Archibald Cronin - The Stars Look Down

“Damn it all,” turning to Joe, “I’ve forgotten my counterfoils.” He ran his hand through his hair. “Take the car like a good chap and run up to Hilltop for them. Ask Laura, Mrs. Millington I mean, or ask one of the maids for the long envelope I left in the breakfast-room — on the table, I think, or perhaps it was in the hall. Go on, quick, now, before Dodds gets away.”

Joe hastened to comply. He went out of the office and into the yard where Millington’s car stood drawn up with the engine still running. He explained the matter to Dodds and in a minute they were on their way to Hilltop.

The morning was cold and fine with a crisp exhilaration in the air. Joe sat beside Dodds in the front seat and the wind of the car’s passage whipped a fine colour into his cheek. He had a swelling sensation of his own fitness, of his rising importance in the world. When the car reached Hilltop, about two miles from the works, and ran into the semicircular drive of Millington’s house, a large modem villa with an outlook towards the golf-course, he jumped out, ran up the front steps and pressed the bell.

A neat maid let him in. He smiled in a brotherly fashion to the maid — Joe never neglected anybody.

“I’m from the works,” he announced, “to see Mrs. Millington.”

The maid showed him into the lounge where he stood up by a fine coal fire and waited carefully. Though the chairs were deep and looked easy to sit in, Joe felt that it would be safer for him to stand. He liked the lounge, it was comfortable and different, there was a single picture on one of the walls and no more. But it was, reflected Joe, a classy bit of work. And he had enough knowledge to understand that the furniture was antique.

Then Laura entered. She descended the stairs slowly looking cool and trim in a dove-grey dress with white cuffs and collar. With an air of complete detachment, she gave him a rapid, impersonal glance and said:

“Yes?”

In spite of his assurance Joe felt intimidated. He stammered:

“I came for some papers. Mr. Millington left them on the breakfast table.”

“Oh yes.” She stood half-looking at him with a kind of curiosity and he blushed to the roots of his hair, not knowing what to do, conscious that he was being scrutinised, weighed up and judged. Although he cursed his unusual embarrassment, it stood him in good stead, for suddenly she smiled faintly, the smile of a bored woman responding to a momentary whim.

“Haven’t I seen you before somewhere?” she asked.

“I had the pleasure of dancing with you once, Mrs. Millington,” he gabbled. “At the social.”

“Yes.” She nodded. “I do remember now.”

He gave a deferential laugh; he was recovering himself.

“I haven’t forgotten, at any rate, Mrs. Millington. That was something I couldn’t forget.”

She continued considering him with a certain interest. He really looked extraordinarily handsome standing there in his neat blue suit with that fine colour in his cheeks, his strong white teeth showing in a smile, his curly hair and dark brown eyes.

“Stanley spoke about you the other day,” she said reflectively. “You’re doing well.” A pause. “You’re the one the young lady jilted.” She smiled her cool faintly amused smile. “Or was it the other way round?”

He looked down hurriedly, feeling that she saw through him and was making fun of him.

“It’s finished with, anyhow,” he blurted out.

She did not answer for a minute.

“Well, I’ll get you the papers.” She moved towards the door but on the way out she paused in her impersonal way. “Would you like a drink?”

“I don’t usually touch it,” he answered. “Not in the morning. I want to get on, you see.”

As if she had not heard she took the decanter which stood on the top of the walnut cocktail cabinet and mixed him a whisky and soda. Then she went out of the room.

He was sipping the whisky and soda when she returned. She handed him the papers, remarking:

“So you want to get on?”

“Well, naturally, Mrs. Millington,” he answered with eager deference.

There was a silence while she stared in a bored fashion into the fire. He watched her dumbly. She was not beautiful. She had a very pale face with faint blue shadows under her eyes and the whites of her eyes were not clear. She had ordinary black hair. Her figure was not remarkable. It was quite a good figure but it was not remarkable. Her ankles were not slim and her hips were inclined to be full. But she was extremely smart, not smart in the ordinary sense, but impeccably smart. Her dress was in remarkable taste, her hair and hands beautifully kept. In that same dumb admiration Joe grasped that Laura was a fastidious woman, he could not help thinking how wonderful her underwear must be.

But he had finished his whisky now and could make no further pretext for delay. He put his glass down upon the mantelpiece and said:

“Well, I must get back to the works.”

She did not speak. She looked up from the fire and once again she smiled her cool, faintly ironic smile, held out a cool, firm hand. He shook hands, terribly deferential and polite — his own hands were well kept too — and the next minute he was out of the house.

He took his seat in the car with his head in a whirl. He did not know, he could not be sure, but he had the wild, impossible notion that he had made some sort of impression on Laura Millington. The idea was crazy, perhaps, but he felt it nevertheless and a tremendous exultation surged inside his chest. He was perfectly aware that he was extremely attractive to women; he could not walk down the street without being conscious of admiring glances flung towards him. Laura had said nothing, done nothing, her behaviour was altogether restrained and cold; yet Joe knew women; and he had seen something too firmly controlled, a flicker under the bored indifference in Laura’s eye. Joe, who had not one moral scruple in his whole composition, gloated inwardly. If only it were true? He had always wanted a lady to take a fancy to him. Often in Grainger Street, strolling as one of the common crowd, he would observe some car draw up and a smartly dressed, disdainful woman pass quickly across the pavement into an expensive shop leaving a peculiar exasperating perfume and the insufferable sense of her inaccessibility. In the past that had always goaded Joe, made him ram his hands in his pockets and, powerfully aware of his own virility, swear to have a woman like that, a lady, some day. By God, he would! Tarts were all right, but a real lady was different. And at the thought he would drift along with the herd again, shouldering his way forward, lip thrust out, pausing perhaps outside a window where gossamer lingerie was displayed. That was what they wore and his imagination, rejecting the cotton crudities available to him, soared towards a future time when he could command the full subtleties of his desire.

All this recurred to Joe as he drove back to the works; he could hardly sit still for sheer excitement. He kept looking at himself in the driving mirror and admiring himself, running his hand over the glossy, natural wave in his hair. At the office he handed over the papers to Stanley and went into the melting-shop in a perfect glow.

But as the days passed and nothing, absolutely nothing, happened, Joe’s complacency began to shrink. He waited for some sign, some vague indication of Laura’s interest. But for all the interest Laura evinced he might never have existed. He began to think he had been mistaken; then he was convinced he had been mistaken. He became surly and ill-tempered, took his spite out on the men in the melting-shop, and ended up with a wild night spent in the company of a blatant and unknown young female whose dirty toe-nails eventually disgusted him Three months passed and then, one frosty afternoon in late November, while Joe happened to be in consultation with Stanley over some defective moulds, Laura dropped into the office. She had her own car outside and had called to drive Stanley into Tynecastle. She entered quietly, a soft silver fox fur enhancing the pale oval of her face, and Joe’s heart took one enormous bound.