The Strange Attraction/Chapter 11
CHAPTER XI
I
“S he looks fine to-day,” said Jimmy proudly, as he spread on the desk in front of Valerie the first copy of the inside sheet of the News to come off the machine. He always made the most of this little ceremony and it never became any less important to him. It was now his job, after Ryder had hammered the last wedge into the make-up frame, to start the mysterious business that sucked in the sheets of paper, already printed on one side, and turned them over on the other ready to be folded. He made a fine art of grabbing the first one over, doubling it for rapid inspection, rushing with it into the office and spreading it out with a flourish. Then he stood by as if the whole world were waiting, while Valerie hunted for the kind of mistake that might halt the machine. That mistake was seldom found, but she always looked for it and Jimmy always stood as if it were an ominous probability. And with them this afternoon, fully conscious of all there was in the little drama, stood Dane, looking over her shoulder.
“By Jove, Ryder got that in,” he said admiringly, pointing to a paragraph at the bottom of a column.
“He gets everything in,” she answered.
At that moment there came an untoward sound from the composing-room, then a few creaks, and then a sad silence.
Jimmy’s face set in righteous indignation. “Well, if that isn’t the dizzy limit?” he demanded of the air. “I went over that confisticated thing this morning and there was nothing wrong with her. That’s a machine for you!” And he dashed into the composing-room.
Valerie could have laughed if it hadn’t been so serious. The boy’s comical explosions at the old press, which he treated as if it were a live thing, amused everybody in the office. He reappeared almost immediately in the doorway with a face full of woe.
“It’s the engine,” he announced tragically. “She’s a goner all right. It’s all hands to the crank.”
“Good Lord!” smiled Dane, “what does he mean?”
“Oh, darn it! The oil engine. It goes off occasionally. The press will have to be kept on by hand. We won’t catch the train and everything will be late.”
They hurried into the composing-room. It had happened on the worst day that week. Both Ryder and Johnson were working feverishly on a political circular that Dane wanted out as soon as possible. The two men put down their cases of type with a resigned air. Dane looked at Valerie.
“I understand oil engines,” he said. “I’ll have a go at it if you like.”
“Oh, will you? Thanks.” She shot him as intent a look as she dared. Ryder and Johnson turned to their benches. Miss Hands and the girls at the cases all stared unblushingly at Dane as he walked to the engine at the back of the room, for this was the first time he had appeared there in the broad light of day. Jimmy, who had thought his white hands meant helplessness, gave him one glance of grudging admiration before going for his runners to help to turn the crank.
Dane pulled off his coat, spread a sheet of brown paper on the floor, and oblivious of the flutter he had brought to the chaste breast of Miss Hands, began to investigate the refractory machine.
Valerie returned into the front office, dropped into her chair, and leaned back for a moment’s respite before attacking a pile of stuff on her desk. She was idly wishing that life could go on forever as it had the last two weeks when she heard familiar voices at the door. She swung round in her chair to see her father and Bishop Lorrimer smiling across the counter.
“Why, dad!” She bounded to her feet. “You might have let me know you were coming.”
“How are you, Dick, old girl? I decided only late last night that I’d come along with the Bishop and have a look at you.”
Davenport Carr was a tall and handsome man with an imposing arrogant head and dissipated face set on a self-indulgent neck. He looked what Valerie had long called him, a tired hedonist. He had the manner of a man used to seeing the multitude tumble over itself to get out of his way. But he was a humane and good-humoured despot for all that. He had rarely found it necessary to show such fangs as he possessed. After all most people were just as ready to serve him as he was ready that they should. He was perfectly dressed in travelling tweeds, and rather dwarfed the importance of the smaller man in black beside him. Bishop Lorrimer was of the ruddy-faced cheerful kind of clerical, who has an inextinguishable faith in the magic of bishop’s blood and the sacraments, and an equally inextinguishable faith in the rights of birth and privilege.
Davenport Carr’s amused blue eyes roamed round the office. “I suppose you’re damned proud of this, Dick?”
