by Sara Seale
Was that then the chief difficulty? But he could only be honest.
"Did you think I wanted nothing from you, Gina?" he said quietly. "I'm afraid I never intended you to think that our marriage would be purely formal." He looked straight at her. "That sort of thing hardly ever answers, my dear, and it's no use pretending that I would expect nothing on your side."
He couldn't quite understand her expression as she said,
"I thought—I was afraid "
"You were afraid I should expect too much?" he said gently. "Is that why you refused me, Gina?"
She looked at him in such amazement that he was further puzzled.
"Oh, Mark! You don't know very much about me!" she said with 'a little smile, and at that moment Sebastian came excitedly into the room.
"Hullo, you two! All snug and warm by the fire! I'm frozen," he exclaimed, and squatted between them on the rug. "Sweeny says you've hurt your foot. Is it bad?"
"Just bruised. The horse is a sagacious animal but heavy withal; the hoof of the horse is shod with iron," said Gina in a sing-song voice.
"And when the hoof of the horse is shod with iron, is not the hat of my uncle in the hall?" inquired Sebastian earnestly. "Poor old Ginny! I'm glad it wasn't me. Mark, I'm spending all day tomorrow with the Neills. You don't mind, do you? We've got a scheme for a money-making concern."
"Oh! What's that?"
"Running a syncopated coffee-stall in Piccadilly. Arthur Neill would shake the drinks—I mean serve the coffee— Mavis would sing, and I would play one of those sweet little cottage uprights you can wheel about quite easily on a barrow. All my own tunes of course. I'd become well-known that way."
"I'm sure you would!" said Mark dryly,
"No, honestly, Mark, it's a scheme," Sebastian said seriously. "We could work in something for Ginny as well, and then we'd both be off your hands. You'd put up the capital, of course, but that wouldn't be much—just enough to buy the stall and the piano and the barrow and things. You'd soon get it back. Well—I'm off to bed to finish my thriller—Good-night, chaps!"
He leapt up, and having kissed his sister, went out of the room. They could hear him singing at the top of his voice as he went up the stairs.
Mark burst out laughing. "How's that for a perfectly serious business proposition?" he said, but Gina looked unhappy.
"It would be funny if he didn't really believe it," she said a little shortly. "I don't see you ever getting Sebastian firmly established in some nice neat city office, Judge."
"Well, there are other jobs. We shall have to consider," he said easily, but privately he saw the years stretching ahead with Sebastian living charmingly at his expense, and relieving the monotony by becoming involved in harebrained financial ventures from which Mark would have to extricate him.
"I shouldn't worry about his future yet, anyway," he said.
She threw the cigarette she was smoking into the fire. She looked very tired.
"I think I'll go to bed soon, Mark. I've had quite a hard day," she said.
"Is the foot hurting?" he asked quickly.
"A bit."
She stood up, and put her foot gingerly to the ground.
"Ow! It's got stiff from sitting," she exclaimed, and limped painfully towards the door.
"Let me carry you up," he said at once.
"No, please, Mark," she returned hastily.
He went across to her and picked her up in his arms. "Don't be such a little silly," he said.
He felt her whole body stiffen as he carried her across the hall, then she suddenly relaxed against him, and her arm tightened round his neck.
It seemed to Gina a long way up those stairs. Mark never spoke, but when they reached the door of her room, he paused before putting her down, and looked into her green eyes with a queer little smile.
"Little sweet," he said softly, and kissed her.
II
The next morning, when Gina came down to breakfast, she found Mark alone in the dining-room staring out of the window at the driving rain which had been steadily pouring down since dawn.
He turned as she came into the room, and said rather brusquely, "Julie never came home. She rang up just now to say she couldn't manage to get back last night."
She didn't at once understand why he should be annoyed about it, and she supposed she must have looked her surprise, for he said quickly:
"She oughtn't to have done it when she knew you were alone in the house with me. The servants might talk."
