Harper’s Bazaar May 1951 Page 125

continued on page 175

The Sound Tape

by Wright Morris

· I've lived across from the Porters most of my life. During the twenties, when it was fashionable to open developments that closed in the thirties, they built a chalet-type mansion across the road from my place. It was said to resemble something Mrs. Porter saw in France. We were not neighbors, however, as the Porter chalet was the first house in the new development, and mine was the last in what is charitably called the old. The road between us, I suppose, is a kind of Mason-Dixon line.

Although we lived in separate worlds, every morning Mr. Porter and I joined forces and rode into town on the same commuter's local, and in the late afternoon we rode home again. On occasion I found him walking home from the station and gave him a lift. I observed that he chain-smoked my brand of cigarettes, traded in his Ford coupe every second year and checked the arrival and departure of the trains by glancing at his watch. Along with everybody else I made the observation that he led an orderly, careful life and that Mrs. Porter led a careless, somewhat disorderly one. Not that it mattered, except for the little problem of keys. When Mrs. Porter left her purse in the seat of some car or on some department store counter, she also left, with certain unimportant matters, the keys to her house. As she did this five or six times a year, some thirty sets of keys were in distribution before Mr. Porter had the locks changed on all the doors. The distribution of the new keys, of course, promptly began. At this point Mr. Porter washed his hands of the matter, he rubbed his palms briskly together as he told me, it was her house, and she could do with it as she liked. Mrs. Porter solved the problem, as usual, by letting nature take its course, losing the last set of keys and entering the house through the garage. I could tell when she came home by the thump of the heavy overhead doors.

When they first moved in, I used to speculate about Mr. Porter's line. He seemed to have money, but I told myself that he worked for it. He kept the same monotonous schedule that I kept myself. He took the 8:04 in the morning, the 4:48 in the afternoon, with only Saturdays and national holidays off. It was nearly ten years before I discovered that Mr. Porter had no line, or rather that his only line was how to pass the time. But he went about it, as he did everything else, in a competent, businesslike way. He put in his eight-hour day at the club where he applied himself to his growing tax problems and a wide range of anti-Roosevelt literature. He was the most informed man on obscure subjects I have ever known. A certain pride of class, I suppose, as one of the surviving unearned increment boys, forbade him to apply himself to anything useful. But nothing prevented him from putting his mind to work. It was a good mind, and he worked it around the clock.

He preferred to sit alone, while commuting, but there were times when he found himself compelled to stand in the aisle or take the seat beside me. As he had paid for this seat, he always took it. Without troubling to open the discussion or indicating that he knew who it was that sat beside him, he would share some of the strange lore he had stored away: the air distance between the capitals of the world, the reason for the smallness of French equestrian armor or the meaning of the serial numbers to be found on the sides of freight cars. He spoke on all these matters with an air of authority, knowing that his listener would be poorly informed, which led most people to think that he was merely a kind of cybernetic marvel full of facts and figures, waiting to be tapped. I found it hard to explain the touch of covert sympathy I felt for him.

My knowledge of Mrs. Porter is of a different sort. What I choose to call my knowledge began on a fine summer dawn, just twenty years ago, when I saw her out padding around in her garden in what she called a shift. An abundant woman, built along the lines of the concrete goddesses that brooded in her garden, she sometimes fancied herself a suburban Diana with a pack of sleek hounds. Draped in her shift and armed with a pair of garden shears in case some urban interloper might stop to marvel, she loved to pad around her acres with the spread- legged gait of a big circus cat. That summer morning, as I remember, she went along making tracks in the dewy grass, stopping now and then to lift the shift and gaze at her well-turned calves. Like in many big women, she was vain of her shapely ankles and small feet.

Later in the morning, a wrapper over the shift, and holding aloft a few wilted flowers. she would cross the road to my seedy lawn and call on me. Would I like a few flowers? She knew that I didn't grow my own. So we would start with the flowers, which she would drop, sometimes head down, in the highball glasses, and then we would get around to the latest pet in her house. It had usually run off, flown off or simply rolled over and died. She had tried, over the years, nearly everything: exotic imported birds, which I could hear in the summer when the windows were open, and pedigreed dogs which I could hear whether the windows were open or not. Sooner or later the birds stopped singing, the dogs stopped whining and barking and the cats I had seen at the windows disappeared. Our discussion usually centered on what sort of creature she should try next.

This problem puzzled me, as Mrs. Porter had a friendly, sympathetic nature, and while the pets were alive she often carried them around in her arms. "Baby," she would say, I was not that type, but she liked to believe she had that type around her, "Baby, isn't he a lover?" and scoop her dachshund, Himmel, into her arms. But there was always more than the usual melancholy in Himmel's eyes. He had learned, much quicker than I did, that when Mrs. Porter put him back on the ground, she had also put him, for the time being, out of her mind. She might forget for a day or two that she owned a dog. There were times when she forgot what the name or breed of her latest dog was.

"Did that boxer, the lover, leave me, Baby?" she would ask, and it was sometimes quite awhile before she found out. Missing cats were often found trapped in her enormous closets, and some of the smaller dogs were hard to hear at the back of the house. But not to smell. In the summer Mr. Porter soon found them out. I would hear him going through the house from wing to wing, opening and closing doors.

It was by slow stages, I suppose, that Mrs. Porter moved from pets to goldfish, from fish to flowers, and from flowers to the house. The house was always there. When a door was left open it did not run off. Something of the concern she felt for her pets, when they began to act distracted, now crept into her voice when she spoke of the house. As she had once said, "Baby, isn't he a lover?" and held up something for me to pet, she now called my attention to her house. From my porch we had a fine view of it. While I was getting her a drink she would move her chair around so that she faced the house. I'm not sure just when I came to know that the place across the road was something more than a house, or when she first noticed the change in its personality. She was the one to point out to me that its character had changed. She spoke of it as of a friend who had lost some endearing faculty.

"Baby," she would say, "what am I going to do about my house?" As a man would say, "what am I going to do about my wife?" I never knew. From where I sat it looked about the same. Every spring the same handy man painted the fence, whitewashed the concrete urns that flanked the doorway and repaired the holes that Mr. Porter's chains made each winter in the drive. Nor had she changed. She still left on my porch whatever she had brought along with the wilting flowers: sometimes her shoes, as she liked to cross the lawn without them; sometimes her squashed pack of menthol cigarettes. "I can't stand menthol, Baby," she would say, "so I don't smoke much."

But she smoked more and more that summer, and if she left a squashed pack on my porch, she went off with my fresh pack tucked into the pocket of her gown. In August she spent a month at the shore, but when she returned it was not to my porch, and she no longer crossed the road to ask me what I thought of her house. There were also other changes; and when it was clear that Mrs. Amory Porter would soon be a mother, it was assumed that Mr. Porter had little to do with it. He had fathered the child, so to speak, by a legal transmission of the pollen, but in every matter that counted, the flower would be hers. Mr. Porter more Or less said so himself. He was the first to joke about the matter; and when talk got around to the child, he would make that characteristic washing gesture with his hands, rubbing the dry palms together as if he stood before a fire. I didn't see Mrs. Porter that winter, but every day I drove past the house and I sometimes felt that I observed a change in it. As a last resort, it amused me to think, Mrs. Porter had got around to changing her house by altering, insofar as possible, the inhabitants.

