And she found herself wondering if he thought he had gone too far, or whether he were expressing a perfectly honest opinion. Even already she, was less positive of her suspicions. The sharp outlines of what had seemed to her a dreadful situation were already beginning to blur and fade. Had she been thinking along ridiculously melodramatic lines? and was she doing her darling guardian the most frightful injustice With a deep sigh, Norma put her head down again his shoulder, and, ignoring all doubts and problems, said rather childishly: "I don't want to go away from you and marry anyone."
He laughed softly and kissed her.
"All right, darling. You shan't think any more about it to-night. Only remember, if you married Richard, you'd be near me and able to see me nearly every day. And you'd be Lady Inworth, and very beautifully you would adorn the position, too. Now go along to bed."
She was so infinitely soothed and comforted by hi affection that she moved to obey immediately. Then she suddenly remembered something, and turned with one arm still round him.
"Just one thing more about Paul. I must speak about that. I feel so badly about it. I didn't even want to kiss you good night to-night until I'd had it out with you."
He looked amused, rather than appalled, by this evidence of her displeasure.
"Well, what did you want to say about Paul?" "When he called that time, to say good-bye, at Bishopstone, you saw him, didn't you?"
"Yes."
"And told him that I was out?" "Yes."
"But I wasn't. It was a lie." He raised his eyebrows.
"I can't say that it's a lie which has weighed too much on my conscience," he said dryly. "Anyway, since he saw for himself that you were within call, no doubt he took it for shall we say? a social inexactitude, employed to indicate that I preferred my ward to have other friends."
"But why? How unfair and unreasonable." "Norma, we've been over this ground before, and frankly, I'm not prepared to go over it again at this time of night." Her guardian spoke pleasantly but positively. "I think you will admit that, usually, I am not an exacting guardian. Very few things are asked of you, and a good many are accorded you"
"Oh, yes, yes, indeed! Don't think I don't appreciate how good you are to me," Norma cried.
"Very well. I don't specially want to stress the point, because, of course, it also gives me great pleasure to indulge you to a certain extent. But, on the very rare occasions when I ask for obedience "
"Unquestioning obedience?"
"Unquestioning obedience. Then I don't think it is unreasonable of me to expect you to indulge me, in my turn."
Norma was silent. She knew there was something fundamentally wrong with this argument, and yet she could not put her finger on it. Instead, after a moment, she said: "I wish you'd told me the truth at the time. It would have been more dignified, and fairer to me."
"My dear, you were told the truth up to a point.
That a servant had mistakenly said that you were out. I saw no special reason to describe to you the further development in Paul's inquiries."
"But that's just quibbling," cried Norma, as she had to Paul.
Her guardian shrugged, unperturbed.
"Then I am afraid I am perfectly prepared to quibble, if it means more peaceful relations between me and a sometimes difficult ward."
Norma gave nun a slightly startled glance under her thick lashes.
"You mean?"
"My dear, what do you suppose would have happened if I had given you a verbatim account of the conversation between me and young Cantlin?"
"I should have been furious, I suppose, and tried to persuade you to change your mind," Norma admitted reluctantly.
"Exactly. I didn't really see why I need lay myself open to that. I preferred to look after your happiness in my own way, and so compensate for any small disappointment over young Cantlin. And I can't say, Norma, that I have noticed you pining during the last few months."
"Good money, good conditions, and no questions asked," quoted Norma very softly.
Her guardian glanced at her sharply. "Is that some sort of reproach?" "No."
"Then may we consider the subject of young Cantlin definitely closed?"
Norma looked down and rather nervously traced a pattern on the arm of his chair.
"There's just one thing you've overlooked. I'm really fond of Paul," she said in a low voice. "And I think he's fond of me."
She heard her guardian draw a sharp breath of annoyance.
'We're getting perilously near the beginning of our argument again, Norma," he said dryly. "And I'm not prepared to go round and round in circles like this. In any case, the question of whether or not you are, as you put it, fond of some young man you really know very little can't be of overwhelming importance, at the moment. If you want to examine your feelings with a magnifying glass, I suggest you consider your feelings for Richard Inworth, who has just asked you to marry him."
"He hasn't asked me. He's asked you," Norma remarked, with an irrepressible flash of mischief. And, to her relief, her guardian laughed, and ruffled her hair indulgently.
"All right. He asked me if he might ask you. Quite a proper proceeding, considering your age and position. Now go along, to bed. I think I've been lectured in my own house quite long enough for one night."
So Norma with a vague feeling that she had perhaps, in her excitement and agitation, been unreasonably hard on her guardian slowly took her way upstairs again to her own room.
This time, she went to bed. But not to sleep. There was too much to think about.
First the situation between her guardian and Paul, .which had originally sent her downstairs, believing that nothing in the world was more important than to get this matter straight. Then Richard's almost entirely unexpected proposal. And then the horrible certainty_ now only a strong suspicion that her guardian had been deliberately using her for the sole purpose of regaining possession of Munley Towers.
They were not separate problems, of course. At leas not if her final suspicions were correct. They were all interrelated in a frightening and revolting manner.
"He couldn't do anything so coldly calculated," thought Norma. "He's too fond of me."
And then she remembered the sceptical, pitying W Paul always looked at her when she insisted on her guardian's affection for her.
Not that Paul knew, of course. How could he, or anyone else, know just what a lovely and affectionate relationship existed between herself and her guardian? It was so personal and real and significant.
Or was she just deluding herself about that too? He his real cleverness lain, not in his scheming which, after all, appeared to be astonishingly simple but in the hold he had established on her emotions and her affections?
Norma gave an unhappy little groan and tried to think of something else. Which brought her to the fact that she had given remarkably little consideration to Richard's proposal until this moment.
There had been so much else to think about, of course. But still dear, kind, easy-going Richard wanted her to share his life. For a few moments, the very thought of how easy-going he was, and the blessed simplicity there would be about life with him, made an almost irresistible appeal to Norma.
It was restful just to think of Richard reducing life to satisfying simple terms, and naturally warding off emotional crises. Only she couldn't quite .imagine married life with him at Munley that was to say, a) Bishopstone. And then she was back again at the other half of the problem. Had her guardian really pulled all the strings, and were she and Richard just responding in the way he intended them to respond?
"Anyway, I don't want to marry yet," Norma assured herself. "I don't want to marry anyone. I think Richard is a darling, and he'll make a marvelous husband for someone, but I'm not sure that I'm that someone."
And this, more or less, was the gist of what she told Richard the next day.
He had called to see her fairly early, and, when she came into the drawing-room, he was standing there, looking serious and big and rather i
ll-at-ease only so straightforward and understandable that she could have hugged him.
"Hallo, Norma. Did your guardian tell you we had a talk about you last night? He did? Weller thought I'd just come round and see you this morning." Richard was one of those people who are apt to dispense with pronouns when embarrassed. "Seemed it was time we talked with each other, and not just through someone else."
"Yes, of course, Richard. Though it was nice of you to speak to Mr. Yorke first and ask his permission."
"Well sounds a bit old-fashioned and Victorian, put that way." Richard cleared his throat and laughed a little. "Only, you're such a kid and"
"I don't feel exactly a kid just now," Norma remarked soberly. "But it's true that I'm young, Richard, and, quite honestly, I don't want to make up my mind about marrying anyone yet. I know lots of girls do marry at eighteen but "
"I wouldn't tie you down in any way, Norma,"
Richard exclaimed, suddenly recovering, both assurance and pronouns. "It was just that I wanted you to know how I felt, and to think it over in your own time. I get scared every time another man looks at you, and I thought what a fool I'd be, if I stood back and let another chap walk off with you, just because I'd been waiting until you got a bit older."
"Yes, I see." Norma laughed a little at his way of putting it, but she patted his tweed sleeve gratefully. "You're being awfully nice about this, Richard, and I feel rather mean, not giving you a definite answer"
"Good lord, that's all right!" Richard told her. "I'm only too thankful to be given half-and-half chance.
I was afraid you were going to tell me this other chap"
"What other chap?" asked Norma quickly. Richard looked faintly put out again.
"Well, I had the idea Yorke seemed to have the idea that there was another fellow on the mat. It's all right, Norma. No names were mentioned, but" "Did my guardian imply that I was keen on someone else?"
"No not exactly. He gave me to understand that I needn't regard myself as the only pebble on the beach."
"And that, therefore, it would be just as well to hurry things on and get them settled?" suggested Norma slowly.
"Yes. Though I daresay I'd have thought that for myself, in any case," Richard added with a grin.
"No." Norma spoke half to herself. "The idea was put into your mind."
"Oh, hang it all, Norma! It wasn't an unusual idea for a man in love. He usually wants to get things shipshape as' quickly as possible," Richard objected. And then, in a different tone. "What's the matter, dear?"
"N-nothing." Norma put up both hands and pushed back her dark hair. "Richard, don't think me mad, but did you ever have the impression that my guardian was engineering this match?"
"Engineering it? Heavens, Norma, I don't need any other man to engineer a proposal for me. D'you suppose I don't know my own mind about the girl I want to marry? Look here, you- mustn't suppose that, because I went to Yorke first, we were hatching up something between us. You don't think that, do you?"
"Oh, no, no. You didn't have anything to do with it, I know." Norma was still speaking half to herself. "I expect I'm being crazy, anyway."
Richard looked at her anxiously, and said, with palpable truth: "I don't understand."
"It's all right, Richard. It's just some wild idea I had."
"About Yorke?"
She didn't answer. And, after a moment, he added doubtfully: "Yorke's quite been on the idea, if that's what you mean. He told me few things would please him better than to have you accept me."
"Yes. And do you know why?" Norma retorted almost fiercely. "Because he thinks I'll persuade you to live at Bishopstone and to let him have Munley. Oh! I shouldn't have said that!"
Richard gazed at her in ludicrous astonishment. "Say that again," he said slowly.
"Oh, no. Once was too much." Norma gave a shaken little laugh. Then she stood there, watching the expressions slowly change on Richard's face.
Suspicion incredulity and then a sort of dogged obstinacy, which made him set his rather heavy jaw in a way she had not seen before.
