“I think,” said John, speaking mildly, “I think that when you know the facts you’ll feel that it’s up to you and Jenny—”
Nicholas interrupted again:
“I don’t accept the slightest obligation.”
John pursued his way:
“There’s been a certain amount of talk; and there’ll be more if you and Jenny go on cold-shouldering Anne. Naturally, I don’t want there to be any talk.”
Nicholas lit another cigarette.
“Anne Waveney took her own line. I told you what that line was. I haven’t the slightest intention of allowing Jenny to have anything to do with her.”
“I really think you’d better talk to Jenny about it. I wrote to her and suggested that Anne should come down here until we could be married. Of course, if Jenny hasn’t spoken to you, you’ll say ‘No.’ So I think you’d better talk to Jenny before you say anything.”
Nicholas shot him an odd sidelong glance. He smoked in silence for a full minute before he said:
“Nothing that you’ve said to Jenny is going to have any effect at all upon the situation.” A second glance said quite plainly: “Now, will you go?”
John took no notice of it. He was wondering where Jenny was. He said in rather a hesitating manner:
“I think you don’t know all the facts. There were things which I had asked Jenny to tell you. I think when you know them you’ll feel differently about Anne. That’s why I’m not getting angry. I’d like to see Jenny, if you don’t mind.”
Nicholas shrugged his shoulders, got up, and walked to the bell.
“If you’d rather hear Jenny tell you that my mind is made up, I’ve no objection—Yes, I rang. Will you ask her ladyship to come down. Tell her Sir John Waveney is here.”
Then, as the door closed behind the servant, he returned to his lounging attitude and to an expression of bored annoyance.
Upstairs Jenny was sitting on the floor with her baby in her lap.
“He knows me, nurse! I’m sure he knows me! Didn’t urns, lovey? Didn’t urns knows its horrid old deserting mum—going away and leaving him for two whole days? Nurse, I’m sure he’s heavier—I’m sure he is!”
“He’s got your letters, ma’am. He’ll have them in his mouth in a minute.”
Jenny laughed and kissed the pink clutching hands.
“Lie still, angel! Oh, he’s sucked the corner of this one! Piggy Wiggy!”
She held it up, and then remained looking at the envelope. Her mind said quickly: “John Waveney! Why should he write to me?” She took the letter out, tearing it a little in her haste, and read what John had written:
“Anne and I are going to be married.”
The words seemed to jump towards her, seemed almost to hit her. She felt as if she had been struck.
“Anne and I are going to be married. I hope you will be pleased.”
Pleased. She took a sharp breath and called the nurse:
“Nurse, take baby.”
She got up with the letter in her hand and went over to the window with it.
Little Tony gave a piercing shriek of disapproval. He was very comfortable on Jenny’s lap; it was soft, not starchy; and he liked being cooed at and tickled. He voiced the most passionate disapproval. But Jenny did not hear him.
“I hope you will be pleased.” This—this was what she had always been afraid of. She was so much afraid now that she did not know how to go on reading the letter. She felt as if she was standing on the edge of some frightful nightmare. If she read the letter, she would slip over the edge and become part of it. But she had to read the letter.
She looked at it and read on. Anne to come here—Anne to stay with her! Nicko wouldn’t—And then: “I think you had better tell Nicholas all about Levinski’s pearls.” The letter disappeared in the mist that seemed to fill the room.
Jenny went on staring at the place where the letter had been. The mist got thinner. She saw a white oblong with streaks on it—black streaks, letters, words, that danced, shifted, steadied. She began to read the words: “You’d better tell Nicholas at once, because I’m coming down tomorrow, Monday.”
She read on to the end of the letter. She was to tell Nicholas at once—tell Nicko that she was a thief; that she had taken Levinski’s pearls and let Anne go to prison for it. She was to tell Nicko all this at once.
Her right hand held the letter. Her left closed hard upon itself, driving the pink pointed nails into her palm. She began to breathe a little faster. John—she must get hold of John. She must get hold of him before he saw Nicko. And she must make him understand that she couldn’t possibly do such a preposterous thing. He couldn’t ask her to do it—not really.
“If you please, my lady—” It was the nurse with little Tony, now pacified, in her arms.
“What is it?” said Jenny sharply.
“If you please, my lady, James came to the door with a message from Sir Nicholas; and he says will your ladyship please go down, as Sir John Waveney would like to see you.”
Jenny took the blow without any outward sign; it hit her so hard that, for the moment, it took away her power to feel. She crumpled up the letter and pushed it down into the pocket of her white jumper suit. She had thrown off her hat when she came into the nursery. She put up the hand that had held the letter, and smoothed her fair wavy hair. The other hand hung down rigid.
She went out of the door and down the stairs with the fear in her rising to panic. It was coming; she couldn’t stop it. John was there with Nicko. The worst of all her terrible dreams was coming true. And there was no Anne to save her now.
Halfway down the stairs she began to run. Then, with her hand on the study door, she stopped, leaning there, her head against the panel, breathless and quivering. She heard John speak, and the thought rushed into her mind: “He’s telling Nicko now.”
She pushed the door open and ran into the room.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
When the servant had gone to find Jenny, John remained looking at Nicholas for a moment. Then he walked over to the window and stood there looking out. The clouds were very black on the far side of the river; the water ran like dull quicksilver through the wet green meadows. The lilac was over, and the crimson may.
John looked out into the drizzle of fine rain and settled what he would do. When Jenny came, he would ask her if she had had his letter; then he would leave her to tell Nicholas. He could go for a tramp and come back again. He felt sorry for Nicholas Marr.
“I’m sorry Jenny didn’t get my letter first thing this morning. I didn’t think of her being away. Have you only just got back?”
“Five minutes before you—blew in.”
“I see.”
Perhaps he’d better give them a little more time—clear off altogether and come down again tomorrow.
“Jenny’ll want to talk to you,” he said. “I’ll just make sure she’s had my letter, and then I’ll clear off. I can come down again to-morrow.”
Nicholas knocked the ash off his cigarette on to the carpet.
“Can you?” he said. And with that the door was pushed open and Jenny came in.
John turned, and received a shock. For the first time, the likeness to Anne was a real thing. And it was a likeness of suffering. Jenny’s face, with the colour drained from it and the eyes staring, was terribly like the face Anne had lifted to him when he met her, dumb and beaten, in the drive at Waterdene.
Jenny was looking, not at him, but at Nicholas. She ran into the room, and stopped by the writing-table, holding to the back of a tall chair and looking at Nicholas.
“Nicko! What has he said? Send him away! It’s not true! You won’t—you won’t believe him if I say it’s not true! You won’t believe him against me! Nicko!”
Nicholas Marr got up slowly. He threw the end of his cigarette into the fireplace. Then he went over to Jenny and put his hand on her shoulder.
“Jenny!” The word came sharp.
The hand on her shoulder was firm. Jenny clutched
at him.
“Nicko—send him away! What has he said?”
Then, leaning back against Nicholas, she turned upon John:
“How dare you come here with your lies? Do you think he’ll believe them?”
Then back again to catch at Nicholas with a desperate hand:
“Say you don’t believe him! Nicko, it’s a dreadful, dreadful lie! I didn’t do it—I didn’t! Anne confessed—you know she did. She took the pearls, and she confessed. Nicko, send him away!”
“I’m going,” said John. He went to the door and spoke in clear, deliberate tones: “I haven’t said anything, Jenny. Why did you think I had? It’s up to you. I told you so in my letter.”
Then he went out and shut the door behind him.
Jenny took a shuddering breath. She let go of Nicholas and stood back a pace. He hadn’t spoken. How much had she said? What was she to say now?
As the thought went through her mind, Nicholas looked at her, and she had hard work to keep from crying out.
“Explain,” he said.
“I—Nicko—” She put her hand to her throat.
“That is hardly an explanation.”
“Nicko—I—”
“Your very tactful cousin having removed himself, I’m afraid I must ask you for something a little more to the point.”
Jenny gazed at him dumbly. It was worse than the worst of her dreams.
“What does it mean?” said Nicholas.
“I—” Her voice failed.
“John Waveney wrote you a letter. Where is it?”
She moved her head very slightly, as if to deny the letter.
“I imagine it shed some light on the situation. Will you show it to me?” Again that very slight movement of the head. “I think you have it—pockets aren’t meant to hide things nowadays. Will you give it to me?”
Sheer terror opened Jenny’s lips:
“Nicko, I can’t!” Then, as he reached forward and took the letter from her pocket, she gave a little broken cry and shrank away.
Nicholas straightened out the letter without looking at it.
“I shall not read it without your permission. But I think you can hardly refuse your permission. You see, I’m bound to have an explanation. You seem unable to give me one. There remains the letter—and your cousin. Either I read this letter, or I ask John Waveney to tell me its contents. It’s whichever you prefer, of course.”
Jenny went back a pace, struck against the writing chair, and sat down. The fight was gone out of her. There was no one to help her. Nicko would never forgive her. She felt a great longing for Anne. She laid her arms on the back of the chair and dropped her head on them.
“Am I to read the letter?” said Nicholas in that icy voice.
Jenny just moved her head again. This time the movement said “Yes.”
She had no sooner moved than she would have given all the world to recall that despairing consent. If she had said “No,” he wouldn’t be reading that dreadful letter—now. Her forehead was wet where it pressed against her arm. If she could only faint—if she could die, and escape from Nicko’s eyes.
After a long, cold time, Nicko’s voice, slow, measured, controlled:
“You’re to tell me about Levinski’s pearls. I’m waiting.”
He waited.
Jenny’s mind, strung to the extreme of terror, was swept clear of conscious thought. When she and Anne were small they had been taught verses from a book that had belonged to their grandmother. One of these formal, stilted verses repeated itself over and over in the empty places of her mind:
“Now, Jenny, I pray, put such feelings away,
And own that you acted amiss.
How sweet to be friends and make loving amends,
And end all our strife with a kiss!”
“Answer me!” said Nicholas in a voice that Jenny had never heard from anyone in her life.
The shock brought her head up and gave her back the power of speech.
“Was it you who took the pearls?” said Nicholas.