Eloise, as the child was named, was born in March. On the balcony, when the weather was pleasant, I sometimes saw the nurse with the hooded carriage, and I read in the paper that Mrs. Porter had returned to life, her name appeared on the usual committees and her voice was heard at the usual parties. Mrs. Porter, was back, but only half of Mr. Porter turned up.

As I seemed to be the only person who missed him, I'm not sure anybody else remarked that Mr. Porter no longer came home on the 4:48. He went in as usual, but he came home at one o'clock. Early in May I came home early myself, as there were things to do around the house, and when I reached the Porter house I saw him wheeling something up the drive, a baby carriage, the perambulator I had seen on the balcony. When I stopped, I think I stopped to ask him what was the trouble, he wheeled it up so I could peer into it from the car. Eloise, at that time, was about ten weeks old. But the connection between the child in the carriage and the man who was pushing it was more than a resemblance, I felt I was looking at Porter himself. As if time, right there before my eyes, had unraveled the old man who stood before me, layer by layer, until nothing remained but the Porter seed itself in swaddling clothes; the Porter essence there in the perambulator. Porter knew this, he had wheeled the carriage up, so to speak, in order to prove it; and all the proof he needed he found on my face. Without waiting for me to speak or to recover, he wheeled her off.

For a year or more I saw very little of him. He had taken over, as he told those who asked him, the education of his child. But the following summer when I dropped into the big public market where I did my shopping, Mr. Porter and Eloise were often there. In the spacious air-cooled market, full of soothing music and educational educational commercials, Mr. Porter, as well as Eloise, felt right at home. In the second year, as if to meet his needs, the new baby shopper made its appearance, and he would hustle down the aisles with Eloise propped up between the handle bars. Before she could talk, and long before there was reason to believe that she understood, he described to her the contents of the cans he purchased. He pointed out the label and other important details. It was a great comfort to him to find that this child of his old age, he was then in his late fifties, had a mind that was very much like his own. Curious, precise and absolutely disinterested.

When she was five or six, and when Mr. Porter was not at home. Eloise, like one of Singer's midgets. Would sometimes cross the road and enlighten me. All of my opinions, as she knew them through her father, were woefully misinformed. The correct opinion was the one she brought along. Her great field, as was his, was politics. From Eloise I learned, in the course of several summers, more about the workings of the Administration than I would ever have mastered by myself. I have no mind for figures; Eloise had no mind for anything else. Very early we discovered, or rather Eloise discovered, the fatal flaw, the Achilles, heel in nearly every statement I put forth. Invariably I fell back upon the word feel,

"Now don't you feel Eloise." I would say, whereupon she would shriek and jump up and down. Like her father, she would rub her little hands together.

"You just feel," she would reply, "Daddy thinks."

That, of course, saw early, in the beginning, for later there was no particular need to let me what Daddy did, or anybody else. At seven and one-half Eloise could do it for herself.

"You're always just feeling. Mr. Brady," she would say, "I think."

She was right. I was always feeling, but she could think. She would come to my porch, that side of the porch where the grass and the robins had taken over, with her little head, like a worming robin's, cocked to one side,  ready to pounce on the first wormy feeling I let slip out.

A thin, sober-faced little girl, with the oversized clothes her father bought for her, she seemed to be a woman without ever having been a child. As she stood there reciting. I seemed to hear many small fine wheels going around.

She went to school, but she was not popular. Neither dolls nor other little girls seemed to interest her. She would do her lessons many months in advance and, using the books of the girls ahead of her, master the subjects she would be having the next year. She had the time. There was nothing else that she cared to do. On weekends she might walk across to tell me where macaroni was made or to name the city with the largest smelting works. She knew. And she never seemed to forget. If I happened to meet Porter at the A. and P. or coming home on the local, I could tell by the nature of his lecture what subject Eloise was now on at school. They read the same books, went over the questions carefully. Mr. Porter would pick her up at school, and I would often find them,  an hour or so later, sitting in the front seat of the car that was parked in front of his house. Winter afternoons, when the days were short, the overhead light in the car would be on, and I would see Mr. Porter's head bent over some book. Or the head of Eloise, nodding briskly, as she talked to him. A their backs was the great empty house, like abandoned barracks, with a pale light burning behind the blind in Mrs. Porter's room.

In this manner he instructed her in fractions, learned something about algebra himself and brushed up on the French he had not used for many years. In the A. and P., around the frozen food locker. I would sometimes hear an excited exchange, as if a pair of expensive imported servants were having it out debating in French the merits of stringless or French-style cut beans. Their arguments were full of a kind of heat lightning, intended to sharpen the faculties and illuminate the subject, and he would sometimes turn his back on her to conceal the pleasure on his face.

That was the fall that Harry Truman was a doomed, nearly pitiful man. Mr. Porter had never been in better spirits, and sometimes two or three times a week Eloise would come over, ring my doorbell and recite a bon mot. But just before the election I saw very little of her. Then on Halloween, early in the evening somebody rang my bell. When I opened the door, there stood Eloise. She carried a pumpkin lantern, made of orange and black paper, and on her small sober head sat a pointed witch's cap. The black sateen lining of one of Mr. Porter's coats covered her like a sheet. The effect was that of a dummy that had been dolled up. I failed to notice for a moment that her hand, the palm up, was extended toward me.

"That's a wonderful costume. Eloise." I said. carefully screening my language.

"You're supposed to give me something." she said. 

"Oh." I said. "Oh, all right. What would you like? How about a piece of cake?"

"I'd rather have money," she said, "if you don't mind."

That set me back a bit but I said. "Is it customary to ask for money?"

"Father says if he's elected, we'll all be begging." she said. "Well, there isn't much chance of that." I said. "Is there?"

We stood there while she thought. I could see that she thought there saw not much chance but that she had been impressed by what she had heard.

"Father says if he's elected, he's just going to give up."

"If he's elected, Eloise," I said, sounding quite a bit like her father, "it means that most of the people in the country voted for him. It means he may not be your man, but he's our president." When she didn't reply to that I said, "Well, how do you feel about it?" It was out before I knew it.

"It's not a matter of feeling, Mr. Brady," she said, controlling herself. "it's a matter of thinking."

"Most people will vote as they feel," I said, letting the bars down. "and that's probably how I'll vote myself." But I didn't need to tell her. She could see that for herself.

"What reason is there to go on in a world like that?" she said.

Was that her father? I wasn't sure it was. I put my hand into my pocket, took out some change, then said. "Well, here's twenty-five cents if you spend it right away, Eloise," which was pretty sharp, but she settled for it. I held out the quarter and placed it in the hand with the long fingers and the small palm that snapped shut like a trap when the coin touched it. She turned without another word and walked off. Her small feet made a tapping sound on my brick walk. When she first faced me I had thought how little like a Halloween witch she was, but as she walked off, her witch's head bowed, I wasn’t so sure. It crossed my mind, just faintly, that is, that my grown-up idea of witches was silly, but her idea of a witch was one that meant business, Not foolishness.

