“I wouldn’t mind going through the court, if she did,” she added.
She felt it safer not to speak of a subsequent marriage. Ossie was in an awkward mood this evening and there was nothing to gain by looking too far ahead. She and he had always avoided the subject of his wife, and Olive knew hardly more than Linda Hyson’s name until that glimpse in the garden had given her something concrete to think about. But Hyson’s answer brought her up suddenly against an undreamed-of obstacle.
“Divorce me, you mean?” he said abruptly. “Wish she would. No chance of it. She’s a strict Catholic. Divorce doesn’t go, with them. She’d never think of it.”
In all her dreams and speculations, Olive had thought of Hyson as like all the other men she knew. He was married, of course; but marriage was not necessarily a permanency. At the back of her mind, from the very beginning, there had been the idea of a divorce as a final clearing-up of the situation. And now, at a single stroke, she saw this solution made impossible in the way she had never anticipated. She had heard of so-called mixed marriages, but it had never occurred to her that Ossie’s marriage might be one of that kind.
“They don’t believe that, do they?” she exclaimed, aghast.
“They do. She does, anyway, and that’s all that matters, so far as I’m concerned.”
Olive Lyndoch had a quick mind, and almost instantly a fresh solution presented itself.
“There’s nothing against you divorcing her, is there?” she asked. “I mean, if you could prove anything against her, it wouldn’t matter about her being a Catholic, would it? You could get your decree?”
“Oh, yes,” Hyson admitted. “But you can put that out of your head. She’s not that sort.”
Olive reflected for a moment or two.
“How do you know?” she demanded. “If there were anything, you’d be the last to notice it. You’ve no interest in her now. You’re at the office all day. What does she do with herself then? Or when you come here in the evenings? You don’t know.”
“No, I don’t,” Hyson replied, rather crossly, as though the idea gave him a shade of discomfort. “But Linda’s not that sort.”
“I wasn’t ‘that sort’ either, until you persuaded me,” Olive retorted with more than a trace of acid in her tone. “Isn’t there any man in her circle, or does she meet nobody except women?”
Hyson did not answer for some moments. Apparently he was thinking over her question. Then he shook his head decidedly.
“No, you’re on the wrong tack. There’s nobody in her crew who’d have the backbone,” he commented scornfully. “There is a fellow who comes about the house. Nice little gentleman. What you call a tame cat. But he’d be no use. ‘I could not love thee, dear, so much, loved I not honour more.’ And all that sort of thing, Barsett, his name is. But you can leave him out of the betting.”
“What you really mean is that it couldn’t happen to you,” said Olive with a smile which seemed rather awry. “I used to think that myself, before I met you, Ossie. You never can tell.”
Hyson was frankly amused.
“Trying to make me jealous of him?” he asked. “Waste of time.”
“Well, you make other people jealous,” Olive said incautiously. “It would be only fair if you suffered yourself.”
Hyson looked at her with only half-concealed amusement.
“Who is it now?” he said, teasingly. “That new girl at the office, perhaps? What’s her name . . . Severn . . . Oh, Nevern, that’s it.” Then, realising that this was likely to bring up Olive’s grievance about the private ledger, he hurriedly continued, “Or Miss Jessop, maybe? You can make your mind easy. She gets on my nerves, that woman, with her continual ‘Yes, Mr. Hyson,’ ‘No, Mr. Hyson.’ ”
The mention of Miss Jessop deflected Olive’s thoughts.
“That woman might be dangerous,” she said, soberly. “She’s got a perfect itch for gossip. She was in the office lately when Lockhurst was busy and kept her waiting.
She spent the time trying to pick up all the information she could get out of me. It’s not because she’s interested. I could see that. It’s just that she’ll pick up any bit of news the way a jackdaw picks up anything bright. You be careful of her, Ossie.”
“I’d rather have the Nevern, if it came to a choice.”
Hardly were the words out than he cursed himself for his folly. That was the worst of thinking too much about Kitty; her name had slipped out before he knew what he was saying. And Olive was quick to read his mind. She drew herself free from his arm with a lithe movement and turned deliberately to look him fair in the face.
