The road began to climb. The trees were no longer pines but beeches, emerald-green in the shadow, and gold-green in the sun. It was like driving up the aisle of some vast cathedral which had come alive and was praising God with the voice of all the green things upon the earth. It sang, “Praise Him and magnify Him for ever,” so loud and joyfully that Anne forgot to be angry any more; the sheer beauty of the place came in on her like a flood and made her joyful, too.
It was some time before John spoke again. Then he spoke quite suddenly:
“Have you many rings?”
Astonishment made Anne turn and look at him.
“Rings!”
“Rings.”
“What sort of rings?”
“Just rings,” said John. “What the catalogues call dress rings. I can’t think why, but they do. I once got landed in a commercial hotel where the only literature was jewellers’ catalogues. There were six of them. And I gathered that you began at the top with dress rings at anything from five hundred pounds to fifteen, and finished up with gem rings, which ran from fifteen pounds to thirty bob. Have you many rings?”
As she had forgotten about being angry, Anne laughed.
“No, I haven’t.”
“Have you any?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“Well, we didn’t seem to be talking much, and I thought we might as well talk about rings. Did you say you hadn’t got any at all?”
“I’ve got two or three of my mother’s, but I don’t very often wear them. I mean”—her colour deepened—“I don’t wear them at all. I suppose Jenny’s got them.”
“What are they like? You ought to have them if they’re yours.”
Anne’s smile was so sad that he didn’t know how to bear it.
“They’re no good to me.”
“You ought to have them. What are they like?”
“There’s an opal, and a little old pearl ring, and one with two diamonds and a ruby. I’ll ask Jenny for them some time.
“You’ve never had an emerald ring? Emeralds are topping stones. Don’t you think so?”
What was he driving at? He didn’t think—he couldn’t possibly imagine—that she would let him—
At this point in her thoughts Anne blushed scarlet, and John saw her blush.
“Did you ever have an emerald ring?” he asked in a laughing voice.
“No. Why should I? I don’t like emeralds a bit.”
“Jenny does,” said John. “She has an emerald ring, hasn’t she? I’ve seen her wearing one.”
“Her engagement ring.”
“Yes, I thought so.” He looked at Anne’s reflection in the wind-screen. “Did you ever wear it?”
“Jenny’s engagement ring?” There was no mistaking the surprise in her voice.
“You might have. Don’t girls wear each other’s rings?”
“Not—” Anne stopped short and put one hand quickly over the other. After a moment she said, in a different sort of voice: “Why did you ask me that?”
“Perhaps I wanted to know whether you liked emeralds.” He had been slowing down; he stopped the car now by the side of the road and swung round in his seat. “Perhaps I wanted to know what sort of ring you would like for an engagement ring.”
Anne’s left hand, which lay uppermost, closed hard on her right. Without any effort at all, she was angry again—angry and rather frightened, not of John nor of herself, but of something which seemed to be pushing them both. She tried to look angrily at John, but the something that was frightening her would not let her look at him at all.
John’s hand came down on hers.
“Anne, are you still angry? You can’t go on being angry.”
“Yes, I can.” The words were defiant, but the voice that carried them was a trembling traitor.
“Why are you angry?”
There was no answer.
“You know I love you very much. You must know that.”
Anne shook her head. She was not angry with John any more; she was frightfully angry with herself. To have such a beating heart, to lose voice and words, to feel herself upon the edge of tears, just when she needed all her self-possession and all her nerve—it was unspeakably humiliating. She must say “No,” and she must say it with a dispassionate calm that would convince him that it was all quite hopeless. She must send him away in such a manner that he would never come back. And how was she to do this, when she could neither look at him nor steady her voice to a single word?
It was when she felt his arm about her that she gave a little sobbing cry and shrank into the corner of the seat.
“No! Oh no!”
“Anne darling—don’t! Look here, I won’t touch you if you don’t want me to. Only it’s so frightfully hard when you look like that. Do you mind—I mean really mind—if I hold your hand?”
Anne didn’t mind at all—that was the devastating part of it. She wanted to catch tight hold of the warm, strong hand that covered hers; she wanted him to put his arm round her again and hold her against the world. With a very great effort she lifted her eyes and looked at him through a mist of tears.
“Please.”
John took his hand away at once and sat back.
“All right. But we’ve got to talk. I love you.”
“You mustn’t!”
“What’s the good of saying I mustn’t? I do.”
Two of Anne’s tears fell down into her lap. They did not soak into the rough crepy stuff, but lay on the blue and green pattern like shining drops of rain. Now that the tears had fallen Anne could see how obstinate John looked. He didn’t look in the least as if he were making love; he looked quite frightfully determined, and his chin stuck out.
“It’s no good,” she said rather shakily.
“Nonsense! I mean you don’t love people because it’s good, or because it’s bad. You don’t plan to do it—it happens. And when it’s happened it’s no good saying ‘don’t’ any more than if you’d fallen off the top of a house.”
