Accompanied by His Wife

by Mary Burchell

  Michael shook his head impatiently.

  ‘I don’t agree. If ever I dislike a man on sight, it is usually because he is that type. And I don’t think I’m often mistaken in identifying the type.’

  Patricia glanced up for a moment from the book she was pretending to read and, although Michael was not even looking at her, she felt curiously certain that she was in his thoughts.

  Was that why he had taken an instant dislike to Phil? If so, she thought grimly, his judgment had certainly been vindicated once more.

  ‘Well, it’s a most useful gift to have,’ declared Isobel with a laugh. ‘Though, of course, in your case it would be better if you could identify the feminine counterpart at sight. I’ve sometimes thought—and I know Aunt Leni has—that you were rather the kind to get caught by a harpy. But, after all, you managed to choose very well.’ And she smiled in a friendly way at Patricia—who smiled back gallantly and made some remark of her own, since it was Michael now who needed a little support.

  Isobel was called away to the telephone a few moments later, and—half to escape from her own thoughts and half because she was really interested—Patricia said:

  ‘Michael, did—did your mother have to put up with a good deal?’

  ‘From my father, you mean?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, Patricia, for a proud woman—and she is proud in her way—it must have been odious. He was never unpleasant to her, you understand. But he simply reserved the right to have a good time with anyone who took his fancy. I believe he would have argued that he always came back to my mother in the end—and so what reason had she to complain?’

  ‘Which was his idea of constancy?’

  ‘No doubt. The only time I gave myself the pleasure of saying what I thought, he was perfectly agreeable—so much so that one might almost have supposed that he agreed with my point of view. But, as a matter of fact, he thought everything was explained and excused when he stated complacently that the truth was—he was not the marrying sort—What did you say?’

  ‘Nothing. Go on.’ But Patricia bit her lip hard, because she had in fact given a slight exclamation, on hearing that unpleasantly familiar turn of phrase.

  ‘He added that my mother ought never to have married him. Which was,’ Michael admitted grimly, ‘perfectly correct. Only not, of course, in quite the way he meant.’

  ‘Did she say—say how much she regretted it?’

  ‘Not in his lifetime. And never, I am sure, to anyone outside the family. Afterwards, of course, she told me more about it—though I had always guessed a good deal. And when Isobel now suggested that the anniversary of his death might conceivably cause Mother some melancholy reflection, I didn’t feel I could let that pass. I hope,’ he added after a slight pause, ‘that there isn’t anything troubling her.’

  ‘She is sure to have ups and downs in her condition until she is a good deal stronger,’ Patricia pointed out soothingly.

  ‘Yes, of course.’ He frowned. ‘If only we can keep her free from any kind of shock for the next week or two.’

  ‘But we are, Michael. That’s just what we’re doing—at some pains to ourselves.’

  ‘Yes, I know. It’s absurd to be nervous. Only I sometimes think—’ He broke off with a sigh.

  ‘What do you think, Michael?’

  ‘Oh, it’s only an idea.’ He shrugged. ‘But I can imagine Pat coming to the house again and—making some sort of scene.’

  ‘He certainly is beginning to recognise her for what she is!’ thought Patricia. But aloud she only said:

  ‘Don’t worry, Michael. She could never get as far as seeing your mother, with Susan on guard. Quite apart from any interference I should make if I were in.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ He stood up with a smile, and patted her shoulder in a friendly way as he passed. ‘You are a good friend, my dear. I only hope your Phil realises his good luck. Don’t be surprised if I come late to bed. I have some work to do. I’ll take care not to wake you. Good-night.’

  ‘Good-night, Michael.’

  She thought, all the same, that she was more likely to be awake than asleep when he did come to bed. She was afraid this was going to be one of those terrible nights when she lay awake until the light came.

  She went over every word of that conversation with Phil, wondering now if she had been too hasty in her angry dismissal of his pleading. If she had been more reasonable, more—gentle, she supposed was the word—might he not have seen her point of view? Might he not even have been shamed into a realisation of how hopelessly he was betraying the love between them? Why hadn’t she pleaded for her idea of what their life should be together? There certainly wasn’t much to be gained by a few angry words and a lofty withdrawal from the scene.

  ‘After all, I suppose he isn’t the only man to start with wrong-headed notions about these things,’ muttered Patricia into her pillow. ‘Because he didn’t expect me to refuse. That’s the most extraordinary part of all. I’ve never done anything to make him think—’

  Well, of course, there might be two ways of regarding her adventure with Michael. However much she protested that the whole thing was innocent—almost as impersonal as a business arrangement—Phil was not a man who would ever see it in that light. She realised that now.

  Suppose she had convinced Phil for the time that their happiness lay in marriage, what security would there ever have been afterwards? None, of course. She should have seen that at once!

  ‘I won’t cry,’ she told herself angrily. ‘I won’t cry about Phil. He isn’t worth it.’

  But she went on crying just the same. Perhaps not even so much for Phil himself as for all he had represented. Love and romance, companionship and the deep warm consciousness that there was someone to whom one mattered supremely.

  She had no idea how long she had been crying when suddenly she became aware of Michael’s step outside—that step which he could make so surprisingly light and quiet for such a big man.

  Somehow she choked back her tears and controlled her uneven breathing. She drew the bedclothes right up to her face and lay with her head turned away, in case he should put on the centre light.

  Evidently he assumed she was asleep, however, for he put on only the light over his own bed. And even then, she noticed, he tipped the shade a little further, so that no streak of light could possibly disturb her.

  ‘Patricia, are you awake?’ he said very softly.

  Patricia breathed deeply—and immediately there followed that soft, tearless sob which she had tried so hard to suppress.

  ‘My dear—’ He came over at once. ‘Are you crying?’

  ‘N—no.’

  ‘But you have been.’ He sat down on the side of her bed, felt for her in the gloom, and quite naturally gathered her into his arms. ‘Patricia dear, what is it?’

  ‘N—nothing,’

  ‘Oh, come, I won’t believe that, you know.’ He was smiling, she knew, from the tone of his voice. ‘Even silly people don’t cry for nothing. And you’re not a silly person.’

  Still she was silent, though the slight pressure of her hand on his acknowledged his attempt to comfort her.

  ‘Is it something about Phil Magerton?’ he inquired at last. ‘Something which happened this afternoon, and you haven’t told me about it?’

  ‘Y—yes,’ Patricia admitted in a whisper.

  ‘Well, that doesn’t take much guessing,’ he said quietly. ‘I didn’t entirely believe you, you know, when you said he had no objection to the divorce suit being contested. Of course he objects. Any man would. And I suppose you quarrelled about it, eh?’

  ‘No, Michael, we didn’t quarrel about it. We didn’t actually quarrel about anything. We decided not—to go on with things. That was all.’

  ‘Not to go on with things?’ He was astounded, she could tell. ‘What things?—Your engagement, you mean?’

  ‘It never was an engagement.’ Patricia found that she could say that quite steadily now. ‘At least, it ne
ver went further than my imagination. He didn’t intend to marry me. You see, he—he’s not the marrying sort.’

  ‘Damned bounder,’ Michael said softly, but in a tone that was singularly free from surprise now. ‘But you thought, until to-day, that he did mean marriage?’

  ‘Of course. I should—well, I suppose I should have stopped it all long ago otherwise. It never entered my head that his talking of—loving me meant anything else. ‘I think I was a bit of a fool, now that I look back. I was uneasy, of course, when he—made love to me although he thought I was married to you. But I thought that was sheer desperation because he thought he’d lost me, and I was sure that when he knew I was free after all, he would be immeasurably relieved and forget all his other wild ideas.’

  ‘Whereas it made no difference at all?’ Michael’s tone was grim.

  ‘N—none. He wasn’t interested in making me his wife. So the question of whether I was married or not hardly mattered.’

  There was silence for a moment. Then he said:

  ‘You’re sure this is the real truth of the matter? It isn’t really that he has raised hell over his fiancé figuring in a divorce suit, and you’re trying to cover it up in order to spare my feelings?’

  ‘No, Michael, of course not.’

  ‘I’m terribly sorry about this,’ he said at last. ‘I know just how sick and stunned you’re feeling, and you probably don’t want anyone to start telling you that you’ve had a lucky escape.’

  She smiled faintly.

  ‘No, it isn’t really necessary. I know that part. Only, somehow, it doesn’t seem to make a lot of difference.’

  ‘Not at the moment,’ he agreed. ‘But’—and his tone became unexpectedly dry—‘it will, Patricia.’

  ‘Do you mean—’ she glanced up, and tried to read his expression, but there was not enough light‘do you mean that’s how you felt? Stunned and miserable and—empty, at first. And then—then the fact that you’d been so badly treated began to have its effect?’

  ‘Something like that, I suppose. It isn’t resentment. It isn’t even self-pity, I think. It’s just that things are no longer at all what you thought, and so you can’t feel quite the same about them. But it’s confoundedly unfeeling to say these things in the first moment’—he tightened his arm slightly—‘and it isn’t any real comfort. I only wanted you to know that—that one feels better afterwards.’

  ‘Michael, thank you,’ She hugged him. ‘I’m sorry I cried and was a fool.’

  ‘No, don’t be sorry.’

  ‘Why not?’ She smiled a little at his tone.

  ‘Oh—it gave me a chance to do something for you, even if it was only a small thing.’

  ‘Michael, it’s not at all a small thing! It’s lovely of you to appear at just the right moment, and say something that makes me feel better.’

  ‘Well, you appeared at exactly the right moment for me, remember, and helped to get me out of my particular hole, with more energy than I’ve put into rescuing you from being miserable.’

  ‘Oh, we—ell, I’m not sure that I’m the person to thank for my appearance on the road that afternoon. I suppose ‘—and she laughed a little—‘we have Mrs. Enderby Elmes to thank for that.’

  ‘Who on earth is she?’

  ‘The lady who didn’t want me as governess to her children.’

  ‘Oh, that one.’ And then he laughed softly too.

  ‘What is it, Michael?’

  ‘I was trying,’ he said, ