CHAPTER THIRTEEN
AND THEN, at last, Leslie knew that she was finished. She would stop. It would be so much easier. She wondered she had not given in before, instead "All right, darling," Reid's voice said, not a coupleof yards away from her. "Let yourself float. I can manage you."Incredibly, the sound of his voice tore away the veils of illusion. There was still a life to be lived and a struggle to be made.And there were other considerations too. Recollections which forced themselevs back on her with remorseless clarity."Caroline," she gasped. "She's in danger too.""I can't manage more than one." His tone wasgrim and uncompromising. "I know understand." Mechanically, she wasdoing what he told her to do, but something in her urged her to protest. "That's why you must take her." "Stop talking. My wife comes first." She knew it was idiotic to waste words and breath now. But, though the effort brought the tears to hoieyes, something greater than herself forced the finalprotest from her."No. She's your love. She comes first.""You are my love and my wife," he said. "Nowbe quiet, for God's sake. We need our breath for something else."She was quiet. Incredulously, rapturously, obediently quiet. She did exactly what he told her. She was even able to help herself a little, once his supporting arm had given her a tiny respite. In any case,the most difficult part of the journey was over. But what gave her strength, far beyond any material consideration, was the fact that he had said she was his love. 177 The next few minutes were just a little vague. She was dimly aware that Reid was rubbing her vigorously with towels, wrapping her in a coat and making her drink brandy.There were two or three other people there, she realized presently, and someone was sobbing breathlessly quite near her. With a dreadful feeling of guilt, she thought, "Caroline!" And though the effort hurt she rolled over on the sand to gaze in the direction of the sound.It was a moment before she realized that the sobbing .was not for Caroline, but from her. She waslying there, as exhausted as Leslie herself, and beside her knelt a dripping Oliver, his face a whitishgrey with anxiety and fear."She's safe too!" Leslie gasped, in a cracked little voice, and she felt the tears of hysteria rising in her also. "Reid ""Stop it!" Reid told her peremptorily. "Carolinewill be as right as rain in an hour or two, and twice as dry. Don't you start crying, or probably Oliver and I will do the same. Come on, I'm taking you . home now." ,,., , . ,.And he rolled her in a rug and lifted her in his arms.One or two eager bystanders offered to carry herfor him, seeing that he was a good deal exhausted already. But he would not let anyone else touch her.Rather slowly, he carried her to the car which some. kind passer-by had offered to put at their disposal. And still half dazed she was driven back toLaintenon, lying in Reid's arms, indescribably warmed by his tenderness, and nearness, and possibly a little by the liberal amount of brandy he had poured down her throat.She thought, "There are so many things to askhim and to tell him." But she could not think of the words in which to express any of them. And, sincehe seemed very well satisfied just to hold her and be 178 silent, she felt that perhaps that was what she wanted too. When they arrived at Madame Blanchard's, thatgood lady rushed out, with a natural premonition ofdisaster or at least sensation little short of miraculous. But though she exclaimed in a variety ofkeys and three different languages, she was intensely practical and helpful too. And in a remarkably shorttime Leslie had been undressed and put to bed withhot-water bottles. The warmth and ease and quiet were so deliciousafter the ordeal through which she had gone that Leslie could not restrain one or two little groans ofsheer relief. Then, because it seemed the loveliest and the most natural thing in the world to do, she went to sleep,and bothered no more about anything or anyone for several hours. ' _ When Leslie woke, the last of the golden eveninglight was filtering into the room, and she lay there loving it with the grateful tenderness which we attach only to a beautiful, familiar thing we have very nearlylost. She was alive when she might have been dead, and the world was a wonderful place. Then a very slight movement beside her made her turn her head, and she saw, with a fresh rush of grateful tenderness, that Reid was lying back in the chairby her bed, quieter and more thoughtful than she usually saw him."Hello," she said softly. And he turned his headthen and smiled at her. "Hello, sweet. Feeling better?""I feel wonderful." He leant forward, with his arm on the bed, so that he was very close to her. "Promise me that you'll never take a risk like that again. I wouldn't relive this afternoon for all Great-Aunt Tabitha's fortune." "I promise. I'm awfully sorry, Reid. It was very wrong and silly of us, I know. We started to. race 179 and I felt I had to