Gina laughed and sat down at the table. "Oh, Mark!
Surely these days !" she protested, helping herself to coffee. "I shouldn't worry about the proprieties—besides Sebastian's here."
"Well, she should have rung up last night," Mark persisted. "She won't be back now till late tonight. I suppose Swann is motoring her down."
She was silent, thinking of the prospect of a day and another long evening alone with Mark. She wondered if he was irritated on that count.
"I don t suppose she thought you were here," she said quietly. "We none of us expected you this week-end."
"Probably she didn't. Lord! The whole sky's coming down! I'm afraid you'll have to put up with me as a solitary companion today, Gina. It doesn't look as if we'll want to leave the house."
She gave him an oblique look, but said nothing, and he came and sat down 'at the table.
"I never asked after the foot!" he exclaimed suddenly. "Julie put everything out of my head for the moment. I do hope it's giving you less pain."
"Oh, it's better, thanks," she smiled. "It's awfully tender, but the swelling's completely gone. I'm going to be all colours of the rainbow soon!"
"Poor child! I'll bandage it again after breakfast."
After breakfast, Gina curled up with a book by Mark's study fire, while he sat at his desk and wrote letters.
But she couldn't concentrate on her book. She was too aware of the scratching of Mark's pen, the occasional flutter of paper, the opening and shutting of a drawer; all the tiny intimate indications of his presence in the room. Her mind kept going back to last night. How unbearable it had been to discuss the idea of marriage with him again; what exquisite torture to feel his hands touching her foot, his arms carrying her upstairs . . . "Little sweet . . ." It really wasn't fair of Mark.
Lunch was a rather silent meal. Gina was ill at ease, and Mark didn't help her much. He seemed engrossed with his own thoughts, and when they went back to the study for their coffee, he sat staring into the fire and scarcely spoke. Later, however, he became suddenly gay, devoting every minute of the 'afternoon to Gina's amusement; spoiling her, teasing her, paying her compliments, so that by tea-time she felt so nervous that she was almost ready to cry. He seemed to go out of his way to touch her, finding excuse in massaging her foot, arranging a cushion at her back, tucking a stray piece of hair behind her ear. It was nearly unbearable. She smoked endless cigarettes to give herself something to do, and when the tea-things had been taken away, she sat opposite him in the firelight, tense and silent, lighting one cigarette from the other.
It had poured all day, and she watched the rain rattling against the uncurtained window, the water running in bright streams down the glass, caught by the dancing light inside the room.
Mark, who had been watching her, got up and took the cigarette from her fingers. "That's enough for this evening," he said, throwing it into the fire. "You'll be a nervous wreck if you go on at this rate."
"I shall be a nervous wreck if I don't," she muttered, and reached out her hand for the silver box.
He caught her fingers in his and stopped her. "No, you naughty child, you're not to have 'any more," he said with a smile. "You're shaking as it is." He leant over her and took her chin in his finger and thumb. "Look at me, Gina—"
Her endurance snapped at last. "Don't touch me again, Mark!" she cried, twisting her body out of his reach and springing to her feet. "If you come near me again this evening, I'll go up to my room and stay there."
H
e put his hands in his pockets and stood looking at her in silence.
"I can't bear it—why can't you leave me alone?" she said, as if the words were forced out of her.
"Do you dislike me as much as all that?" he asked quizzically.
Her mouth trembled suddenly, and she abruptly turned her back on him. After another long look at her, he crossed over to the window and drew the curtains, the old brass rings running along the pole with a friendly rattle, then he came back to the fire.
"Gina—" he said gently.
"Do you think it's fair to treat me like this?" She spoke with her back still towards him.
"How have I treated you?"
"Never leaving me alone—pretending to make love to me! And last night—Do you think it's fair?"
There was a little pause and a log of wood collapsed in the grate with a tiny crash, sending a fountain of sparks up the chimney.
"I wasn't pretending," said Mark quietly.
She turned then, and he saw her face in the firelight, white and pinched with misery, the tears streaming from her startled eyes.
"Oh, Gina—my poor sweetheart," he exclaimed, and a moment later, with an odd little cry of defeat, she was in his arms.
III
He knew now without a shadow of doubt that Gina loved him. She returned his kisses with a passion that was all the stronger because it had been so long repressed, and he felt all her unhappy loneliness of spirit go out to meet his own.
"You love me, Gina?" he murmured once. He wanted to hear her say it.
"Oh, yes, yes! I love you more than anything in the world," she answered. "You're everything that has 'any meaning for me—everything. . . ."
"Did you really never think I might be in love with you?" he asked her curiously.
She lifted her head to look at him. "No," she said simply. "Are you?"
"Oh, my darling child!" he exclaimed a little helplessly, and took her face between his hands to kiss her again. "I've loved you for so long now, I can't remember when it began," he told her tenderly.
She clung to him suddenly, a little desperately. "Why didn't you tell me before?" she cried desolately. "If I'd only known when you asked me—You see, it was the day after I knew I was in love with you. I even hoped you might eventually love me,—and then you asked me to marry you, and it was so—so cold-blooded."
"Listen, Gina, we must talk this out," he said gently, and sat down on the sofa, taking her with him. She tucked her feet under her, and curled up in the circle of his arm.
"I proposed to you in a perfectly insane manner. I soon realized that. But you must try to look at things through my eyes. I hadn't an idea at the time that you cared for me in any but a perfectly friendly way, but I did think that you might be willing to marry me in place of a job. I thought, I admit, you would have been quite ready to provide a home for Sebastian, and I honestly imagined you would mind being dependent on me less if you were my wife than if you had no legal claim on me. We've been at cross purposes all the time. I'm 'afraid I must have caused you an awful lot of unnecessary misery, poor sweet."
"Oh, Mark, it was ghastly," she confided. "I thought you were merely carrying duty to its logical conclusion— the English have such queer ideas on the subject.—But even so, I think I would have married you if it hadn't been for Sebastian and something Julie once said. You see, I thought that in time perhaps I might have got you to love me a bit, given a fair chance."
"How lovely you are, Gina," he said. "A lovely mind and a lovely spirit—What had Julie said to you?"
"She warned me that you might be—quixotic."
"And she told me that you didn't care tuppence for me."
"That was devilish of her," said Gina quietly, "because she must have known. Any woman must have."
"Well, it's all over now, thank God. We can begin again," Mark said with a great sigh of thankfulness. "Do you want me to propose to you all over again, darling?"
She was suddenly still, and he felt her body stiffen. He waited, a little uncertain of her, then she said very quietly:
"I'm not going to marry you, Mark."
He looked down at her in amazement. "What? But, my darling child, that's all finished with now," he said, a little puzzled.
She drew slightly away from him, and when his arm tightened round her at once, she said:
"No, let me go. I want to explain." She was speaking in a flat toneless voice now, and looking straight in front of her. "When you asked me to marry you, you told me to talk it over with Sebastian."
"Yes. I realized afterwards that was about the rashest thing I could have done," he interposed quietly.
"No. It wasn't, really, because it gave me an opportunity of seeing exactly what your life would be if I did marry you. Sebastian has been my dearest companion always, but I can see him for what he is. Charming, selfish, utterly without moral obligation. He only wanted me to marry you so that we could both sponge on you for the rest of our lives. I couldn't have that"—her voice broke suddenly —"I couldn't have someone trading on your love for me for their own interests."
He heard her to the end, then put his arms round her and lifted her close to him. "Oh, my dear, don't torture yourself so," he said gently. "I know just what Sebastian is—better than you do, perhaps. I don't mind. I'm willing to give him anything under the sun for the privilege of marrying his sister."