I closed the door and forgot about Mr. Porter and Eloise until four days later when I sat in my room listening to the returns. A little after midnight I stepped out in the yard to smoke a cigarette. It was a sharp, but very pleasant night. The Porter house was dark, without a light burning, but out in front was the Porter car with the parking lights on. The front window was down and I could hear the radio. The voice was announcing what appeared to be a surprising trend.

That left a certain impression on me but I didn't think too much about it until the next morning, about eight o'clock. The phone rang just as I was getting ready to leave the house. It was Mrs. Porter. I could hear the bath water spilling into the tub behind her and the blurred nasal noise from her radio.

"This you. Baby?"

"This is me," I said.

"Is my little sound tape over there, honey?"

"Your sound tape" I said, and turned to look around the room. I knew that they were making and selling such things.

"You're cute as cotton, Baby," she said, "You know what I mean, his little sound tape, She isn't here. Is she over there?"

"Oh," I said. "Oh no. No, she isn't over here."

"Is he over there?"

"No, he isn't either," I said.

As there was no reply to that. I said, "I suppose you know they've elected Truman."

"They did?" she said.

"I mean the people did." I said.

"You think they went to an all-night movie?" she said.

"I've no idea. Mrs. Porter." I said, "And right now I've got to run for the train.".

 She didn't answer.

"Well, I've got to run." I said, and did. With the single exception of Mr. Porter, I'm usually the first car out in the morning, and I sometimes pass him on the highway where he waits for the school bus. When the weather is cold, he and Eloise sit there in the car. He was there ahead of me as usual, and through the glass at the back of the car I could see their heads leaning together bent over some book. Some lesson or problem that she had to puzzle out. When I pulled alongside, I gave a tap on the horn as I usually do when I pass them, but this time he didn't toot back, In the rear view mirror I glanced back at them. Eloise, her head lolling to the side, was asleep on his arm. Mr. Porter's chin was resting on his chest. At that point it occurred to me that they had been up all night. They had probably sat right there in the car taking in the returns. Eloise was wearing her new school cap with the bright school colors, and the yellow tassel dangled where the sunlight streamed through the glass. I was relieved that my toot on the horn hadn't waked them. That was something I could leave to the school bus.

In the evening on my walk through the station I took particular trouble to steer clear of Mr. Porter's usual route. The election might be too much for him. I bought a paper for the late returns, went down and took my seat in the smoker, then opened the paper and stared at Porter's face, a photograph taken, I would say, thirty years ago. What struck me was how much he looked like Eloise. Mr. Porter had been found, the report said, with his only child, Eloise, in their car parked in the neighborhood in which they lived. They had died apparently sometime during the night. A faulty heater had flooded the car with poisonous gas.

Very little was said openly, but under the talk that got around to me was the feeling that Porter had acted deliberately; had persuaded his impressionable child to go along with him. This came from people who bad known him very well, who now referred to him as "poor Amory" and sometimes crossed my lawn to ask if I had any insight into the case. I said I hadn't really known Mr. Porter at all. We usually agreed that he had been a hard man to figure out.

Now that he is gone, I find he is often in my mind. I seldom board the local or back to my car without thinking for a moment of Mr. Porter, though I doubt that we ever exchanged a personal remark. Mrs. Porter, they tell me, now spends her time in France. The house across the road is empty, but not long ago a prospective tenant who had got wind of its history stepped over to ask me what it was all about. He had heard, he said, about the Porter case. He I couldn't believe that a man would treat his only child like that. It made me think of that night many years before when I had opened the door of my house, and Eloise Porter in her witch's costume had confronted me.

"It's not a matter of feeling. Mr. Brady," she said, "it's what you think."

As usual, Eloise was right. So far as I know she was never wrong. -----------------

Woman's Own November 27 1957 Page 8/9

When she was with Joe, the future seemed safe 

and sure. But when she was alone, she was 

afraid ...

Safe in his Love

by Mary James

Illustrated by George Hughes

  continued overleaf

FROM the window of her small top-floor room, Janey could see the upper storey of the high building in which Joe worked. By closing her eyes she could visualize him, as he would be, on this warm summer's evening: white-shirted, sleeves rolled up to reveal his brown arms (that last Sunday at the sea!), his head bent over his drawing-board, a pencil between his teeth. In another half-hour he would finish work, and would come to see her. It was his birthday. 

 He had phoned her at midday. 

 "Hi, Janey! I'll be earlier this evening. Have some tea ready for me." 

 " Joe! How wonderful!" 

 "That's right-wonderful!" His voice lowered. "Now say it, Janey." 

 She said it, glancing shyly round to make certain that she had the office to herself. "You love me, Joe, and I love you, too!" 

 It was a little piece of ritual between them. If Joe were alone he said it. If neither of them were alone the formula was, "I've said it !" 

 Silly little things, crazy, tender, intimate: these were the sweet trappings of the bond that held Joe and Janey together. Every misunderstanding, every quarrel, and the link was there, precious and compelling, pulling them close again. 

 It was the only way that Janey could bear waiting for the time when Joe would be through with studies, have passed his final exam, and be ready to make her his wife. Not only the irksome waiting, the long hours of loneliness, but the cramped, rather grubby limitations of her unattractive bed-sitting room. 

 When she had come to London from the north, to be near Joe, he had told her with enthusiasm, "Clever Joe. That's me! Darling, I've got you a room practically on top of Cleeve and Bymans, from your window you can actually see the top half of Design House." 

 Laughing, loving the touch of his arm through hers, she had answered, "I shall wave to you, to remind you of me!" 

 Those first weeks in London Janey would never forget. Joe was going through a relatively slack period and every evening he was waiting outside the office in High Holborn where she worked to meet her and 'take her around.' The Tower, the Abbey, the National Gallery, all the places, he told her with a grin, that he, a true Cockney, had never visited before! 

 There were quiet, interesting little suppers in Soho and Chelsea, which he knew very well. 

He introduced her to his friends, gay, smart, unusual people, among them a few very attractive girls. 

Janey knew a moment's pang, her heart tightening in a spasm of jealousy. How was it, she asked herself, that Joe knew so many girls, lovelier, more sophisticated, smarter than she was, and yet he had waited until he came to a small provincial town and meeting her had loved her from the beginning?

 One evening she had asked him shyly, "Why did you choose me, Joe, when there are so many beautiful women in the world, your world?" 

  Holding her tightly he had said gently, "You are my world, sweetest -you're my sort of girl. Remember that." 

 She tried to remember, repeating to herself the words he had used, remembering his mouth against hers, the deep sincere tenderness in his voice. 

 Now, when he was so busy, working so hard, with only a snatched few hours to give to her, she reminded herself, "I am his world; his sort of girl." Sometimes, even when the daylight had almost gone, she saw the top windows of the tall building where he worked, still lit up, and knew that he was working. 

 She fought back the loneliness, the longing to see him, remembering the other things he had said to her. ''I'm working for us, darling, for us, don't forget." Another time when her eyes had filled with disappointment, "Please, dear, try to be patient. I know it's tough having to be so much alone, but as soon as I'm through with all these studies we'll have all the fun in the world." 

 But today he had promised her, "I'll be earlier this evening." The first birthday celebration that they would have together.

 Back from the office Janey had tidied up her room, arranged a bunch of fresh marigolds on the small white table which she had spread with a gay cloth. 