“You bet I am. Want to see it all?” For the moment she forgot Dane was on his knees beside the oil engine.
“Rather, if we’ve time.” He looked at the Bishop. “We’ve ordered a buggy to pick us up here in a few minutes to take us on to the hospital.”
“Nothing here yet,” she said, looking out over the top of the whiting on the window. “You’ve come at a distressing moment,” she went on lightly. “The oil engine has broken down.” She thought of Dane, and hoped he would not be cross at having to meet her father in his shirt sleeves. She led the way into the composing-room where everybody was going at top speed, and the runners, two at a time, working the printing press crank. There was no sign of Dane. He was down on his knees on the far side of the oil engine.
Valerie led her visitors up to Ryder and Johnson and introduced them. Davenport Carr had caught something of the spirit of that humming workroom. He had heard from Roger too of the Townshend job. And then he had more money than anyone else in this business.
“You’re doing tip-top work here, I believe,” he said with genuine appreciation. “Does she allow you any time to smoke?” And with a quizzical look at his daughter he handed his cigar case to the men.
“Thanks, sir. Yes, she does,” said Ryder warmly, for it was Valerie who had insisted on a ten-minutes’ spell in the morning and in the afternoon.
The visitors turned to the printing press, slowly and laboriously grinding out the papers. Just then Davenport Carr caught sight of the figure, that, unaware of their presence, had crawled round the oil engine at the other end of the room.
“What the deuce,” he began, and looked at Valerie who shot a mischievous glance back at him. He hesitated for a moment and then walked off. She followed with the Bishop.
Dane looked up as he felt the big form approaching, and Valerie was delighted to see that he was not in the least upset.
“Well, upon my soul, Barrington, what are you doing there?”
Dane’s hands were black and there was a streak of grease where he had flipped a fly off his nose. But he was simple and self-possessed as he looked up at Valerie’s father, and not disturbed by the question he thought he saw in his eyes.
“I’m the engineman at present,” he said. Then he scrambled to his feet and bowed gravely without speaking as Valerie introduced him to the Bishop, who had never met him.
“I’ve got at the trouble, I think, Miss Carr. I’ll have her going in less than ten minutes.”
Valerie had not written of any change in the office, and it happened that her father had not heard of any, but Dane wondered at once if he had come up because he had, and saw by his next words he had not.
“How do you come to be here, anyway?” Davenport Carr asked it very lightly, as if it did not matter in the least.
“I’m writing the leaders till Lorrimer comes back.”
“Oh, are you? Will you dine with us at Mac’s? I’m going to the hospital first with the Bishop, but I will be back by seven.”
“Thanks, I will.”
Jimmy came up to Valerie and told her that a buggy had stopped in the front. Nodding pleasantly to the staff Davenport Carr led the way to the office.
II
Dane was waiting down-stairs in the hotel when Michael told him Valerie’s father was back. He had had but a few minutes to reflect upon the fact that kissing her had made an enormous difference to his attitude towards her father. He was now prepared to resent any probing, covert or open, as to his acquaintance with her. But Davenport Carr was far too clever to show his hand to a man he suspected of being cleverer than himself. And besides all he saw so far was a situation and its possibilities.
Dane led the way to a private room and ordered a preliminary drink. They sat down opposite each other.
“You’re looking deucedly well, Barrington.”
“I’ve been living a good deal in the open air this last six months.”
“Very sensible. What chance do you think Benton has?”
“The best any man has ever had against Mobray.”
“Isn’t there a prohibition man out?”
“Yes, but he won’t be in at the finish.”
“Ah, can be persuaded to stand down, eh?”
“I think so.”
Carr smiled across the table at the non-committal white face and into the eyes that met his with easy frankness. “Ah! how few of us could not be persuaded to stand down, eh, Barrington?”
“Few indeed, I'm afraid. And if I were Benton it isn’t Dodge that would worry me, it is Townshend.”
“Ah. Big labour vote there?”