She rested her head rather wearily on his shoulder. "You're so marvellous yourself that you would feel like that about it," she said. "But to me it matters most terribly. I should never be completely happy knowing that you were being continually imposed upon."
"I think you exaggerate a little, my darling," he said then. "After all, Sebastian will presumably find some sort of job eventually, even if it's only to fulfil his heart's desire and be a pianist in a jazz band!"
"He'll never work if I marry you," she said, her voice suddenly hard. "You said yourself that you can't make someone work who won't. Sebastian would live on you for the rest of his life, and in your heart you know it. Don't you see, Mark, it would destroy us all? What happiness would I have, knowing you were being continually sponged on? What happiness would Sebastian have, losing his self-respect and his whole self? It would all come back on you in the end and make you miserable."
"I think you're putting too fine a point on the ethical side of the business," he said quietly. "Sebastian might change—in time he may marry himself, and then he'll have to attain to some sort of responsibility."
"That's a weak argument," she said at once. "You're only stating what you hope may happen, not what you know will happen. No, no, Mark. "We both owe you too much for me to contemplate such a thing."
She wriggled out of his grasp, and stood up, not wanting to be so close to him that she knew she must weaken.
"But, Gina, this is absurd!" he cried in despair. "I can't think your reasons are sound, though they are very meritorious. You said just now that had you known in the first place that I loved you, you might have married me. "Why should things be any different now?"
"I didn't. I said I wish I'd known," she replied, looking down at him unhappily. "I admit I was tempted before I'd talked to Sebastian, but now—oh, God! Can't you understand?"
He responded immediately to the desperate note in her voice. "I understand, but I think you're wrong," he said. "Gina, do you really mean to throw away your own happiness and mine for the sake of an ideal?"
"There's only one other way," she said slowly. "You can be my lover."
He looked at her steadily, his heart aching for her in her unhappy struggle.
"Darling, that wouldn't work," he told her very gently.
But the idea grew in her mind as their one means of escape. She knelt beside him, and put her hand in his. "Why not, Mark?" she said eagerly. "No one need ever know—it would be so easy. Couldn't we be happy that way without having to lose anything?"
He shook his head. "You can't have your cake and eat it."
"It wouldn't be. To me, marrying y
ou would be having my cake and eating it," she cried. "Mark, darling, I love you so much that I want to give and give. But I've nothing to give but myself. I'm yours just when you want me. Please, Mark—it's the obvious way out."
His fingers closed tightly over hers. "That's the most wonderful thing you could say to me, Gina," he said, "but not possible."
"Why?" she repeated, her mind stupid with unhappiness.
"How do you think I should feel putting you in such a position—a man of my age, and a child like you?" he asked her.
"Age hasn't anything to do with it," she broke in.
"Well, but my dear, don't you see that I couldn't possibly be happy taking everything from you and giving you nothing."
"But you would be giving me everything I wanted. I love you."
"Sweetheart, you must try and understand, it just wouldn't do."
"You mean you think it's wrong?"
"No, not in itself. But the reason doesn't justify such a course."
She knew of old she couldn't wear him down, and she broke into tired, desperate weeping.
"Gina dear"—he bent over her, resting his cheek against her bowed defeated head—"don't hurt us both so much. Can't you see, sweet, that marriage is the only way out? You're torturing yourself for nothing. I feel this is all somehow mixed up with your old sensitiveness of being dependent on me. Surely you don't mind, now we love each other."
"I don't mind that—any more," she gasped between her sobs. "I'm just grateful. But Sebastian's different—we can't—"
"I understand what worries you, but I know you're wrong."
"I'm not—people must find themselves—"
He couldn't argue with her on the same ground. "Don't try and work it out now. Just say you'll marry me," he said gently, but she only sobbed, "I can't—I can't —"
Presently she grew quieter, and stood up, leaning wearily against the mantelpiece. Her foot was beginning to ache rather badly again.
"Well, this seems to be deadlock," Mark said a little sadly.