There was a cake, Joe's favourite coffee and walnut, crab sandwiches and lettuce. The room was cool, a light breeze blowing from a distant river stirring the faded chintz curtains. 

  JANEY looked around. Oh, the room was poky, shabby, noisy with the traffic outside, but Joe was coming, they would have the evening together, and it was the loveliest room in the whole of London! 

 Standing on tiptoe in front of the mirror, which was nailed too high for her five foot four and a half inches, Janey touched the bright gleam of her dark hair, and smoothed the collar of her pretty blouse.

 Joe liked her to wear gay blouses and cotton skirts. 

"You look like a film starlet, waiting for her first big 'break' ," he declared. He loved her eager delight, the sparkling excitement in her eyes, the wholehearted enthusiasm which she brought to all their expeditions together. "Don't ever dare to go blase on me," he said half, threateningly, "I get a tremendous kick out of playing the man about town showing the adorable country mouse around! " 

 Half-past six. He said he would be leaving the office at twenty-past. Allowing for the time he would take to clear up the papers on his desk, wash his hands, come down in the lift, he should this very minute be crossing the road. 

 Janey stood by the window, looking out. People were going home: men, girls, with attache cases, shopping baskets, hurrying on their way down the side streets to the station. Cars streamed past, taxis drew into the kerb. Joe, Joe, where are you? So much time can pass when one is standing at a window, waiting and watching for someone. 

 Her watch told her that it was nearly seven. Three times already the kettle had boiled for tea. Water that had boiled for too long made a dreadful cup of tea, she told herself, and went down the stairs to the landing where there was a tap which supplied drinking water. 

 The windows of the huge offices were in darkness. So Joe wasn't working late! It was nearly half-past seven now and still no sign of him. 

 She went downstairs again, to the hall where telephone messages were left. There wouldn't be a message, she knew this, of course, but an idiotic hope nagged her that perhaps, for once, she may have overlooked a note addressed to her. She had come in so hurriedly, so anxious to start making preparations for Joe's visit that she could not remember if she had stopped to look on the table. 

 There was nothing there. Only a pile of telephone directories, and a post-card from Brighton that had been waiting for its recipient for weeks. 

 He could have phoned! 

 Janey swallowed a lump in her throat as she slowly climbed the stairs again. He could have let her know that he wasn't coming.

 All the afternoon she had worked at fever pitch, getting done early, so that she could leave a half-hour before her usual time. The chief clerk had smiled at her, sympathetically, as she asked permission. "Yes, that will be quite all right, as long as you've finished. Have fun!"

 It wasn't the first time he had had to break a date, but he always let her know. It was so much worse, this time, because of all the trouble she had gone to, the expense, of getting things ready for him. 

 She stared at the table, the pretty yellow china she had brought from home, the festive cake, the sandwiches already beginning to curl. Tears started to her eyes and she dashed them away, angrily, with the back of her hand. She stood at the window, looking out, one hand holding back the net curtain. (When Joe came he swept aside the net and, as he said, 'let London come in at the window' rooftops, chimneys, the dark aloof beauty of the night sky, the throbbing mutter of a metropolis slowly and lazily preparing for another day.)

 Two girls in a house opposite came down the steps to join two young men on the pavement. They laughed, linked hands, and strolled off towards the river. A man and a girl climbed into a taxi. The girl turned her head to smile and even from a distance one caught the breathless wordless love in the way her mouth curved. 

 "Everyone has someone" the words went through Janey's mind, and she wondered were they part of a song or words that she had simply thought up for herself? 

 Well, she had Joe. And Joe had his work, his ambition, his inflexible determination to make a place for himself in his own particular world, a world into which he could take her with him.

  SOMETIMES, wistfully, aching with loneliness she whispered. "Let's not wait, Joe. Let's be married. We'll make out, other couples do." 

 He was half-angry, brusquely impatient when she spoke like this. Other couples. Joe had seen'em! Pinching, scraping, living in furnished rooms, living on dreams that became crumpled with constantly being folded away. This year? Next year? 

 "We can afford to wait. We'll start our married life with our dreams in our laps and time enough to build up other dreams," he insisted, his young face stern with resolution. 

 Janey supposed, with a sigh, that he was right. Joe knew what he wanted, for her and for himself. He didn't want any compromise, any so-called romantic nonsense about love on a penny. 

 He had been brought up one of a large family and had witnessed the constant struggle to make ends meet which had nagged his parents all through their long life together. Oh, yes, they had been happy enough, but they had left youth behind far too early. He would do better than this for Janey. Trust Joe!

 "Trust me," he said tenderly. 

 But tonight was different. This was a special occasion. His birthday. And she had gone to so much trouble to make things festive. The flowers, the cake! It was mean of him not to have come, not to have phoned! 

 She turned from the window, letting the curtain fall. The room was veiled in dusk. The table looked as if it had been waiting for years. 

 Picking up a white cardigan she flung it round her shoulders. She couldn't bear to spend the evening alone in the room. She would walk down to the embankment, look at the river, cross the bridge and stroll in the park. 

 She would do it all very slowly, without measuring time, so that it would be late, bed-time in fact, when she returned. 

 People strolled in pairs, in some mysterious way enclosed in their own secret worlds, as if the gathering darkness wrapped them in sweet privacy. Outside the Town Hall a little group of people gathered. Light spilled on to the pavement. It was the evening for one of the weekly chamber concerts. Janey paused to read the, programme Tchaikovsky. 

 She was conscious of a man standing at her side, also scanning the poster. Their eyes met and impulsively they both smiled. 

 "A heavenly concert!" she exclaimed with enthusiasm.

 He had two tickets in his hand and looked down at them a shade ruefully. "It starts in about five minutes. I'll murder my friend for daring to be late!" he said with a half-laugh. 

 Janey made up her mind. She would go to the concert. It would be better than walking about on her own, and she loved music, especially Tchaikovsky. . 

 She ran up the steps of the Town Hall and went to the box-office. A few seconds later she was turning away, disappointed. Not a seat left! She stood on the top of the steps, suddenly wrapped in melancholy. Everything was going wrong this  evening, absolutely everything. 

 A voice spoke to her: "I say, forgive me, but I wonder if you'd accept one of my tickets. I don't think my friend will come now." It was the young man again. 

 Janey looked at him a little hesitantly. He returned her look with sincere frankness. "Please." He held out the ticket, almost tucked it into her hand. "Such a shame to waste it!" 

 She opened her bag, her cheeks flushed with gratitude.. "Thanks awfully, I must pay you for it!" she said breathlessly.

HE smiled. "No need. It's a complimentary. I have a friend in the orchestra," he explained simply. 

 It all seemed so natural; giving an unexpected warmth to an evening that had been so disappointing. The rapt audience, the thrilling magic of the music, and the knowledge that she shared with this man, this stranger, a passing companionship that needed no conventional excuses for its existence. 

 During a pause between movements Janey looked slyly at him. Good looking, in a fair, rather dishevelled manner. Young, touchingly so, with his thin body, his bony wrists, and the attractive shyness in his eyes and voice.

 He too, had been waiting for someone, a friend? The girl he loved, perhaps? Oh, didn't she know just how miserable it was, how lonesome, to wait around for someone who didn't turn up?