"Look here, Norma" he took both her hands and drew her against him "Yorke hasn't got a thing to do with this. You shall live just anywhere you like, if you marry me. Munley, Bishopstone, any other place in the country. This is just between you and me, and I'll not have any house property deals mixed up with my marriage."
"All right, Richard all right."
As she looked up into the dark obstinacy of his face, she thought: "Even Justin Yorke would never have changed any direct decision of his. He would have to do it through me if at all."
Richard was still looking down at her, puzzled, anxious and with a half-formed suspicion that there was something very wrong.
"It's quite all right now, Richard." She smiled. She had to reassure him. "I just got hold of some silly idea for a few minutes. But I see now that it was ridiculous. Don't think any more about it."
His expression relaxed, and he kissed her suddenly.
Not awkwardly, but certainly not with any offensive boldness. And Norma kissed him back again quite simply.
"Thank you, awfully, Richard, for asking me to marry you. I'm really very flattered and honoured, you know. And please don't consider yourself in any way committed "
"Oh, but I am," he interrupted quickly. "No please. I'm not going to have my request for more time turned into a way of keeping you dangling. I just don't want to make up my mind about anyone yet. And, in asking to be allowed to remain free, I insist that you are equally free. It's the only possible fair way of doing tilings."
He looked rather disconsolate. Perhaps he knew that, if she were so willing to risk losing him to someone else, she could not be very much in love with him at the present time. On the other hand, he could make it his business to be on the spot much more than any other admirer. And, at that reflection, he appeared more contented.
During the next few days, Norma alternated between certainty that she had done her guardian considerable injustice, and equal certainty that her suspicions were correct, and that he was deliberately trying to engineer a match between her and Richard to serve his own ends.
But, as time went on, inevitably the less fantastic theory began to be the more acceptable one, and Norma became reasonably sure that, apart from interfering unwarrantably in her friendship with Paul, her guardian was not trying to influence her future more than any conscientious guardian might.
It was true that, temporarily at least, Paul had passed out of her life. And it was true that Richard was her constant and accepted companion. But one did not have to seek far for the reason for both these facts.
And, anyway, Richard was a very agreeable companion.
Sometimes it disturbed her a little that other people were beginning to couple her and Richard together rather firmly. But it would have taken a much more experienced person than Norma to avoid that, without some sort of upset out of all proportion to the occasion.
And, by the time the Christmas and New Year festivities were over, Richard was well established as something very like a near-member of the family.
Once, she said a little doubtfully to her guardian: "Do you think we ought to include Richard in absolutely everything?"
Justin Yorke looked surprised.
"Don't you want him to be asked on Thursday, then?"
"Oh, I don't mean that I've any objection to his coming. I always like to see him," Norma explained hastily. "I only thought we might be giving him the impression that he is more or less an accepted fiancéé. Whereas, of course, he's not."
"Oh" her guardian smiled "I think Richard understands the situation perfectly. I shouldn't worry about that, if I were you. We won't ask him on Thursday, if you prefer not to. But he's bound to hear of the party from the Forresters, and may wonder why he's been slighted."
"I don't want him to do that!" cried Norma. "Ask him, by all means. Only, perhaps some other time" "We'll keep in mind the necessity of not raising false hopes," her guardian agreed amusedly.
But, so far as Norma could see, Richard came just as often as he had always come.
The very first signs of spring came early that year, and Richard used to take her riding in the park early in the morning. Her guardian declared that he only cared for country riding, so that, once again, Richard was her natural companion. And it was on one of these early morning rides that Richard finally told her that he would not be able to stay much longer in London.
"Oh, Richard, I shall miss you," Norma said, with sincerity. Though, in her heart, she was aware of a guilty throb of relief, for this would surely adjust the balance a little in her relationship with him. "When do you have to go?"
"Sometime next week. I've got a law case coming on, to do with boundaries, and I ought to be on the spot during the next few weeks," Richard explained. Then, after a pause: "I suppose there's no chance of your coming north yet awhile?"
"I don't think so. I think Mr. Yorke usually stays down here until Easter at least."
"Um-hm. I was afraid so."
At that moment, she almost wished that he would ask her again about the possibility of her marrying him. because then she would have told him that she didn't think even time was going to make much difference in his favour. But he didn't reopen the subject, and she hardly saw how she could, unless she could definitely tell him there was someone else which she could not.
After Richard's departure, Norma had a good deal more of her guardian's companionship, and she was very happy because of it. She seemed closer to him again than she had been ever since the shock of what might have been a disclosure or might have been an unjust suspicion. And, although his endearments were few, she was certain that he too loved having her with him.
Once, when he teased her a little about her inexhaustible pleasure in everything, she very nearly told him that it was so much more fun to go out with him than with Richard good and kind though Richard was. But something told her that the statement, though complimentary, would not be acceptable, and she suppressed it.
And then, one cold, bright February afternoon, when they were coming home together from a picture exhibition, and Norma was chattering away eagerly, she suddenly became aware of the fact that they were being hailed in very familiar tones.
Ward of Lucifer Page 13