Of all the denials that had come so fast to Jenny’s lips there was not one to serve her now. She said, “Yes. Why?” She put her hand to her neck as if she were feeling for the pearls that were not there. “Your pearls—you wanted them.”
“Mine? What do you mean?”
“You wanted them. I hadn’t got them.”
“Will you explain?”
Jenny went on looking at him with eyes that saw nothing—blank brown eyes like shallow peat-water.
“I had to have some money. I couldn’t ask anyone. I pawned your pearls.”
When she had said this, Jenny shivered under the contempt in his eyes.
“You told me Anne took your pearls and pawned them. That wasn’t true?”
Jenny shook her head.
“You pawned them yourself, and when I went on asking for them you took Levinski’s. Were you going to pass them off on me as mine?”
“I don’t know—I didn’t think—it was so easy to take them—I just did it.”
“I see. And you let Anne take the blame?”
“She did it,” said Jenny. “Anne’s always—always—” She broke off with a little bitter cry of “Anne!” and dropped her head on her arms again.
Nicholas stood quite still. He had never liked Anne. Jenny was his, and he would share her with no one. Anne’s likeness to her was an offence; Anne’s love for her a claim. In his intolerable humiliation his anger against Anne was a relief. There was murder in his heart for Anne. What there was for Jenny he didn’t know—contempt, colder than anger; resentment, far more bitter than a blow.
He said, very low, “You rotten little outsider!” and went out of the room without looking back.
CHAPTER XXXIX
Nicholas came back to Waterdene in the dusk. The rain had ceased; it was a clear, grey evening with streaks of saffron in the west. He had driven furiously for hours. He came home now for no reason except that one cannot go on driving for ever.
Emmot, the butler, met him in the hall, a comfortable, rotund man who had been for twenty years at Waterdene, and to whom Nicholas was still secretly Master Nick.
“Her ladyship—we’ve been a bit troubled about her ladyship.”
For an instant Nicholas went cold.
“What’s the matter?”
“Nurse wanted to send for the doctor, but I said better wait till you came home.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Her ladyship’s been sitting in the study ever since you went away. Nurse can’t get her to move—not even for Master Tony. She and Harman are very much upset.”
Nicholas shed his coat.
“Her ladyship’s had bad news—we both have. I’ll go to her.”
“Nurse did get her to take some tea. I didn’t think you’d want the doctor sent for till you came home.”
“No—quite right.”
He came into the study with his mood violently wrenched. Public opinion—no getting away from it. Servants, friends, relations, Press—you couldn’t live your life, meet tragedy or disaster, in a decent privacy.”
He had thrown his bitter contempt at Jenny and flung off. He came back to Emmot’s concern, to what nurse and Jenny’s maid, Harman, were thinking—to public opinion in his own household.
Jenny was sitting just as he had left her. Harman, frightened and excited, was at the far end of the room. She went out as he came in, with just one scared look over her shoulder.
As the door shut Jenny lifted her head from her arms. She looked as if she had been crying for hours. The light from the reading-lamp upon the table touched the edges of her hair with gold. The curtains had been drawn, and the room was in darkness except for that one lamp.
Nicholas put up his hand to the switch and turned on the light in the ceiling.
“I thought you’d gone,” said Jenny.
“I’ve come back.”
He went to the fireplace and stood there, one arm on the mantelshelf, his face dark and
expressionless. His eyes avoided Jenny.
“Why did you do it?”
“I told you.”
“You wanted money. Why?”
The thought of the money had been like poison all those hours.
“I had to have it.” Jenny’s voice was very faint and exhausted.
“How much was it?”
“Five hundred pounds.”
“You had to have five hundred pounds. You were being blackmailed?”
Jenny choked on a cry.
“You were being blackmailed?”
“Who—told you?”
“It was fairly obvious. Perhaps you’ll tell me why.”
Jenny pushed back her hair. Nicholas felt a strange, sharp stab. She had looked like that when they let him see her after Tony was born.
“Are you going to tell me?” he said harshly.
Jenny got up. All her movements were stiff and slow. She held on to the chair, and said in a whispering voice:
“It wasn’t anything really. But you won’t believe that. Anne said to tell you; but I always knew that you wouldn’t believe me. So I had to have the money.”
“I think you must tell me now.”
“It’s no use. But it doesn’t matter—it wasn’t anything really. There was a man. I didn’t know he was married. He was at Aunt Jenny’s canteen. He made love to me. When he went back to the Front I wrote to him.”
“What did you write?”
“Just letters—nothing at all. He said he hadn’t anyone to write to him.”
“Well?”
Jenny hesitated.
“Nicko—there wasn’t anything.”
Nicholas said: “Five hundred pounds.” His hand rose for a moment, and then fell again. There was a certain finality about the gesture.
“It was when he was coming home on leave,” said Jenny quickly. “He wrote about our doing theatres and going to dances together. When I said Aunt Jenny wouldn’t let me, he said she needn’t know—I could stay at an hotel with him. And I wrote him letters about it. I didn’t know, Nicko, I really didn’t know—I thought it would be fun.”
“And you went?”
Jenny shivered at his voice.
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