“That’s twice you’ve mentioned her in the last couple of minutes, Ossie. She must be very much on your mind, surely, when you can’t keep her off your tongue. Oh, I know you well enough! You think you can get round her, and it’s likely enough that you could. But before you begin, just get this clear. You’ve dropped your wife, and she doesn’t seem to mind that. But I’m not like her, understand that; I’m not the kind of girl you can pick up to amuse you and drop again when it suits you. Don’t try to put her in my place. . . .”
She stopped suddenly. When she began, she had no intention of saying as much as this; but her jealousy had carried her away and the words had slipped out before she could pull herself up. Now she looked at him, half-frightened, lest she should have done irreparable damage.
Hyson could think quickly also. With a certain roughness, he pulled her back to him.
“Don’t be an ass, Olive. You’re getting to the state where one can’t say a girl’s name without you flaring up. It’s silly. I’m not bothering about Kitty Nevern. Engaged, for all I know, or care. What’s the good of my coming up here at all if you’re going to go on this way? I’ve known more amusing ways of passing an evening. Forget about it. I’m a bit worried, just now. Nerves on edge, rather. Don’t know why. But that makes me tease people, without wanting to do it. Working it off on someone else, perhaps. I’m sorry it was you who got it.”
Olive was only too eager to accept peace. And, looking at him earnestly, she did see signs of worry. Subconsciously she had noted them much earlier and she now recalled that to mind. Her voice was gentler when she spoke again.
“What’s worrying you, Ossie? Let’s hear about it.”
But Hyson was not the man to take any woman into his full confidence.
“Don’t let’s waste time over it,” he said, irritably. “It’s nothing much. Give me a kiss, that’s more to the point.”
He drew her to him, and though she still resisted faintly, his attraction was too strong for her. She wanted him more than he wanted her, she recognised reluctantly. Anything to have his arms round her and forget things while she could.
When Hyson let himself out of the flat an hour or so later, his troubles attacked him again, bringing reinforcements to help them. He remembered Olive’s face and the flash in her eyes when she had lost her self-control for a moment or two. She hadn’t actually threatened him. Amounted to the same thing, though. And he knew her well enough to guess that the unspoken menace had been serious. She was past caring what happened if she once lost him. Dangerous, that, on top of his other troubles. And she had her weapon to hand, worse luck. If she blew the gaff to old Lockhurst, told him she’d been Hyson’s mistress, then the old Puritan would boot him out into the street. The sack, with a month’s salary. Suppose that happened to-morrow? Phew!
Further musings made the affair no brighter. Marriage was what she wanted. Just when he was growing bored with her, too. Well, thank heaven, that was out of the question, short of Linda going off the rails or dying. But to have a woman with a hold over you might be even worse than marriage in some ways. He wished he’d never set eyes on her! And now, of course, it wouldn’t be safe to touch Kitty. Silly little fool, that girl, she’d never be able to keep the thing from Olive’s eyes, in the office, if he once started. No, no good. Have to drop the idea. Another notch in the score against Olive. Why couldn’t these women realis
e that a man wanted change? Curse them!
Chapter Three
Worse Than the Sword
WHEN Linda Errington’s engagement to Hyson was announced, her friends were incredulous. Then they shrugged their shoulders and said it amazed one to see the kind of man a nice girl could fall in love with. But love was like that, of course. . . . When she married, they tolerated Hyson rather than hurt Linda’s feelings by showing their real estimate of her husband. And when she herself waked up to a clear vision of the man she had married, she thought all the more of her friends for their behaviour. After all, Ossie probably had some good in him, like everyone else in the world.
Once he grew tired of her, he left her very much to her own devices; and she made no complaint. She merely set about filling the time which he might have occupied had things turned out differently. She had plenty of friends to see; she liked the cinema; she served on the Ladies Committee of a local hospital; she played golf in summer and badminton in winter; and bridge filled in any spare evenings when time might have hung on her hands. In fact, she much preferred to have small bridge parties at her house on the nights when she knew he would be out. Oswald Hyson’s card-sense was rudimentary and he spoiled the evening for good players if he was at home and took a hand. Also, oblivious of his deficiencies, he was always ready to argue in defence of his play, which made things unpleasant.
On the night that Hyson visited Olive Lyndoch’s flat, Linda had arranged a table: herself, Norris Barsett, Jim and Nancy Telford. They all played to much about the same standard, and none of them wanted to go higher than threepence per hundred. A very pleasant little evening, it had been, for luck had been fairly evenly distributed during the early rubbers. While the cards were being shuffled, Linda rose and went to switch on the electric kettle.
“We’ll have to fend for ourselves,” she explained. “Thursday is Cissie’s night out. We’ll go on with the game. These kettles take such a time to boil.”
She sat down again at the table and the game proceeded. Half-way through it, the door-bell rang. Linda made a faint grimace as she put down her cards.
“Who can that be? Just excuse me a moment while I go. That’s the worst of keeping only one maid.”
She left the room. The others heard the front door open, then the sound of voices, and, after a minute or two, Linda ushered Ruth Jessop in.
“I happened to be passing and saw the light here, Linda,” she explained effusively, “and I thought I’d just drop in, in case you were all alone, needing company. And then, as I came up the path past the window, I saw you had friends in and I thought of going away. But I just made up my mind I’d come in. I won’t break into your bridge unless you ask me to cut in. I’ll just sit quiet and watch you play.”
Jim Telford glanced at the window. The blind was down, but it hung slightly askew so that Ruth had obviously been able to see through the aperture and note what was going on in the room. He rose to his feet and moved across as though to set it straight, but Linda called him back.
“It’s no use trying to make that blind right, Jim,” she said. “It always comes down a-slant, like that. I’ve been meaning to get it rehung for long enough, but I never remember about it at the right moment, somehow. I’ve got a memory like a sieve for things like that.”
She was too good a hostess to show any sign that Ruth’s incursion had upset her arrangements; but inwardly she was making rapid calculations. Ruth, poor thing, lived on the tiniest income and half-starved herself, despite her plump appearance. As a result, when she joined any friend at a meal she seemed determined to make up for home deficiencies and displayed an enormous appetite. At afternoon tea, she ate as though she did not expect to see another meal before breakfast-time. Linda’s preparations had been based on a very different scale, and she reckoned up the result of Ruth’s arrival with some dismay.
“Well, it’ll mean cutting more bread and butter,” she concluded, ruefully. “These sandwiches and cakes aren’t half enough for her, even if the others ate nothing. And I’d like her to get all she wants. If only she wouldn’t drop in like this!”
She did not reflect, though she might have done so, that Ruth Jessop “dropped in” more often than not. People, somehow, had fallen out of the habit of asking her to bridge. She would insist on talking while the hand was being played. Linda was sorry for her and would have invited her oftener; but one had to think of the other guests’ feelings.
Ruth, with some characteristic fussiness, finally got herself installed in an arm-chair, and the game continued. But she could not restrain herself and she at once began to talk.
“Are you going to Mollie Keston’s wedding, Nancy?” she demanded, turning to Mrs. Telford. “They sent me an invitation, and I’d such difficulty in getting a nice present for her. I chose a tiny toast-rack, finally. Just the thing for a bed-tray.”
Nancy Telford looked round with a slightly irritable air. She was an old friend of Linda’s. They had grown up together. Then Nancy had married Jim Telford and he had taken her off to Scotland, so that the two girls saw each other only when Linda went North or when Nancy came on a visit to her widowed father. This time, it was hardly a pleasure visit. Linda had been taken aback by the change she noticed in Nancy. Something had gone wrong with her health. She looked different, somehow, with a disturbing look in her eyes — a kind of haunted expression, as Linda described it to herself. She had sympathised with Nancy, and evidently Nancy needed sympathy badly. But what the trouble was, Linda had no idea. Nancy volunteered nothing about it. There were some things — like cancer — that one didn’t discuss. Linda hoped that it wasn’t anything of that sort; and since Nancy maintained her reserve, Linda kept away from the subject. It was something serious, she guessed; for Jim Telford seemed worried also, and he was a man who generally kept his troubles under. Whatever it was, it hadn’t made them less fond of each other. Nancy seemed, if anything, keener than ever on Jim. He had come down for a week; after that he’d have to go back home and look after his business, leaving Nancy in the care of Dr. Malwood, a local specialist in whom they seemed to have implicit trust.
Linda, watching them, could find it in her heart to envy them despite their present trouble. They had got all that she and Ossie had missed. An ideal love-affair, a rapturous engagement not too prolonged, and complete happiness in their married life. Very few people had been so lucky in the things that really mattered. They were not rich, but they had all the money that they seemed to want. And they had complete trust in one another, as Linda knew. What a contrast to her own life since she had married Ossie.
“Yes, I’m going,” Nancy answered Ruth’s question about the wedding, and then turned back to her game.
“Mollie’s quite passable-looking now,” Ruth commented. “One would hardly have expected it, seeing what a gawky child she was. I don’t much care for these tall thin girls, though.”
“I think Mollie’s very pretty, Ruth,” Linda declared. “And you needn’t talk as if she were a bean-pole. She’s slim, but she’s got a nice figure.”
“That’s a matter of taste, dear,” Ruth retorted, evidently nettled by the implied criticism, “so we needn’t argue about it, need we? By the way, who’s going to be her bridesmaid?”
“Nina Alderbrook and Dorothy Campdale,” said Nancy, curtly.
“Nina Alderbrook? I don’t know her. Is she the daughter of Alderbrook the coal man who made a lot of money in the war? Oh, now I know who you mean, of course. Her grandmother used to keep a tiny little grocer’s shop after her husband died, I believe. It’s wonderful how some people come up in the world, in these days. But of course it’s just money.”
Ruth’s father had been a general practitioner; and she had a habit of looking down on anyone connected with trade, no matter how successful they had been. If they had been less successful, she looked down on them still more.
“The classes are getting very much mixed up, since the war,” she went on. “Now, in the old days, the Kestons would never have l
ooked at the Alderbrooks. They were in a different stratum altogether. Their friends were among the country gentry. They still have some of them. I remember the last time I happened to go up to their house, I met a Mr. Wendover. He has a big estate.”
“Wendover? Is his place called Talgarth Grange?” asked Barsett.
“Yes,” Linda confirmed. “He’s a friend of the Chief Constable of the county, Sir Clinton Driffield. They’re both coming to the wedding. Mr. Wendover’s an old friend of Mr. Keston’s. He used to have Mollie and a lot of other young folks to stay with him at the Grange. She looks on him as a kind of unofficial uncle.”
“Who is Sir Clinton Driffield?” demanded Ruth. “Is he a baronet or just a knight?”
“He was abroad before he came here, in South Africa or Malaya or somewhere,” Linda explained. “And he must have been pretty good, since they gave him a knighthood quite young, for something he did out there. Mollie thinks the world of him.”
“The next three are mine,” said Jim Telford, laying down his hand. He glanced at his wife with faint anxiety. “Feeling headachy, dear?”
“Not exactly. But I think tea would do me some good. That kettle’s just come to the boil, Linda, if you don’t mind my giving you a broad hint.”
“So it is. Just a moment while I infuse the tea and bring in a tray.”
Norris sprang to his feet.
“I’ll get the tray, Mrs. Hyson. Where is it?”
“In the pantry, at the end of the passage. Thanks.”
Ruth Jessop’s mouth-corners turned down a little as she saw Barsett going for the tray. She could never get accustomed to Linda’s easy naturalness with men. What an idea, letting a male guest bring in a loaded tray from the pantry! She ought to have gone out without saying anything, brought the tray into the room, and then let a man take it from her. Ruth Jessop had very definite ideas about what one ought or ought not to do.
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