“The result lies there, if it ever lies in any one place in an election. But I’m going to warm up Townshend, very carefully, you know. I’ll have some leaders on the pioneer work done for the North by these big employers who came in and battled against desperate odds. He had quite a pull, I believe, and it won’t hurt to point it out. It will please him, and it may help to make him neutral, open his camps to both sides, and let his men go uninfluenced.”
“That’s the idea, Barrington. The silken touch. That will look magnanimous, too.”
“It will have to be very carefully done. These chaps know well enough what you’re after these days when you do any buttering.”
“They may do. But buttering wins elections just the same. By the way, I didn’t know you were interested in politics.” Davenport Carr said it very carelessly.
“That shows a lamentable lack of knowledge of some of my best work, Carr,” smiled Dane. “However, as it was in Australia, you are pardoned for not being familiar with it. But I’ve always taken considerable interest in the New Zealand legislation. You forget that I’ve been something of an idealist for the human race.”
The older man had to smile at the expression on the younger one’s face. And then the personal charm that emanated from Dane, affecting men as well as women, began to work. And Carr remembered that he was one of the best bridge players he had ever met.
“What about a game to-night?” he asked.
Dane hesitated. “Well, yes, I’d like it. But it would have to be late, Carr. Would you like to have Mac and Doc Steele as well?”
“Yes, all right.”
Just then the sounds of the piano drifted down to them. Davenport Carr thought he detected a swiftly repressed attention to it on the part of the other man. He himself pretended not to know who it was who was playing. But Dane gave no sign. He lit another cigarette and asked Carr how many seats the Opposition hoped to win in Auckland.
“Their hopes are a bit extravagant, I think. I believe that’s Valerie at the piano, isn’t it?”
“I’ve heard she plays well. I don’t think there is anyone else about who does.”
Davenport Carr stood up. “I’ll go up. What time do we get dinner, do you know?”
“A little late, I’m afraid. Mac ordered fresh chickens in your honour.”
“Oh. Will you come upstairs?”
“No, thanks.”
Valerie turned from the piano as her father walked in. “How did you find Bob to-day?” she asked.
“Looks pretty sick, poor chap, beastly thin. But they say he’s getting on. You haven’t been often, Mrs. Lorrimer says.” His keen eyes rested lightly on his daughter as he said it.
Valerie sprang up from the piano stool. “Good Lord, dad, that woman drives me mad. What does she think I do all day and most of the night? I’ve been along on the Sundays, used the only spare hour or two I had. That’s all I could do. She doesn’t know what work means.”
“I suppose she doesn’t.” Davenport Carr settled himself in the most comfortable chair he could find and looked round the dingy sitting-room with amused eyes. “Like all this, Val?”
“Rather awful, isn’t it? But I don’t look at it. You know, dad, it’s wonderful what you can ignore in the world if you know how.”
“Do you think you’re teaching me something?” he asked amiably.
Her eyes twinkled at him. She enjoyed the perfectly arrogant spectacle he made in his swagger tweeds, but she was distressed to see that the folds in his neck were fuller and the pockets under his eyes more spongy.
“You haven’t asked after the family,” he said.
“Has anything of importance happened to any of them?”
“Now, Dick, old girl. It’s time you were getting tolerant. They’re all right, you know.”
“Ah, you’re growing tired, dad. That’s what is the matter with you. You’ve no more fight in you.”
“Indeed.” He looked curiously at her. “By the way, what do you get to fight up here?”
She laughed. “Nothing. Everybody loves me, and I just live for the office.”
“Nothing to fight? How boring life must be. Are you seeing much of Barrington?”
She had been waiting for that. “What would you call much?”
“Anything with him. He’s too damned fascinating.”
Valerie’s eyes twinkled again at her father. “And why should he not fascinate me? Why am I to be deprived of fascination?”
“That’s all right, old girl. But you be careful. He’s outside the pale as far as you are concerned.”
“Dad, you must know you’re a fool to talk to me like that. No person is outside the pale as far as I am concerned until I put him there myself. And I’m surprised at you suggesting this thing to me by talking against it. Between you and Bob you’d have me living with Dane Barrington in a month if I let you talk to me.”
