"All that tea for one and threepence!" he said, laughing, when he joined her. "Wonderful, isn't it?"
She laughed too. She got in beside him and tucked the rug round her warmly.
"How long will it take to get home?" she asked. She seemed all at once conscious of the growing dusk, conscious, too, of anxiety to get back to Gladys. She was a little afraid of this man, though she would not admit it even to herself.
"We ought to be home in an hour," he said. He started the engine.
The car ran smoothly for a mile or two. Christine began to feel sleepy. Kettering did not talk much, and the fresh evening air on her face was soothing and pleasant. She closed her eyes.
Presently when Kettering spoke to her he got no answer; he turned a little in his seat and looked down at her, but her head was drooping forward and he could not see her face.
"Christine." He spoke her name sharply, then suddenly he smiled; she was asleep.
He moved so that her head rested against his arm; he slowed the car down a little.
Kettering was not a young man, his fortieth birthday had been several years a thing of the past, but all his life afterwards he looked back on that drive home to Upton House as the happiest hour he had ever known, with Christine's little head resting on his arm and the grey twilight all about them. When they were half a mile from home he roused her gently. She sat up with a start, rubbing sleepy eyes.
"Oh! where are we?" He laid his hand on hers for a moment.
"You've been asleep. We're nearly home."
He turned in at the drive of Upton House. He let her get out of the car unassisted.
Gladys was at the door; her eyes were anxious.
"I thought you must have had an accident," she said. She caught Christine's hand. "You're fearfully late."
"We had tea at Heston," Christine said. She ran into the house.
Kettering looked at the elder girl.
"You would not come," he said. "Don't you care for motoring?"
"No." She came down the steps and stood beside him. "Mr. Kettering, may I say something?"
He looked faintly surprised.
"May you! Why, of course!"
"You will be angry--you will be very angry, I am afraid," she said. "But--but I can't help it."
"Angry! What do you mean?"
There was a moment's silence, then:
"Well," said Kettering rather curtly.
She flushed, but her eyes did not fall.
"Mr. Kettering, if you are a gentleman, and I know you are, you will never come here again," she said urgently.
A little wave of crimson surged under Kettering's brown skin, but his eyes did not fall; there was a short silence, then he laughed--rather mirthlessly.
"And if I am not the gentleman you so very kindly seem to believe me," he said constrainedly.
Gladys Leighton came a little closer to him; she laid her hand on his arm.
"You don't mean that; you're only saying it because--because----" She broke off with an impatient gesture. "Oh!" she said exasperatedly, "what is the use of loving a person if you do not want them to be happy--if you cannot sacrifice yourself a little for them."
Kettering looked at her curiously. He had never taken much notice of her before; he had thought her a very ordinary type; he was struck by the sudden energy and passion in her voice.
"She is not happy now, at all events," he said grimly.
She turned away and fidgeted with the wheel of the car.
"She could not very well be more unhappy than she is now," he said again bitterly.
"She would be more unhappy if she knew she had done something to be ashamed of--something she had got to hide."
He raised his eyes.
"Are you holding a brief for Challoner?" he asked.
She frowned a little.
"You know I am not; I never thought he was good enough for her. Even years ago as a boy he was utterly selfish; but--but Christine loved him then; she thought there was nobody in all the world like him; she adored him."
He winced. "And now?" he asked shortly.
She did not answer for a moment; she stood looking away from him.
"There was a letter this morning," she said tonelessly. "Jimmy is ill, and they asked her to go to him."
"Well!"
"She would not go. She told me she was going to Heston with you instead."
The silence fell again. Kettering's eyes were shining; there was a sort of shamed triumph about his big person.
Gladys turned to him impatiently.
"Are you looking glad? Oh, I think I should kill you if I saw you looking glad," she said quickly. "I only told you that so that you might see how much she is under your influence already; so that you can save her from herself. . . . She's so little and weak--and now that she is unhappy, it's just the time when she might do something she would be sorry for all her life--when she might----"
"What are you two talking about?" Christine demanded from the doorway. She came down the steps and stood between them; she looked at Kettering. "I thought you had gone," she said, surprised.
"No; I--Miss Leighton and I have been discussing the higher ethics," he said dryly. He held his hand to Gladys. "Well, good-bye," he said; there was a little emphasis on the last word.
She just touched his fingers.
"Good-bye." She put her arm round Christine; there was something defensive in her whole attitude.
Kettering got into the car; he did not look at Christine again. He started the engine; presently he was driving slowly away.
"Have you two been quarreling?" Christine asked. There was a touch of vexation in her voice; her eyes were straining through the darkness towards the gate.
Gladys laughed.
"Quarrelling! Why ever should I quarrel with Mr. Kettering? I've hardly spoken half a dozen words to him in all my life."
"You seemed to have a great deal to say to him, all the same," Christine protested, rather shortly.
They went back to the house together.
It was during dinner that night that Gladys deliberately led the conversation round to Jimmy again.
They had nearly finished the unpretentious little meal; it had passed almost silently. Christine looked pale and preoccupied. Gladys was worried and anxious.