Anne looked for her handkerchief, failed to find it, and blinked hard.
“So you see it’s not the slightest use saying that sort of thing. I love you. You can’t stop me loving you. I can’t stop myself. I don’t want to stop—I like it—I like it frightfully—I want to tell you all about it from the very beginning.”
Anne pulled herself together. It was like pulling something that was much too heavy to lift out of a very deep ditch; but she did it. She sat up straight and set herself to say what she had to say:
“You mustn’t tell me. I can’t listen—I don’t want to listen.”
Right in the middle of the last sentence her voice faltered because John looked at her with eyes that gave hers the lie direct.
“I think you might listen,” he said with suspicious mildness.
“No, I can’t—it’s no use.”
John sighed.
“My dear child, what’s the good of talking nonsense? I’m not being useful; I’m being purely ornamental. I’m making love to you because I like making love to you.”
Anne shook her head.
“You mustn’t.”
“Why?”
All at once she was composed; the mist was gone from her eyes, and the lump from her throat. The relief was very great. She was able to look at him, and she was able to say:
“John, how much do you know?”
“I know I love you, and I know that I can make you love me.”
She lifted her hand as if to brush that away.
“You know I don’t mean that. I mean how much do you know about me?”
John caught the hand and held it for a moment.
“You’re Anne Belinda—that’s enough for me.”
“No, John, it’s not enough. Don’t play with me. Tell me how much you know.”
“I think I know everything,” he said very gently.
“Then”—she pulled her hand away—“I needn’t say any more. If you know everything, you know that I can’t listen to y
ou.”
“No, I don’t. Now, look here, Anne, what’s the matter with you is that you’re too highfalutin. And there’s no need to be highfalutin at all. I love you like anything and I want to marry you, and there’s no reason on earth why I shouldn’t, or why you shouldn’t. It makes me mad to think of you cleaning that Fossick-Yates woman’s spoons and laying her beastly table—every time I think of it it makes me feel madder. If you don’t want me to go absolutely off the deep end, you’ll let me take you right out of it all before anything happens. Hang it all, you can’t want to stop with a woman like that! Marry me good and quick! I’ll be nice to you, Anne Belinda.”
“John, don’t! It’s impossible. No—wait! You say you know everything; but I don’t think you do—or you wouldn’t think I could marry you. I don’t know what you’ve heard—I don’t know what people are saying. Jenny’s been telling them that I was in Spain with Aurora, and that I was ill. I wasn’t ill, and I wasn’t in Spain. I was in prison for stealing.”
As she said the last word, she opened the door of the car and jumped out. She had thought that she could say it. Well, she had said it. But she couldn’t stay there, so near, almost touching him, and wait for what he would say. The impulse to run away and never see him again was so strong and sudden that she was out of the car and running before she knew what she was going to do.
She stopped herself with a great effort when she had run no more than a dozen yards. John found her leaning against a tree. Her hands were behind her pressing the rough bark; her head, in its little close cap, was thrown back. She looked as if she were held by invisible bonds.
John put his hands on her shoulders.
“Anne darling, I knew! Why did you run away? I told you that I knew.”
“Not that.”
“Yes, that—and everything else—everything else. Do you hear? Now will you come back to the car and talk about really interesting things for a change?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Anne in a desperate voice.
“Don’t you? I think you do; but I don’t mind explaining. I’ve known about your being in prison for quite a long time. Nicholas told me the day after you went down to Waterdene and Jenny sent you away. He told me you’d been in prison, and he told me why. I can’t think now why I kept my temper so beautifully. Every time I think about it I wonder why I didn’t knock him down, but at the time I was so taken up with wanting to find you that Nicholas didn’t seem to matter.”
Anne actually laughed. “Why should you knock Nicholas down? It was true.”
“Was it? I mean I know you were in prison all right. But I know something more than that—I know why you were there and who you went there for. You see, I’ve had some very interesting talks with Mr. Levinski.”
“Oh,” said Anne. Her lips just parted to let the sound come through; they were very stiff.
The tree against which she leaned seemed to be moving upwards, for she could feel the rough bark scraping along the palms of her hands. John saw her waver and begin to fall.
Before she quite lost consciousness she felt his arms close round her.
Chapter Thirty-One
Anne came back to the sound of her own name: “Anne—Anne—Anne—Anne.” It was like hearing a wave break. It was her own name, but it sounded strangely. She opened her eyes. John’s face was so near that she shut them again immediately. Her left hand was resting on something rough and dry. Beech leaves—she was sitting on the ground on the drifted beech leaves. John’s arms were round her, her head was on his shoulder, his face touched hers, he was saying her name.
She said, “I’m all right,” and pushed with her right hand against his arm. It was not a very strong push.
“I’m all right, John.”
Instead of letting go, the arm that was round her tightened.
“Let me go,” said Anne in an odd, shaken voice.
“Aren’t you comfortable? Is that better?”
Please let me go.”