 The music took her thoughts and trailed them in dreamy rhythm through her mind. Joe the way he looked, spoke, held her, promised her. "Be patient, my darling. Trust me!"

  Oh, she did trust him! But she wanted not to wait any longer, wanted him to come back to her at nights, to share her life, stop this foolishness of living apart, each of them in separate little rooms! 

 The boy at her side had taken her hand, was holding it tightly in his., Looking at him she knew that he was unconscious of the action, his eyes shining, lips parted, leaning forward a little as if he were drinking in the liquid notes. She let her hand stay in his until the end of the movement, when he quickly released it, turning to her, flushed, and rather embarrassed. 

 "I-I forgot. I wasn't thinking!" he stammered. 

 Janey felt the tears start to her eyes. It was all so sad! Both of them loving and wanting to be with their love, wanting it so badly that it was easy to pretend, to forget, that they sat next to a stranger!

 In the interval they went along to the buffet for coffee and biscuits. The music had swept away inhibitions had made it possible, almost a relief, to confide in each other. 

 "My name is Peter," he said:

 "Mine is Jane." (Janey was Joe's name for her.) 

 He looked at her steadily. "I'm so glad you came to the concert. I wouldn't have come on my own." 

 She nodded. "I would have come on my own but only because I was lonely, disappointed." 

"Tell me."

  IT was like telling a story about something that had happened a long time ago. Things seemed so detached: her room, the tea-table, even Joe-Joe! She felt a wave of short-lived anger. How much did Joe care that she was alone, waiting, meekly accepting his last-minute change of plan. "Darling, I'm sorry! Another night." 

 Then it was Peter's turn. There was Helen, the girl who had not turned up at the concert. She was a violinist, just starting on her career as an orchestra player. "Music is her life. When we are married we shall live with music," he said softly. "I want to be married now, now, now! Helen wants to establish herself before she takes on the responsibility of being a wife. I don't want to wait." 

 They exchanged glances, and laughed softly, in sympathy.

 Finally he said, sighing, "Helen's right of course. I must be patient. She is too sensitive, too talented, to plunge into married life built on mere bubbles. " 

 He looked thoughtfully into the distance, his eyes clouded. "Romanticism is all very well up to a point, but there's more than mere romance, however beautiful it is, in married life. We don't believe that we can take a blind 'header' into it with our eyes closed, keeping our fingers crossed. We want to feel secure, comfortable, fundamentally sane." 

 The way Joe felt. The way she, Jane, must think, because the way Peter put it it seemed sensible and worthwhile. 

  THEY went back to their seats. As he gave her the programme their hands brushed, and a swift electric sensation passed between them. So short a time ago they had not known that the other existed; they had come to the concert strangers. Now-- 

 "If it had not been for Joe I might have fallen in love with him," thought Janey, and the idea was so fragile, without reality, that she felt no disloyalty to Joe.

 She felt his hand touch hers again. He whispered, "Jane, thank you for coming. I shall never forget you." 

 Waiting for Joe. Waiting for Helen. And in between times a brief interlude of romantic tenderness, something that they would carry in memory for the rest of their lives. 

 Outside in the darkness it was as if they stepped out of a dream into the real world. 

 "Shall I see you home?" He was polite, a man called Peter whom she had just met. 

 She shook her head. "No, thank you. I only live a few minutes walk from here." She held out her hand. 

 "Good night. Thank you for letting me use the spare ticket."

 "Good night." 

 He hurried away and she saw him cross over to a phone kiosk. In a few moments more he would have pressed Button A. "Helen. Is that you, darling? This is Peter." 

 It was half-past ten when she opened the front door. On the quiet night air, the river breeze blew the rumbling tones of Big Ben over the city. She opened the door of her room, and switched on the light. The tea table was still there, and the flowers, drooping down in sleep. The sandwiches curled back at the edges like petals. The cake, the cake had a good-sized wedge cut out of it. Then she saw Joe. He was slumped in the only armchair, fast asleep. 

 She paused, then throwing off her cardigan, she went and stood at his side, taking his hand and holding it up to her face. Dear, dear Joe! 

 He stirred and half-drowsily grinned up at her. "I rang you, darling, but you'd left the office. I had to attend a last-minute meeting, important, you know." His voice was thick, husky with weariness. "Then when I tried to contact you here-they said you were out." 

 Now wide-awake, he stood up and pulled her into the shelter of his arms. 

 She said softly, her head on his shoulder, "I waited, Joe. I got tired of waiting, I-I was so disappointed." 

 Joe looked rueful. "I ate some of the sandwiches and cut a huge slice of cake. I wished myself many happy returns. It wasn't so much fun on my own ! "Resting his chin on top of her head he went on, "It all looked so, so home-y. The flowers and everything. I went round the room touching your things, wishing you were here, loving you so terribly." 

 There was a pale, strained expression on his face that she had not seen before. "Janey, don't let's wait, Let's start being home-y together, just like this. It will do for a start. I didn't realize how much I needed you until I came here tonight and found the room empty. Do you feel that way too, when you are here alone?"

 Memory flooded Janey for a brief moment Peter, his gentleness, the understanding. One day she would tell Joe about Peter and, perhaps, Peter would tell Helen about Jane. 

 "I waited for you, you didn't come, I was so disappointed. There was a girl, her name was Jane." 

 There was a boy, his name was Peter. 

 Joe was saying, "Let's be married Janey, beloved." .... THE END

Woman's Own November 27 1957 Page 11

  continued overleaf

Theo learned that a young girl's hero worship can be flattering but embarrassing

Man of the World 

by Charles King 

Illustrated by Joe De Mers

----------------

 THEO VINCENT moved into the gracious old house he had bought at Midfold on a crystal morning in late October. He was standing in the garden and wondering how to get his grand piano through the french windows when he saw an eye watching him in the hedge. 

 His next-door neighbours were a maiden aunt and her niece, so the taxi-driver had told him. The eye belonged, he supposed, to the niece. He smiled to himself, wandered casually out of its range, and quietly approached it along the hedge. 

 "Good morning," he said. 

 He had stooped politely. The eye widened, blinked at him, and vanished. There was a confused rustling on the other side of the hedge. 

 He said, still stooping, "Please don't go away. I didn't mean to startle you. I want to introduce myself." 

 "I haven't gone away." 

 Theo straightened himself rather quickly. The voice had come from above the hedge. He found himself looking at a girl of perhaps seventeen with darkish hair and a face that would be very lovely one day soon. 

 ''I'm glad," Theo said, smiling. 

 Her own smile was quick but doubtful. "You're not peeved? "

 "Why should I be?"

  "Oh, I don't know." She pulled a leaf from the hedge. "From what old Moppett said I thought you'd be a bit, well, crusty." 

 "And what did old Moppett say?" 

 "Oh, nothing much. Just that the gentleman who was moving in next door was a bachelor and that he’d retired from the Foreign Office." 

 "I resigned, as it happens. I wasn't old enough to retire." Theo straightened his shoulders unobtrusively. 

 "Who is this remarkably ill-informed character, anyway?" 

 "Old Moppett? He drives a taxi." 

 "Of course. He told me an aunt and her niece lived next door. I'd put your age at about nine or ten. I rather thought you'd wear pigtails." 

 She laughed then, delightedly, so he put his, firm brown hand over the hedge and introduced himself. Her name; she said, was Susan Nevill. She dropped her hand and her face clouded. 

 "I behaved like a child, anyway," she said in a vexed tone of voice, "peeping through the hedge at you like that." 

 "Not at all, I often peep myself." 

 "Well, you see, I always used to stand here and watch the tennis parties and things when I was quite a little girl. You must think I haven't grown up yet." 

  THEO said, simply, "No, I don't think that." What he could see of her above the hedge had grown up very nicely indeed. "Why don't you join me on this side?" 

 She hesitated. He coaxed her deftly. "You might be able to help me with that blessed grand piano." 

"All right, then."  

 She walked along the hedge and squeezed through a gap he hadn't noticed before. She was slim, leggy, not yet sure of herself. Theo was charmed with her. 

 They went across to the grand  piano together. She said, wonderingly, "It's huge, isn't it?" 

 "It's the bane of my life," Theo said. "I bought it for my twenty-first birthday and I've carted it about with me ever since."  

 "Not abroad?" 

 "Oh yes. It's gone through a floor in Pekin, sunk a native boat in Honolulu, and got itself wedged in half a dozen doorways from Helsinki to Hong Kong." 

 She was looking at him breathlessly. "Golly. Have you lived in all those places? " 

 "Is that so wonderful?" 

 "I should say. You wait till I tell Donald. He'll be green."

 "Donald? " 

 "He's my boy. . . my friend. He's a reporter on the local 'rag.' He went to Dinard last summer with his father and he's been bragging about it ever since. I say, you must have had a terrifically exciting life? " 

 "Now you mention it," Theo said, "I suppose I have." 

 He had not seen it in that light before. On the whole he had been rather dissatisfied with himself lately. When a man reaches middle age with nothing to show for forty-odd years of experience but a certain savoir faire and a few scratches on a grand piano, disillusionment sets in. 

 But it was something, after all, to be a man of the world. Theo looked at himself for a moment through those dazzled young eyes, and was flattered. 

 He said, briefly, "Well now, the piano. " 

 She was suddenly shy. "You will tell me if I'm a nuisance, won't you?" 

 "I will," said Theo, gravely. 

 He couldn't imagine doing so. She was altogether charming. And besides, her obvious admiration for him was a pleasure he found it hard to resist. 

 For a day or two after he had moved in, she had to be coaxed through the hedge into his garden. After that she wandered through of her own accord. She helped him arrange his books, or brought him flowers her aunt had picked, which filled the house with fragrance. 

 And he talked about himself. She made him. She was endlessly fascinated by his chequered past. He tried to question her about Donald and the aunt he had still to meet, but she shrugged away her own life. It was as dull as ditchwater, she said. 

 He had been in Midfold for a fortnight when Donald presented himself asking for an interview for the local paper. He was a likeable young fellow, but he hadn't learned to hide his feelings yet. 

 He made it obvious that he resented Susan's interest in Theo. Well, Theo thought wryly and without vanity, I am more polished than anyone else in Midfold and young girls always seem' to find silver-templed maturity so interesting. 

 Anyway, his influence would be good for the girl. She needed more polish, hadn't Donald mentioned that Susan would be nineteen next week? How slowly girls grew up in places like Midfold. 

 He wondered suddenly whether he ought to give her a birthday present? She had really been very helpful since he had moved in, and it would be an ideal opportunity to make her aware of herself. 

He did wonder, walking leisurely towards the town centre next morning, whether he ought to speak to the maiden aunt first. Susan had told him she owned a shop in the High Street. She probably sold knitting patterns or kept one of those genteel teashops full of copper warming pans and muffins. 

 And she would undoubtedly suggest that Theo gave Susan something sensible. That was just what Theo did not intend to do. He had walked nearly the length of the High Street before he found the shop he wanted. 

  PAINTED on the black fascia was 'Fay's Boutique.' It had a canary-yellow and a few wispy garments of an intimate nature behind a lot of bland plate glass. Theo smiled approvingly and entered. 

 The woman who came toward him was he thought almost certainly Fay herself. She was tall, slim, thirty-fivish. Her clothes had the same casual sophistication which had so pleased him in the decor of the shop. 

 "Can I help you?" she said. 

 "I’m sure you can." She had an agreeably dry smile. "I wanted a present for a young girl. It must be charming, elegant and frivolous."

 "I see." 

 There was now perhaps a faint glimmer of amusement far back in her eyes. Theo saw it there when she turned round from the glass case. 

 She was holding to her slim throat a dark and filmy cloud which he took to be a negligee. She was smiling at him. 

 "How would this be?" 

 "Delicious," said Theo, candidly  as  he leaned forward, looked at his hand through the delicate cobweb of nylon, and added, "But perhaps just a shade too frivolous." 

 "Oh?" 

 "It has to be a present which a middle-aged man can give to a girl on her nineteenth birthday without, shall we say, embarrassment on either side. " 

 "I see."

 Her smile was a little drier, he judged. It was odd. "Well?" he said. "You did say it was for her nineteenth birthday?" 

 "I did." 

 "Perhaps she might like a scarf or a twin set with her name embroidered on it?" 

"She might." The woman was obviously up to something, but there seemed no harm in telling her. "The name is Susan." 

 Her smile was now almost acid. "You will forgive me, won't you," she said, "but you are Mr. Theodore Vincent? "

 "I am." "I am Fay Nevill." 

 THEO bowed. It gave him time to absorb the distinct shock and to curse the name of Moppett. When he looked up, a moment later, his smile was as serene as ever. 

 "But this is a pleasure, Miss Nevill."

 "I am Susan's aunt, you know." 

 "Yes, yes. I'm so glad we've met at last. And how delightfully convenient that it should be here." 

 "You still want to buy Susan's gift here? " 

 "Of course. Where else could I get anything at all worthy of her in Midfold?

 " Fay Nevill laughed then. She held out her hand and he took it briefly, but with sincere pleasure. 

 He had known very few women in his rather extensive acquaintance who could laugh without losing their elegance.

 "I'm sorry," she said. "I really thought you'd be embarrased when I told you who I was." 

 "But Susan has been very kind to me, as you probably know. And I've grown quite fond of her. Why should I be embarrassed at buying her a birthday gift?"

 "Oh, I've lived in Midfold far too long. I'm full of absurd local prejudices." She smiled wryly. "But don't you think I might disapprove of your choice of gift?" 

"Do you disapprove?"

 She glanced at the black negligee. "Something absolutely frivolous for a girl of nineteen? " 

 "Why not? Now please don't say I ought to give her something sensible. You really aren't that sort of aunt, you know."

 She laughed again, but thoughtfully. "All the same, I do rather disapprove. I've tried not to influence Susan in any particular way, I want her to grow up natural and completely unspoiled." 

 "Unpolished, I should say." 

 "Perhaps. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. Don't misunderstand me. If Susan should acquire the sort of polish we're talking about I wouldn't object. But I don't want it applied to her like a varnish. She's rather a nice person, you know." 

 "I know." He said it quite simply. "Of course it's possible to be both polished and nice." 

 "Of course." She smiled at him. "It's a very delicate process though, isn't it?" 

 "And painful. Still, I'm rather surprised that a woman of your obvious experience should want Susan to remain a rude child of nature." 

 "Perhaps it's because of my experience," she said, and spread her hands coolly over the pitfall her words had uncovered in their casual conversation. "I might ask you why, with your obvious experience, you should have settled in Midfold." 

 "I might tell you," Theo said, lightly, "if I knew the answer. I think it's because I want peacefully and quietly to do some historical research. But I'm not sure. Perhaps I ought to start by "doing some research on myself?"  

 They smiled at each other amicably. She did not probe further, she merely glanced now at the negligee she was still holding and said, without familiarity, "Can I show you something else?

 He glanced round the elegant little shop. "A stole, do you think?" 

 "Certainly, Mr. Vincent." 

 HE walked thoughtfully along the High Street ten minutes later with the parcel under his arm. He had liked Fay Nevill. It was quite a different liking to that which he felt for Susan, but in its way just as precise. 

 Fay after Susan had been like dry white wine after too many cocktails. On the other hand, he reflected, when Susan came into his garden after tea that day and asked him rather shyly whether he would come to dinner on the night of her birthday, one did not lose one's taste for cocktails. 

 It was nice on the evening of her birthday dinner party, to find, when he walked across to the house, that no one was to be present but Susan, Fay and himself. 

 He found Susan alone in the drawing room. She was gazing into the glowing fire, one arm on the mantel shelf in an attitude at once graceful and strangely mature

 "Hallo, Susan," he said, softly. 

 "Theo." The awkward little start of surprise revealed the young girl. "I didn't hear you come in." . 

 He brought his hand with the parcel from behind his back. "Happy birthday, Susan." 

 She looked at the parcel wonderingly. "Theo-" 

 "Well, take it." 

 She took it, turned it over in her hands, breathless with  pleasure. "Aren't you going to open it?" She unwrapped the paper carefully, brushed aside the tissue, opened her lips with a little noiseless sigh of delight. 

 "Oh Theo, it's perfect." 

 "I'm glad you like it." 

 "I love it. I'll always keep it." 

 He was surprised by the passion in her voice. He was even embarrassed. He said, lightly, "It isn't all that precious .

 She glanced up at him then. He had seen that look in a woman's eyes only once or twice before in his life, and never with such panic as he felt now. 

 "It is to me," she said, softly. 

 He had stepped back instinctively. She reached him with a sudden movement that caught him unawares. Her lips brushed his cheek, the perfume of her hair drifted across his face, silk rustled and then he was alone. 

 He felt considerably shaken. He stood there with his hand to his cheek. How could he have foreseen that the girl would fall in love with him? 

   WHEN Fay came into the drawing-room he greeted her warily. Her manner was just as it had been in the shop, easy, friendly, but rather reserved. He wondered uneasily whether she had guessed what Susan's feelings were for him.

 He was relieved, when Susan joined them, that she made no tender demonstration beyond a quick but inflammatory glance at him as they sat down to table. The dinner was going to be ordeal enough without that. 

 The stole seemed to have inspired Susan. She kept shrugging it elegantly off her shoulders between courses. Her voice was pitched higher, too, and she crooked her little finger discreetly on her fork. 

 He avoided Fay's eye. He could not help seeing how incongruous Susan's fine manner was beside that of her aunt, who deftly turned the conversation this way and that while the meal progressed. 

 She did not remonstrate with Susan, and Theo admired her restraint. It was only when they had gone into the lounge afterwards for coffee that she said softly to Susan, "You're feeling all right, my dear?" 

 "Yes, of course." 

 "You seemed a little strained at dinner." 

 "Oh, Fay." 

 Susan appealed mutely to Theo. He said, reluctantly "She is, after all, nineteen, Miss Nevill." 

 "Well, that’s just it, Theo. You always understand. I mean, is there any reason why I shouldn't be cool and polished and elegant?" 

 "But being cool and polished and elegant isn't just an act you put on," Fay said, seriously. "You either are, or you aren't. You  aren't Susan, yet. You're a nice young girl with a healthy interest in life--" 

 "Ugh," said Susan, inelegantly. "No, but really, Fay, you can't expect me to go about gushing all over the place and bickering with Donald--" 

 THEO seized his chance neatly. 'You haven't been quarrelling with Donald?" 

 "Not quarrelling, bickering. Well, eh keeps lurking about and nagging me. He's so immature." 

 "Donald is? " 

 "Oh, you only met him once. Actually he's awfully, well--"

 "Callow? " 

 "Oh, Theo, you always know exactly the right word." 

 "Mm, yes. What does he grumble about then?" 

 "Oh things. And then he wants me to go to the Rugger Ball with him next month, and I won't. Well I can't, can I? It's such a juvenile sort of affair, all jumping about and singing potty old songs and throwing sausage rolls. I mean, it isn't at all dignified, is it?" "And you want to be dignified?" Fay asked, gravely. 

"Well, when you're nineteen, I mean--" 

 Theo, keeping his eyes rigidly on his coffee cup, was glad at this moment to hear a low whistle outside the window. He listened. The low whistle sounded again. 

He lifted his eyes. "There's someone outside, I believe." 

 "It's probably, Donald," Susan said, placidly.  

 "I'd better go see." Theo said, and escaped. 

 He went out by the french window in the dining-room and approached across the grass in the dark. Someone was certainly lurking in the shrubs below the glowing curtained window of the lounge.  

 Theo waited until the lurker whistled again, then he said, pleasantly, "Good evening, Donald." 

 "On, gosh, I mean, Mr. Vincent." 

 "Can I assist you in any way?" 

 "I wanted Susan." 

 "Miss Nevill has a front door bell, Donald." 

 "Yes, Mr. Vincent. Only I wanted Susan." He had recovered from the shock. Theo rather admired the way the boy stood up to him, not insolently, but not humbly either. "It’s rather personal, you see." 

 "Miss Nevill has company, Donald. This is not really a convenient moment. Is there anything I can do? 

 " Donald moved his shoulders. He cleared his throat. Finally he said, quite steadily, "To tell you the truth, Mr. Vincent you are the trouble."

"I am?" 

 "Yes, Mr. Vincent. You see, Susan looks up to you, . she worships you. She thinks I'm callow because I don't have grey hair and a seamed sort of face and lashings of savoir "me.ria[ 

 "Like me, I take it?" 

 "Well, yes, Mr. Vincent. She was all right until you came along and now she's unbearable. To me, that is. s'ehS probably jolly nice to everyone over fifty." 

 "Don't be bitter, Donald."

 "No, Mr. Vincent."  

 "And I am not yet over fifty." 

 "I’m sorry, Mr. Vincent."   

 "Otherwise what you say sounds  reasonable enough. A storm in a teacup perhaps." 

  DONALD'S voice was very quiet. "Excuse me, Mr. Vincent, but it's not. To me it's deadly serious. I love Susan, you see. And even if she did go on despising me, even if I did lose her, I wouldn't want to see her dolling herself up and being cynical 

about all the thins which matter. Anybody can be polished and cynical’But Susan is. . . Susan." 

 "I see," said Theo. 

 And he did see. He saw a girl peeping out of a hedge, a girl with a happy thirst for life and a promise of beauty.  He saw a boy who loved these things in her, and whose love might one day , I' bring them to maturity. 

 He said in an equable voice, I think you can leave it to me now, Donald. You can trust me. 

 "Yes, Mr. Vincent." He turned away, paused briefly. "And thank  you, Mr. Vincent." 

 Theo walked back pensively across the lawn. When he reached the french windows, Fay was waiting for him. 

 He said, rather wearily, "It was Donald." . 

"Theo. . . "

 "Oh, there's nothing to worry about." It was the first time she had called him Theo, he realized. "I think he'll be all right now."

 "It wasn't Donald I was worrying about," she said, quietly. 

 Theo recalled her words in the shop and said, "Fay, might I ask you a rather personal question?" 

 "Of course." 

 "You remember telling me the other day that it might be because of your experience that you wanted Susan to stay natural and unspoiled. What did you mean?" 

 "Oh, I don't know." She waited for the right words. "One acquires sophistication. One learns to live intelligently and not to waste one's emotions. But it all seems rather pointless, doesn't it, when one's alone? " 

 He did not immediately understand what she meant. He had already learned so much this evening. He would think about it later. 

  THEO awoke to sharp sunlight and breakfast and a complete knowledge of what he had to do about Susan. He dressed carefully and went down to his study and made three telephone calls, to Fay's Boutique, the house next door, and the Midfold Gazette. 

 He told Fay that he had decided to hold a house warming party in a week's time. Would she come herself, and provide a list of respectable townsfolk whom he could invite? She would, she told him, rather thoughtfully. 

 He asked Susan whether she would do him the honour of acting as his hostess at the party. She accepted rapturously. 

 He explained patiently to a dubious Donald that he really wanted him to come to the party with as many of his friends, particularly the rugger types, as he could find. They were a bit boisterous, Donald said. Theo assured him that they were just the kind he wanted. Donald, who seemed to guess now that this was some sort of plot, brightened up considerably and, thought he could bring along a skiffle group as well.

 Theo sat for a little while in the study and reviewed his plan. It would work, he thought. He hoped it would not be too painful for Susan. For himself, he had no hope at all. He would suffer miserably. 

 Susan's sufferings began, actually, as soon as she arrived at his house early on the evening of the party. She was dressed rather startlingly in a superbly elegant and most uncomfortable looking confection of white brocade, She was hobbling. 

 "Theo, do you like it?" she asked. 

 "Very much indeed." 

 "Really? " 

 "I think it's splendid, Susan." 

She moved her feet gingerly. '"It's , rather tight, Theo. I mean, you can't kick your heels about, can you?" 

 "One's not supposed to kick one's heels about, Susan. Not in that gown. You slink." 

 "Do I?" 

 She slunk. It was not an obvious success. She was still slinking when Fay came across, the hall towards them, having discarded her wrap. 

 Susan said, "Fay chose the gown for me from the Boutique. She said it would do wonders for me, didn't you, Fay?" 

 "I did." Fay smiled at Theo. "I'm glad you asked Susan to be your hostess." 

 "Are you?" 

 "Very glad. It will teach her such an awful lot, won't it?" 

 Theo said, gravely, "That was the idea, of course." He smiled at her with sober admiration. This was an unusual woman. She not only conveyed in the little pressure of her hand on his that she understood his plan, but that she sympathized with him in his painful duty of carrying it out. 

 Presently she wandered off towards the bar he had set up in the drawing- room. The first guests were beginning to arrive. They were the respectable townsfolk, placid middle-aged people. 

 Theo and Susan shook hands with them. Susan did very creditably, Theo thought. There was a distinct elegance in the way she inclined her head, though her eyes were shining with a rather obvious delight. 

 At the end of the first half-hour, both the elegance and the delight had wilted a little.  

 The guests continued to arrive in murmuring clumps. Susan kept glancing at Theo and shuffling her feet.

 At the end of an hour she said, in a small voice, "Theo." 

 "Yes?" 

 Do we shake hands with everybody?" 

 "Well, not everybody. I believe I saw Donald arrive ten minutes ago with some of his friends. We haven't shaken hands with them." 

 "No, we haven't." She looked wistful. "Someone’s playing music somewhere, aren't they?" 

 "I believe they are. That would be the skiffle group Donald talked of bringing. I thought the youngsters would like that, you know."  

 "I suppose they would." 

 The inexpert but jungly throb of the guitar was coming from the conservatory with quite a lot of other noise. The cheerful hubbub of laughter and raised voices washed around them where they stood, isolated with the latest apologetic arrival in the hall. 

  SUSAN had begun to look harrowed. She said, timidly, "It's a good band, isn't it?" 

 "Rather noisy, I should have said." 

 "But it makes your feet itch." 

 "Does it, Susan?" 

 "Well, you know what I mean." 

 "Yes," said Theo, "I know what you mean. We could walk to the study, if you like. I've had all the important guests gathered there." 

 "Yes, Theo."

 They walked to the study. The important guests were much like the others except that they smelled vaguely of cigars. Susan had begun to look acutely miserable. 

 Theo was suffering himself. 

 He looked at Susan and remembered that foolish, innocent kiss, and wondered how long the painful operation would take. 

 It took, actually, another thirty-five minutes. He had done his best to entertain her, but her expression now was more desperate than elegant and every time the rasp of tile washboard reached them in the study her feet positively writhed. The elegant trap had become intolerable. 

 He said at last, quietly, "Susan, you don't have to stay with me, you know. 

"Oh, Theo. . ." 

 She would not look at him. He put his hand on hers, gently. "Susan, you understand what I mean, don't you? If you really want to abdicate from being hostess, I shan't blame you." 

 "I don't know, Theo, really I don't," 

 She wandered miserably out of the study into the empty corridor. He waited until he saw her back quiver, then he went to her. 

Donald was there. He was standing forlornly by the discarded hats and coats, his feet moving listlessly to the distant music and his lips pursed. Theo glanced at Susan. 

Her face had brightened for a moment, though it was miserable again now. She kept clasping and unclasping her hands. He knew now, without any doubt and with the strangest pang of loss, that his plan had worked. 

 She said, in a small voice, "There's Donald." 

 "Yes, Susan." 

 "Alone." 

 "Yes." 

 "Theo . . . , Oh Theo, I've been so beastly to him." 

 He put his hand on her arm and turned her round. Her eyes were damp. He said, smiling at her gently, "I think I'd go to him and ask him if he'd take you to the Rugger Ball next week and let you sing a potty old song and even perhaps throw a sausage roll or two. I think he'd understand." 

 "But, Theo . . . would you?" 

 "Yes, Susan, I'd understand, too." 

 She looked at him then with an expression which made him feel suddenly as significant a man as he had ever felt. 

 HE had not expected this. He had not foreseen, either, bow grateful to her he would be for it. 

 Because the loneliness, when she ran away from him towards the hall, was for a moment intolerable. 

 He wondered, briefly, whether this party would really warm his house. There was still the problem of the hostess. It had taken him twenty years to realize that he needed one, he could not afford another twenty years to find her. 

 He was still thinking about that when he saw Fay Nevill cross the hall, glance at the happy and oblivious couple by the hats and coats, and come towards him. 

 She was smiling. The smile was not very elegant and not in the least bit cool. His problem was one which could easily be solved, he thought, by a man of the world. ------------ THE END