He looked at her keenly.
“Darling, what is all this? You’d better get it off your chest, you know. Has Field been annoying you?”
“Not-like that.”
He gave a short half-angry laugh.
“Not like what? Come along, out with it!”
His voice rasped, because in the very moment of speaking it came to him what Alan Field might have done. If he had told Carmona the thing which he, James, had always hoped she would never know, it would account for that shocked look. Difficult to believe the fellow would give himself away to that extent. Difficult, but not impossible where Field was concerned. It could be his idea of paying off an old score.
Carmona went back a step. They had never talked about Alan. Why were they talking about him now? She could not remember that James had ever used such a tone to her before. Something in her shrank, and then sprang into anger. He saw her eyes widen and go bright.
“Carmona-what has he said to you?”
“Don’t you know?”
“I think you had better tell me.”
She went back again until the foot-board of the bed brought her up short. She stood against it with a trapped feeling and said, “No.”
James Hardwick came over to her and dropped his hands lightly on her shoulders.
“Tell me what he said.”
It had been a mistake to touch her. The gentlest creature will fight if hands are laid on it. Something very old came up in Carmona. Her anger flared. She looked at James as if she hated him and said,
“He told me you paid him to go away and let you marry me!”
And on the last word she twisted loose and ran for the door. The handle left a bruise across her palm, but she didn’t feel it until afterwards. She was any wild thing wrenching free from the trap, sense and reason gone. If he had touched her, tried to hold her back, she might have screamed.
The door fell to behind her. She had a moment’s horrified realization that she really might have screamed if he had tried to hold her back. But he had not. He had made no move to follow. She stood there with the door between them, and was glad that she was angry.
James Hardwick remained where he was. He was barefoot, with a thin dressing-gown over his under pants. He could hardly pursue Carmona through a house littered with guests. Now that he knew what was wrong he could wait. There had always been the possibility that she might come to know. He would much rather it had not happened, because Field would certainly have put it in the most offensive light, and she was bound to be hurt. It was really a good thing that she should have had that spurt of anger. It would hurt her less that way. He hated her to be hurt.
He went on with his dressing.
CHAPTER 12
A long evening for everyone. Afterwards when everything that had been said or done was being sifted over Beeston was to be asked a number of questions. How had this one looked, and what had the other said? Did anyone seem disturbed, nervous, depressed, or in any way upset? He opined that it was very difficult to say, sir, and the day had been a hot one. It did cross his mind that Lady Castleton might have been out in the sun a bit too long, seeing she had gone to bed with a headache. She and Mrs. Field, now, they were neither of them as young as they were and perhaps better to have stayed in in the heat of the day, but as to the others, no, he wouldn’t go so far as to say they were out of their usual. Mrs. James had quite a colour, and Mrs. Maybury the same and talking very lively. Naturally, they would all be pleased about Mr. James coming home, and coming from abroad, he would have all manner of interesting things to talk about. The work he does, he comes in contact with all kinds of foreigners, and for those that take an interest in such, well, sir, it makes interesting talk. The impression was conveyed that James Hardwick was a good host and that whatever he might have had on his mind, he did not allow it to interfere with the entertainment of his guests.
Carmona got through the evening very well. There were times when she was frightened, but they did not last. Quite suddenly and without any warning she would have the feeling you get when you look over an unexpected drop to something far below-there is a moment of panic fear, and then you stop looking, and it is gone again. For the rest of the time anger burned in her hard and clear. She thought of the things she would say to James when they were alone together. Meanwhile she could play the graceful hostess to his gracious host.
If she had been less taken up with her own affairs she might have felt some concern about Pippa, who had certainly allowed her glass to be filled too often. As her colour rose and her tongue ran faster, Esther began to look uncomfortable. Adela Castleton, intent upon her patience cards, raised an eyebrow, whereupon Pippa burst out laughing and said,
“Now I’ve shocked everyone!”
James poured her out a cup of coffee.
“Too many drinks,” he said easily. “It’s too hot for them this weather. Take a nice long pull at Mrs. Beeston’s iced coffee and come out on the terrace with me. It should be getting cool there now.”
She gave a curious little shudder.
“No-no-I don’t want to do that. I hate your uncle’s garden-don’t you? And it looks worse at night. In the day it’s just plain ugly, but in the dusk all those figureheads and things, they lurk!”
Carmona found herself watching them. He had done that very well. But then James did do things well. He had just that touch of distinction which made everything he did seem right. Through her sense of shock and anger she knew that he was carrying the whole situation as very few men could have done, and carrying it with at any rate the appearance of perfect ease. Now he was starting Maisie Trevor off on one of her favourite lines of chatter, and had drawn Colonel Trevor into saying something pleasant about Bill Maybury whom everybody liked. It was for her to respond to Maisie and to import Esther into the conversation. Esther-and if possible Adela Castleton.
But Adela afforded no possibilities of any kind. Her beautiful pale face remained bent over the patience cards which she fingered with delicate precision, the solitaire diamond which almost hid her wedding-ring flashing under the light, the blood-red ruby on the other hand making one bright spot of colour against the white of her skin and the black of her dress.
“And I really am the only one who knew all the ins and outs of the affair,” said Maisie Trevor. “Of course I was quite a girl at the time, but you know what an interest one takes in that sort of thing, especially when everyone drops their voices and tells you to run away and do the flowers or something like that. He was such a distinguished man, and married, and she was only a year older than I was, so naturally I took the very deepest interest. And she told me the whole thing the night before they ran away.”
Echoes of an old musty scandal dead and gone for a generation-heartbreak and pain, shame and sin and suffering, buried now beneath the indifferent years. Carmona tried to look as if she was listening. It was all so far away and long ago.
Adela Castleton swept her cards together as she had done the night before. The heat, the lights, the voices, Maisie Trevor’s voice and her interminable stories! She stood up.
“Will you forgive me if I go off to bed? I was stupid to be out in the glare for so long. It has brought my headache on again.”
Carmona was all solicitude.
“Can I get you anything?”
Adela looked vague.
“I don’t think so. I have some very good tablets. I’m just not sure-where I put them. Perhaps if you-will come up with me-”
Her face was stripped of life and colour. Difficult to recognize the assured Lady Castleton. As they went out of the door, Carmona slipped an arm about her, and had the impression that it was welcome.
The tablets were in a drawer of the old-fashioned mirror. Yellow curtains, a shiny yellow eiderdown, and Adela sitting on the side of the bed and saying,
“Somewhere on the dressing-table, I think. Yes, that’s the bottle. I don’t take them once in a blue moon, but when I do it means at least eight hours of good deep sleep-and I feel I need it toni
ght. Perhaps you would give me a glass of water from the washstand.”
She tipped two of the tablets into her hand, lifted it to her lips, drank the water Carmona brought, and thanked her.
“Would you be very kind and just look in on your way to bed? Once I’m off nothing wakes me, but it would be nice to know that you would just look in. I haven’t had a head like this since-oh, I can’t remember!”
Carmona saw her into bed and went down to the others.
The longest evening ends. This had not been so long as counted in time, but there are other factors. Endurance is one of them. Just how much strain can anyone endure? The Victorian drawing-room with its garlanded carpet, its gold and white overmantel, its china cabinets, and its brocaded chairs, held more than one who might have been asking that question.
Perhaps no one was sorry when the evening drew to an end. Goodnights were said, and the women went up the stairs, their murmur of conversation dying away as they receded. Doors closed. Carmona, left to the last, crossed over to Adela Castleton’s room and turned the handle gently. Two windows open to the cooler north, and a breeze coming in- the vague outline of the bed. At first no sound, but as she took a step forward and then stood to listen, the regular rise and fall of Adela’s breathing. She waited until she could be quite sure of it, and then went out and closed the door again.
Downstairs James poured drinks, and presently went to latch the windows. He stood for a moment at the long glass door of the terrace. There was a cool air coming in from the sea. The water was dark and the sky luminous. The old figureheads stood up black and strange. He said,
“It seems a shame to shut out the air, but Beeston would certainly expect us all to be murdered in our beds if we didn’t.”
“Your uncle had him a long time?”
“Oh, ages. I used to be sent down by myself, you know. There was a deadly feud between my aunt Mildred Wotherspoon and the Hardwicks. I don’t know what it was about, and it had been going on for so long that I don’t suppose they even knew themselves by then, but they wouldn’t meet. I used to be sent down with a label sewed inside my pocket from the time I was about seven, and the Beestons looked after me. Uncle Octavius used to pat me on the head and tip me- half a crown to start with, rising to a fiver at twentyone, where it stopped dead. He used to mutter, ‘Poor Henry’s boy,’ and go away, to our mutual relief. It was Beeston who provided the statutory bucket and spade and showed me the best places for prawns. And Mrs. Beeston let me have a glass bowl with sea anemones in it, and bring in seaweed, and shrimps and winkles and any old thing.”
Colonel Trevor finished his drink and set down the glass.
“You’re not thinking of staying on here, are you?”
James turned from the window.
“Oh, no, it can’t be done. This kind of house just isn’t possible any more.”
They parted on the wide upstairs landing with its tall ebony clock ticking in a staid old-fashioned way and the crimson carpet giving out a faint musty smell. James knocked on the door of what he still could not help remembering as Uncle Octavius’ bedroom and went in.
Carmona was sitting on the edge of the bed. She had got through the evening, and she had been glad that it was over and glad to be alone, but as one moment after another went by, her courage ebbed. She still wore the pale yellow dress and the pearl brooch. Her hands were clasped in her lap. They were clasped so tightly that James’ wedding-ring was cutting into her finger. But she did not feel it. With the sound of his step and the opening of the door she had begun to feel too many other things, and to feel them too intensely. There could be no more putting off. They had come to the place where they must speak the truth to each other and take what came of it. And she was afraid. Not of James, but of what she might be going to find out about him. She thought that he would tell her the truth-she did think that. But she didn’t know what that truth was going to be. He had bought her from Alan Field. He had paid five thousand pounds for her. She could still raise the hot flare of anger when she pressed this home, but it failed again and left her shaking with an inward cold, because if James wasn’t James at all, but someone she had never known, then where was she to turn, and what was she to do? Just for a moment it came to her that there wasn’t anyone she could turn to- except James himself. And if there wasn’t any James, then there wasn’t anyone at all.
He shut the door and came over to her.
“Well, my dear, I suppose we have got to talk this out.”
She said, “Yes.” That is to say, her lips made the right movement, but there wasn’t any sound.
He sat on the bed beside her.
“Do you mind so much?”
Her lips said, “Yes,” again, but there was still no sound. She sat there, not looking at him, not really looking at anything.
His heart wept for her. Well then, they must get on with it. How did one begin? Now that he had to talk to her about it, all the words which would have to be used were coarse and crude. He said,
“You don’t want me to touch you, do you?”
A long shudder went over her. He said quickly,
“All right, I won’t. But it would be easier if you would let me put my arm round you.”
The shudder came again.
He said, “Very well, I’ll tell you.”
It was quite extraordinarily hard to begin. His mind went back to seeing her that first time in her white dress with her birthday pearls at her throat, and Alan Field smiling beside her, leaning over to whisper in her ear. As the scene sprang into memory, all light and colour, he began to bring it back to her in words. Once he had started, the words came. He told her about sitting there in the box with the Trevors and seeing her like that. He said,
“I fell in love with you then, and I planned to meet you between the acts. The Trevors would have introduced me- they were talking about you a lot-but Maisie turned faint and we had to take her home. I was due in Cairo next day and no getting out of it. It was fifteen months before I could get away, but I heard about you in a letter from Maisie, and from Mary Maxwell who had been staying in the same house. I ran across her and her husband in Alexandria and she used to talk about you, so I knew that you weren’t married or engaged. As soon as I got home I went down to see the Trevors, and they told me you were marrying Alan Field in a week’s time. Maisie was all for it, but Tom said he would break your heart and that he would give his right hand to prevent it. I would have given more than that, but there didn’t seem to be anything I could do.”
Carmona lifted her head.
“What business was it of yours?” she said. Her voice was small and cold.
“I loved you. You were unhappy.”
“How did you know-I was unhappy?”
“I saw you on my way down to the Trevors‘. You were in a window seat of the London train as my train came into the junction. I don’t think you saw me, but you were looking straight at me and I could see how unhappy you were. Both trains were only just moving.”
Yes, she had been most desperately unhappy then. She was going to marry Alan not because she needed him, but because he needed her, and with every day that passed she knew most certainly that it wasn’t enough. Too late to draw back, too late to strike him such a blow, too late to do anything but go through with it as best she could.
James waited to see whether she would speak. The pale profile bent a little, but the lips did not move. He went on.
“I didn’t think there was anything I could do. If I had thought he would make you happy I would have made up my mind to it. But I knew he wouldn’t. Tom Trevor was right-he was going to break your heart. You see, I happened to know quite a lot about Field. He wasn’t fit to be in the same room with you, let alone marry you. I went through hell. And then-something happened.”
She gave a little startled gasp and turned to face him, lips parted, eyes suddenly bright. That was what she had always wanted to know-what had happened, and why, and how.
If James was surprised he did not s
how it. He went on speaking in the same quiet voice.
“I had an old-standing engagement to dine with a man called Edwards and meet his wife. When I got there it was quite a party, and we all went on to rather a hot-stuff night club. It wasn’t much in my line and I wasn’t in the mood for it, but I couldn’t very well fall out. When we’d been there about half an hour Field turned up with a fairly noisy party. They had all been drinking, and they kept on. After Field had slipped and brought his partner down he stopped trying to dance and took to talking instead.”
This was the hardest thing he had ever done in his life. If there was any way out of telling her he would have taken it. There wasn’t any way. It would hurt her damnably, and he had got to do it.
She lifted her eyes to his face and said, “Go on.”
“He talked-about how he had never had any luck. You can’t get anywhere without money, and he had never had any. It didn’t give you a chance. And now the best he could do was to tie himself up for a beggarly few hundreds a year. I’m not going to tell you everything he said, but it was all along those lines. I went over and sat down at his table. The girl who was with him was practically out. I said, ‘You’re getting married in a day or two, aren’t you?’ And he said yes, worse luck, but you’d got to live hadn’t you, and he was down on his uppers. I said, ‘If someone were to offer you a good round sum down and a fresh start in, say, South America, what would you say about it?’ He wanted to know what I meant by a good round sum, and I told him. It seemed to sober him up. He stared at me and said, ‘You’re joking!’ I said, ‘Look here, you’re drunk. I can’t do business with you like this. If you’ll come home with me and put your head in a bucket of water, we can talk.’ ”
Carmona said nothing. She kept her eyes on his face and said nothing.
James went on.
“Well, that was how it was. He knew what he was doing all right. I fed him black coffee, and he wasn’t drunk when he made the bargain. England was getting a bit too hot for him, and he had quite a fancy for South America. And he was quite frank about the money-said yours wasn’t going to be very much good to him because it was all tied up on you and your children, whereas if he had some capital to play with, there were no end of things he could do. I saw him again next day and we fixed up the details. He was to have his passage and some spending money, and the main sum down when he reached Rio. And he wasn’t to see you. He was to write and tell you the truth-that he wasn’t within a hundred miles of being good enough for you, and that you would be better off without him.”
Out of the Past Page 8