A dozen times during the past few days she had tried to decide whether she ought to write to Jimmy or not. Her sharp eyes had seen from the very first the way things were going with regard to Kettering, and she was afraid of the responsibility. If anything happened--if Christine chose to doubly wreck her life--afterwards they might all blame her; she knew that.
She was fond of Christine, too. And though she had never approved of Jimmy, she would have done a great deal to see them happy together.
It was for that reason that she now spoke of him.
"When are you going to London, Chris?"
Christine looked up; she flushed.
"Going to London! I am not going. . . . I never want to go there any more."
Gladys made no comment; she had heard the little quiver in the younger girl's voice.
Presently:
"I suppose you think I ought to go to Jimmy," Christine broke out vehemently. "I suppose you are hinting that it is my duty to go. You don't know what you are talking about; you don't understand that he cares nothing about me--that he would be glad if I were dead and out of the way. He only wants his freedom; he never really wished to marry me."
"It isn't as bad as that. I am sure he----"
"You don't know anything about him. You don't know what I went through during those hateful weeks before--before I came here. I don't care if I never see him again; he has never troubled about me. It's my turn now; I am going to show him that he isn't the only man in the world."
Gladys had never heard Christine talk like this before; she was frightened at the recklessness of her voice. She broke in quickly:
"I won't listen if you're going to say such things. Jimmy is your husband, and you loved
him once, no matter what you may do now. You loved him very dearly once."
Christine laughed.
"I've got over that. He wasn't worth breaking my heart about. I was just a poor little fool in those days, who didn't know that a man never cares for a woman if he is too sure of her. Oh, if I could only have my time over again, I'd treat him so differently--I'd never let him how how much I cared."
Her voice had momentarily fallen back into its old wistfulness. There were tears in her eyes, but she brushed them quickly away.
"Don't talk about him; I don't want to talk about him."
But Gladys persisted.
"It isn't too late; you can have the time all over again by starting afresh, and trying to wipe out the past. You're so young. Why, Jimmy is only a boy; you've got all your lives before you." She got up and went round to where Christine was sitting. She put an arm about her shoulders. "Why don't you forgive him, and start again? Give him another chance, dear, and have a second honeymoon."
Christine pushed her away; she started up with burning cheeks.
"You don't know what you're talking about. Leave me alone--oh, do leave me alone." She ran from the room.
She lay awake half the night thinking of what Gladys had said. She tried to harden her heart against Jimmy. She tried to remember only that he had married her out of pique; that he cared nothing for her--that he did not really want her. As a sort of desperate defence she deliberately thought of Kettering; he liked her, she knew. She was not too much of a child to understand what that look in his eyes had meant, that sudden pressure of his hand on hers.
And she liked him, too. She told herself defiantly that she liked him very much; that she would rather have been with him over at Heston that afternoon than up in town with Jimmy. Kettering at least sought and enjoyed her society, but Jimmy----
She clenched her hands to keep back the blinding tears that crowded to her eyes. What was she crying for? There was nothing to cry for; she was happy--quite happy; she was away from Jimmy--away from the man whose presence had only tortured her during those last few days; she was at home--at Upton House, and Kettering was there whenever she wanted him. She hoped he would come in the morning again; that he would come quite early. After breakfast she wandered about the house restlessly, listening for the sound of his car in the drive outside; but the morning dragged away and he did not come.
Christine ate no lunch; her head ached, she said pettishly when Gladys questioned her. No, she did not want to go out; there was nowhere to go.
And all the time her eyes kept turning to the window again and again restlessly.
Gladys did not know what to do; she was hoping and praying in her heart that Kettering would do as she had asked him, and stay away. What was the good of him coming again? What was the good of him making himself indispensable to Christine? The day passed wretchedly. Once she found Christine huddled up on the sofa crying; she was so miserable, she sobbed; nobody cared for her; she was so lonely, and she wanted her mother.
Gladys did all she could to comfort her, but all the time she was painfully conscious of the fact that had Kettering walked into the room just then there would have been no more tears.
Sometimes she thought that it only served Jimmy Challoner right; sometimes she told herself that this was his punishment--that Fate was fighting him with his own weapons, paying him back in his own coin; but she knew such thoughts were mere foolishness.
He and Christine were married, no matter how strongly they might resent it. The only thing left to them was to make the best they could of life.
She sat with Christine that night till the girl was asleep. She was not very much Christine's senior in years, but she felt somehow old and careworn as she sat there in the silent room and listened to the girl's soft breathing.
She got up and went over to stand beside her.
So young, such a child, it seemed impossible that she was already a wife, this girl lying there with her soft hair falling all about her.
Gladys sighed and walked over to the window. It must be a great thing to be loved, she thought rather sadly; nobody had ever loved her; no man had ever looked at her as Kettering looked at little Christine. . . . She opened the window and looked out into the darkness.
It was a mild, damp night. Grey mist veiled the garden and shut out the stars; everything was very silent.
If only Christine's mother had been here to take the responsibility of it all, she thought longingly; she had so little influence with Christine herself. She closed the window and went back to the bedside.
Christine was moving restlessly. As Gladys looked down at her she began to laugh in her sleep--a little chuckle of unaffected joy.
Gladys smiled, too, involuntarily. She was happy in her dreams, at any rate, she thought with a sense of relief.
And then suddenly Christine woke with a start. She sat up in bed, throwing out her arms.
"Jimmy----" But it was a cry of terror, not of joy. "Jimmy--Jimmy--don't hurt me. . . . oh!"
She was sobbing now--wild, pitiful sobs.
Gladys put her arms round her; she held her tightly.
"It's all right, dear. I'm here--nobody shall hurt you." She stroked her hair and soothed and kissed her; she held her fast till the sobbing ceased. Then:
"I've been dreaming," said Christine tremblingly. "I thought"--she shivered a little--"I thought--thought someone was going to hurt me."
"Nobody can hurt you while I am here; dreams are nothing--nobody believes in dreams."
Christine did not answer. She had never told Gladys of that one moment when Jimmy had tried to strike her--when beside himself with passionate rage and misery he had lifted his hand to strike her.
She fell asleep again, holding her friend's hand.
CHAPTER XIX
A CHANCE MEETING
Two days passed uneventfully away, but Kettering did not come to Upton House. Christine's first faint resentment and amazement had turned to anger--an anger which she kept hidden, or so she fondly believed.
She hardly went out. She spent hours curled up on the big sofa by the window reading, or pretending to read. Gladys wondered how much she really read of the books which she took one by one from the crowded library.
The third morning Christine answered Sangster's letter. She wrote very stiltedly; she said she was sorry to hear that Jimmy was not well, but no doubt he was all right again by this time. She said she was enjoying herself in a quiet way, and very much preferred the country to London.
"I have so many friends here, you see," she added, with a faint hope that perhaps Sangster would show the letter to Jimmy, and that he would gather from it that she did not miss him in the very least.
And Sangster did show it to Jimmy; to a rather weak-looking Jimmy, propped up in an armchair, slowly recovering from the severe chill which had made him quite ill for the time being.
A Jimmy who spoke very little, and asked no questions at all, and who took the letter apathetically enough, and laid it by as soon as he had read it.
"You wrote to her, then," he said indifferently.
"Yes."
"You might have saved yourself the trouble; I knew she would not come. If you had asked me I could have told you. Of course, you suggested that she should come."
"Yes."
Jimmy's eyes smiled faintly.
"Interfering old ass," he said affectionately.
Sangster coloured. He was very unhappy about Jimmy; he had always known that he was not particularly strong, and, as a matter of fact, during the past few days Jimmy had grown most surprisingly thin and weak, though he still insisted that there was nothing the matter with him--nothing at all.
There was a little silence.
"I suppose that's meant for a dig at me," said Jimmy presently. "That bit about having so many friends. . . . She means Kettering, I suppose."
"I don't see why she should," said Sangster awkwardly.
Jimmy laughed rather grimly.
"Well, it's only tit
for tat if she does," he said. "But I thought----" He did not finish; did not say that he had thought Christine cared too much for him ever to give a thought to another fellow. He turned his head against the cushions and pretended to sleep, and presently Sangster went quietly away.
He thought that Christine had--well, not behaved badly. How could anyone blame her for anything she chose to do or not to do, after what had occurred? But, still, he was vaguely disappointed in her; he thought she ought to have come--just to see how Jimmy really was.
But Christine was not thinking very much about Jimmy in those days at all. Somehow the foreground of her life seemed to have got filled up with the figure of another man; a man whom she had never once seen since that drive over to Heston.
Sometimes she thought she would write a little note and ask him to come to tea; sometimes she thought she would walk the way in which she knew she could always meet him, but something restrained her.
And then one afternoon, quite unexpectedly, she ran into him in the village.
He was coming out of the little post office as she was going in, and he pulled up short with a muttered apology before he recognised her; then--well, then they both got red, and a little flame crept into Kettering's eyes.
"I thought I was never going to see you any more," Christine said rather nervously. "Are you angry with me?"
"Angry!" He laughed a little. "Why ever should I be angry with you? . . . I--the fact is, I've been in London on business."
"Oh!" She looked rather sceptical; she raised her chin a dignified inch. "You ought to have told me," she said, unthinkingly.
He looked at her quickly and away again.
"I missed you," said Christine naïvely.
"That is very kind of you." There was a little silence. "May I--may I walk a little way with you?" he asked diffidently.
"If you care to."
He checked a smile. "I shall be delighted," he said gravely.
They set out together.
Christine felt wonderfully light-hearted all at once; her eyes sparkled, her cheeks were flushed. Kettering hardly looked at her at all. It made him afraid because he was so glad to be with her once more; he knew now how right Gladys had been when she asked him not to come to Upton House again. He rushed into conversation; he told her that the weather had been awful in London, and that he had been hopelessly bored. "I know so few people there," he said. "And I kept wondering what you were----" He broke off, biting his lip.
The Second Honeymoon Page 14