This frankness astonished her father and threw him off the scent.
“Of course I admire his looks,” she went on easily, “and I’m well aware of his fascination. But looks and fascination don’t overwhelm me. I want something that you used to care about once, or you said you did—character. And I would never care about any man who hadn’t it.”
And Davenport Carr, clever as he was, overlooked the fact that they might not be thinking the same ingredients into that term.
He was reassured and went down to dinner feeling that Dane Barrington, with his fine social sense, must understand well enough the social gulf that existed between a man who could not be asked out to dinner and a girl bred in the select precincts of the Remuera set.
Something about that dinner party amused Valerie enormously and roused Dane. The spectacle of Mac and Davenport Carr side by side was in itself subject for comedy. Each of them was an autocrat in his own fashion, and each of them appreciated the eminence of the other in his own profession, recognized his authority, and would obey it in his given domain. Mac was as sublimely easy as his turned-up shirt sleeves and split vest indicated. The gentleman never lived who could overawe him, and Davenport Carr, despising sycophancy while ever ready to use it, thoroughly enjoyed the independence of spirit that glared at him out of those hard blue eyes. And he was amusedly aware of Mac’s great hairy arms, of his fat, red hands cleverly carving the chicken, of his enormous head and shoulders, of his curious poise, and of the contrast he made to Dane on the other side of him.
Within a minute or two after they sat down Dane took charge of the conversation by a kind of divine right universally acknowledged. The sight of steaming chickens and bottles of champagne was all that was necessary to start him, and after one or two drinks he was off.
Valerie watched the responsiveness grow between him and her father, the one stimulating the other. And as she watched she was struck more than ever with the fundamental difference in their quality of mind and spirit. It was not till the meal was nearly over that she saw they were drinking too much. They seemed to drink unconsciously, glass after glass. Dane in particular, talking with increasing brilliance, almost forgot to eat.
She became uncomfortably aware of the time, felt she must get back to the office, but knew her father would be angry at a dinner party disrupted. However, at a quarter to nine, she fidgeted and stood up.
“Awfully sorry, dad, but I must get back to work,” she said.
“What?” he exclaimed irritably. “You too?” He looked at Dane who had got at once to his feet.
“Yes, I must, Carr. I promised Johnson I’d be there to plan an inset.”
“When will you get back?”
Dane hesitated. Pleasantly relaxed though he was, he would have been glad to end the evening there. And he was sorry that Valerie should hear of anything further. But this was the kind of thing he did not know how to get out of.
“Oh, about eleven,” he said.
Knowing her father, Valerie guessed how the night would end, but she crushed back a stab of pain, telling herself she must not anticipate trouble. Dane lit his pipe when they got out of the hotel, and they went in silence by the river past the station wharf. It was the first time they had gone through the town together for they had been very careful. As it was dark and they could hear no one Dane drew her hand under his arm after they had passed the wharf. She had drunk sufficient champagne herself to make her feel that it was absurd to be serious about anything.
The office was lit up and Johnson was there when they went in. He and Dane worked till about half-past ten, and then the jobbing man went out. A few minutes later Dane came into the front office. Concentration on the work had cleared his head. He leaned down over Valerie, put his arms about her and raised her face and kissed it. She jumped up, and threw her arms about him. This was the only time when they allowed themselves any lapse of their sternly disciplined emotions.
He held her off and looked at her.
“Valerie, your father is going to be dead against us,” he said quietly. “Now, dear, don’t go off. I know as well as you he has no real right to interfere. But he thinks he has the right of a code, you know. And there’s a good deal to be said for it, and it worries me a little.”
“Dane, I insist that you forget my father and my set and my position, and remember me, just me as I stand here.”
“That’s what I’m doing now, dear.”
“I wonder. But it is what I am doing with you.”
“I wonder,” he repeated, putting his head on one side and peering at her in the beguiling way he had.
“Go away,” she commanded. “Go away at once. I have half an hour’s work yet. Tell dad I’ve gone to bed. He will forget all about me anyway.” Her tone shaded off in regretfulness.
His eyes, considerably softened, regarded her thoughtfully, but he was too pleasantly relaxed to worry about anything. Kissing her once more very lightly he went out.
III
After he had gone Valerie ruthlessly set herself to the remaining work, and at eleven o’clock she was finished. She locked up the office and went out. But she did not turn to the hotel. She knew she would not get to sleep for some time. She walked a little way beyond the station and sat down in a clump of rushes near the river bank.
The two weeks that she and Dane had worked together on the News had been illuminating for both of them. She had seen at once after their first evening of kissing each other that neither of them could go on like that and do the work. She had been unable to sleep without a big dose of aspirin, and she had felt utterly demoralized the next day. In sheer self-defence she put it to Dane the first chance she had, and told him that their emotions must wait. She had expected opposition, but she was surprised to discover that he kept the contract much more faithfully than she did.
Dane had told Roger that in addition to the leaders and articles he would help Valerie in the office on publishing days, and that he would get out circulars and other literary ammunition. He astonished Roger and the committee with ideas. He began to write leaders that had a fire and appeal no other journalist in the country could equal. For he knew how to play upon the emotions of men, and he knew thoroughly the types with whom he had to deal. He had not talked and drunk and sung with these men for nothing.
And Valerie, thinking about him as she sat by the river, told herself that he had shown qualities in those two weeks that revealed him as a man absurdly misunderstood, and misunderstood, of course, because he himself had not the desire or the energy to care about it. She knew that more than anyone she had ever met he saw and appreciated exactly what she accomplished, mentally and spiritually and physically, in that daily rush; that every time she kept her temper against odds, that every time she set herself against giving way to nervous pressure, that every time she managed a difficult interview, or flashed a ready response to some unexpected incident, he knew and estimated it as accomplishment. And nothing in her life had so warmed her, had so stimulated and fired her as that understanding.
And because it so warmed her, because her love for him was daily changing and enlarging its horizons, she could not bear to think of the cloud that she knew descended at times upon that spirit. She had gone through many a tragic hour since the day she had first seen her father the worse for drink. But she had become philosophical about him. She knew well enough that during the process he had died to her as the father of her childhood, and had come to light in a new form as the product of perverted idealisms. And there had come a time when she could even look upon him drunk without emotion. But she knew she would never get to that stage with Dane. Then she told herself she was being absurdly serious about it. That after all, occasional excess need not be allowed to overshadow their love for each other. That she simply must not allow it to. She had known all along of his habits. And she was committed to him now in spite of them.
Unexpectedly a peace descended upon her, as something in the spring night wrought its magic within her. She had worried herself into fevers many times over the reason for what she saw about her. She had put her despairing Whys to the impotent stars, but she had struggled through to one dominant perception, the existence of beauty in manifold forms, and the more she sought it, the more she let herself go out to it, the more she found it everywhere. And she knew that it was for that that Dane lived too.
Comforted she got up and walked back to the hotel. It was nearly midnight, but the place was lit on two of the side rooms. She did not try to listen to see in which of them Dane might be. She went straight to her room and wearied out soon fell asleep.
She was at the office at eight in the morning. She did not know whether her father had caught the boat which had left unusually early. She wondered if Dane would appear that day with the next day’s leader as he usually did, so that it could be set ahead of the rush copy. But she had a premonition that he would not, and arranged her space accordingly. She was right. He did not come in till ten the next morning. She was glad that Bolton was there, having just come in with the news that Dodge was not going to stand, and that he was in George Rhodes’ office that moment framing an announcement which he was shortly to bring along.
She greeted Dane eagerly with this news, ignoring his sensitive and irritable manner. He was enormously relieved. He had dreaded meeting her. But he saw no judgment in her eyes. The moment passed and the rush of the day was on. The incident of Davenport Carr’s visit was ancient history to Valerie by night. But it had left one of those little dents in her mind which, being one of accumulative experience, had more significance than was apparent to the naked eye when it seemed to die.
So many things seem to die and do not.