win. It seemed otherwise as though ""Yes?" he said, because she had stopped. Her lashes came down, making shadows on her cheeks, and a very faint colour showed under her pale skin."Come on. Tell me," he coaxed, and kissed the side of her cheek softly. "Reid I thought you loved her." "So I did," he retorted With cheerful candour. "Once.""Oh, darling, I thought as late as last night." "Last night?" He looked mystified. "Why did you think I loved her last night, for heaven's sake?" "Please don't think I was was prying or suspicious or anything. But I came up to the Villa last night earlier than I told you, really just to get flowers for Madame Blanchard. And while I was there I saw you and Caroline laughing and talking together and she she kissed you good-bye." "Yes, that's true. She did," he agreed reflectively, as though recalling that with surprise. "You had told me, Reid, that you had to go out and attend to some business affairs. I thought you meant you had to see the lawyers. And then when I saw you with her in the garden " She broke off again, almost apologetically. "Yes, I see. I'm sorry, my sweet. I wish I'd known. It was really, a perfectly innocent meeting, you know. And quite unpremeditated on my part." "Not on hers," she countered quickly. "What makes you think that?" He twined his fingers loosely in hers and then raised her hand and kissed it lightly."I stopped to speak to Oliver on the way up he was in their garden and he remarked quite casually that she had gone out and refused to say where she was going. He thought it quite amusing, and was sure she was planning some small domestic surprise for him." 180 "Whereas you thought he was just being the blind husband?" Reid suggested, smiling. "I didn't think anything about it until I saw her with you in the garden. Then I felt sure she had gone out on purpose to meet you.""So far as it goes, that was true," Reid said slowly. "She saw me go past, up to the Villa, and she followed me because there was something she wanted to say to me." "And what was that?" Leslie asked softly and quickly. "I mean if it's not private and you can tell me." "I can tell you, honey. Caroline has a passion for getting things straight, you know. Emotional situations, I mean. Probably it's because she has few inhibitions, and is naively interested in her own feelings. She wanted me to know I believe for my own good as well as hers," he interjected with a dry smile, "that she was completely happy with Oliver and that she knew now that she had made a w.se choice." "She said that?" gasped Leslie rather incredulously. "But why? I mean why go out of her way to come and tell you that?" "Because this visit of theirs to Laintenon had been m the nature of a test. On her part, I mean. I don't imagine Oliver knew anything of what was in her mind," Reid said, again with that smile. "She married him in a good deal of a hurry, remember. I guess she had her moments of doubt. It was not unlike her, you know, deliberately to come to this place which was full of well, shall we say romantic memories of someone else? That was the final proof to her. If, in this place, she could still find Oliver the supreme attraction, then she'd know she had laid all the romantic ghosts of the past." "She hadn't," Leslie said slowly, "reckoned on our being here too." "Candidly, I think it added a zest to her own proof," Reid remarked with an air of reflective amusement. 181 "When she found that, even in the flesh, I no longer attracted her, although the scene was identical with the days when I had " "Didn't you any longer attract her?" "Not to any degree that counted beside her Oliver, he confessed with a grin."I can't understand it," Leslie said with naive simplicity. At which Reid laughed immoderately, but kissed her with great tenderness."Darling, is that how you see Oliver and me now? You never told me, you know.""How could I?" She rubbed her cheek affectionately against his. "I thought
you were still in love with Caroline.""Yes, I see. You know, there's something to be said for Caroline's direct method. Having found that she loved only Oliver, she took quite a pleasure in letting me know that was the exact state of affairs. I'm not quite sure" he rubbed his chin thoughtfully "whether she thought I needed a final warning, or whether she just wanted to share her glorious discovery with someone else who knew a lot about her reactions." "Reid " "Yes." "What did you say, when she told you that?" "If I remember exactly, I said, 'Thank God! Then there's no harm in telling you that I adore my wife and am supremely happy with her.'" "You really said that?" "I did." "Because, you know, I'd rather you told me the exact truth than invented something to please me." "There's no invention, my darling, about either the words or the sentiment. I do adore you and I am supremely happy with you," he said quietly. "Do you think you are such a difficult person to adore?" "I don't know about that. I only know that I have always thought of you as being obsessed by a passion for Caroline." 182 He was silent for a few minutes. Then he said, "When did you know you were no longer in love with Oliver?" "Oh after you and I decided to go on with the marriage in actual fact." "And yet you had been very much in love with him for a long time before that, hadn't you?" "Yes, I suppose" rather reluctantly "I had." "You see, these changes can take place. I fell in love with you in Verona, and after that there could be no other woman for me. Neither Caroline nor anyone else. It isn't any stranger than your falling out of love with Oliver. Or, I suppose," he added reflectively, "Caroline falling out of love with me." "That's the strangest of all," Leslie said, and was swept up in his arms and kissed several times. "I shall hardly be able to let you out of my sight, after so nearly losing you," he declared. "It wasn't such a bad thing, really, Reid." She was smiling brilliantly now. "It was the only thing that would have made me really convinced that you loved me better." "Hell, why? I must say you girls think up some pretty gruelling tests." She laughed outright then. "Why, you see, I knew you could save only one of us. You had to make it the one you really loved." He held her away from him and gave her a long, quizzical glance. Then he said, "Darling, I just hate to undeceive you, and I hope this won't undermine your faith in my love for you. But I did know that Oliver was coming along a few yards behind me, and I should have reckoned in any case that his wife was his affair and my wife was mine." "Oh," Leslie said very soberly. And then there was a long silence between them. "Does it matter very much?" he asked at last, watching her serious face with loving and amused eyes. 183 "I think it does rather." He took her right into his arms then and kissed her cheek and then her mouth. "Do you really feel any doubt about my love for you?" he said. "Any doubts which could possibly be resolved by some swimming contest or artificial proof, I mean?" She smiled slowly and pressed close against him. "You think I'm very silly, don't you?" she said softly."Darling, I think everything about you is dear and lovely," he replied, with a gravity unusual in him. "But" and his characteristic smile flashed out "don't ask me to prove it with any trial by water.There are so many more interesting ways of doing it." She laughed at that. A sweet, happy, relieved laugh."You don't have to prove it. I know," she said, and she felt her cares fall from her. She lay there for a long while in the circle of his arm, both of them so happy and so much at one thatthere was hardly the need of words between them. Then she said lazily,"Why did you go to the Villa yesterday evening?" "What?" He roused himself. "Oh I forgot I went to look at those letters and account books youmentioned. You see, the old lady's lawyers were al-most sure that she made all sorts of notes and tentative bequests before she actually settled on that final will, leaving everything to me. I thought if we couldfind some recent indication that she meant your father to have a good deal, he would accept what I'm making over to him with a better heart.""Couldn't you have told me that," she said a little reproachfully, "and have let me help to look?""Oh I guess it was silly of me. I wanted to find it for myself, and then bring it to you as a surprise." "Reid! Who's the childish one now?" She put upher hand and touched his cheek lovingly. "And didn't you find anything, poor darling?" 184 "No. But there are still one or two things to lookthrough. I hadn't time to finish." She smiled at him indulgently, not knowing it wasthe first time she had ever felt sufficiently sure of him to do that. "Do you want to go and complete the search now?""Not particularly." "You can if you like." She gave a luxurious little yawn. "I'm getting sleepy again, anyway.""All right." He held her for a moment longer, almost painfully tight. Then he kissed her and put herdown. At the door, he turned and smiled at her, so that she remembered the magic of those days in Verona and sensed all the magic of the days to come. When he had gone, she lay there watching the laststreak of the evening sun moving slowly across theopposite wall. She thought what a strange and wonderful day it had been. First the glorious news aboutMoriey. Then the terrible struggle in the water. Andfinally the discovery that Reid loved her. "It would be quite in keeping now for him to findthat Great-Aunt Tabitha left Father half her moneyafter all," she thought. But that was a fanciful idea, and one which made her smile sleepily. Anyway, it didn't really matter. For herself, shehardly cared at all who had the money. The onlyimportant thing about that inheritance was that, in leaving the money to Reid, Great-Aunt Tabitha hadbrought them together. "Bless her, wherever she is!" .thought Leslie. And,thinking that, she fell asleep again.
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