“You’d much better sit still for a little. You gave me a most horrid fright, and it would have been worse if I hadn’t always been sure that that beast of a woman doesn’t give you enough to eat. Look here, I’ve got some milk in the car. Can you lean up against the tree whilst I go and get it?”
He propped her against the tree and departed. Anne watched him through her eyelashes. She ought to be thinking what she was going to say to him. What did he really know? How much did he really know? When a person says they know everything, how are you to find out whether their everything is the same as your everything? She must find out—she must say something. It mattered tremendously what she said, and she couldn’t think of anything to say.
John came back, very cheerful, with a thermos and two cups.
“It’s not milk; it’s coffee. Coffee’s not too bad out of a thermos, but tea is simply foul. There are some egg sandwiches in the packet.”
He tossed it on to her lap, poured out the coffee, and gave her a cupful. It smelt delicious, and Anne became aware that something hot to drink was what she really wanted.
“Next time you’re going to faint from want of food, I do wish you’d say so first. It’s all right for you, but it startles me no end having to catch you like that without any warning.”
The word “Levinski” slipped through Anne’s mind like a snake slipping through grass. John was talking and behaving as if nothing had happened at all. Was she to leave it at that? Or was she to say now—yes, now, between this sip of coffee and the next—“What did Levinski tell you?”
She set down the cup. There was a moment of dreadful endeavour. Then she lifted the cup again and drank.
Not now. Why should she speak? She couldn’t speak—she couldn’t.
“Look here, I was going to go over Leith Hill and have tea in Dorking, but I expect that’s too far. We’d better just dawdle along. What do you think?”
Anne didn’t know. In the end they carried out the original programme, and John beguiled the way with a great deal of cheerful conversation, and not a single word about Mr. Levinski.
When they were driving back to town he asked Anne quite suddenly what sort of engagement ring she would like.
“I haven’t thought. Does one think about it when one isn’t engaged?”
“I don’t know; that doesn’t apply. What sort of ring would you like?”
“John, I am not engaged to you.”
“Aren’t you?”
“Of course not.”
“Oh? That makes it so complicated, because if I’m engaged to you I don’t see how you can help being engaged to me.”
“I’m not engaged to you.”
“I think you must be. I don’t see that there’s any way out of it. Would you like a sapphire and diamond ring? Or only diamonds? Or a big sapphire with little diamonds all round it?”
“John, I’m not—”
“I know. You said that before. I do wish you wouldn’t keep repeating yourself; it makes it so frightfully difficult to get anything fixed up. You see, it isn’t as if I could just blow in and talk about rings whenever I wanted to. I mean we’ve simply got to get it fixed up now, or else I shall feel I’ve got to ring you up. And if I do that miserable Fossick-Yates woman will probably overhear your end of the conversation. She’s got an eavesdropping sort of nose, and if she were to hear you say ‘Make it rubies,’ or diamonds, or whatever you did want to make it, she’d boil up no end of a scandal on the spot. I shouldn’t like to let you in for anything like that. So you see it’s absolutely necessary to fix it all up now. You do see that, don’t you?”
Anne said nothing.
“I like blue stones best myself. I’d like you to have one of those lumpy sort of sapphires. And I think it would be a good plan if we went and chose it together, because then I could match your eyes.”
John went on talking about rings until they reached the corner of Malmesbury Terrace.
Anne went on saying nothing. She listened to stories about precious stones, and
apocryphal anecdotes about engagements and engagement rings. Sometimes she wanted to laugh, and sometimes she wanted to cry; but she managed to refrain from uttering a single word.
John left the car at the corner and walked up Ossington Road with her. It was a cloudy evening and dark. There were not a great many lamp-posts; midway between one lamp-post and the next there was practically no light at all. It was as they passed through one of these dark patches that Anne felt John’s arm come round her. His voice, softened and eager, spoke at her ear:
“Are you still angry?”
Anne was not angry at all, but she said “Yes.”
“Because I kissed you at Wisley?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t see why. Anne, you let me—you know you did!”
“Oh!” It was a shocked breath of protest.
“Anne—you did! I wouldn’t ever kiss you if you didn’t want me to. You know that—don’t you?”
“Oh!” said Anne again.
John put his hand very gently under her chin, turned her face up, and kissed her as he had done before—two kisses for her eyes and one for her mouth.
“Oh!” said Anne again. Then she pushed him with all her might and ran up the road.
When he had seen her cross the lighted space outside the block of flats and disappear through the arched doorway, he turned and walked back to where he had left the car.
As he came into Malmesbury Terrace he was singing just above his breath:
“The world is full of crueltee,
Mr. Mulligan’s gone from me;
Mr. Mulligan’s gone to sea.
Cruel Mr. Mulligan!”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Miss Fairlie called John up next day before he had finished his breakfast.
“Is that you, John Waveney? Oh, it is? You’re about the thirtieth person I’ve spoken to since I got the hotel. I want you to lunch with me. I want to talk to you. If you’re engaged, throw ’em over.”
Anne Belinda: A Golden Age Mystery Page 19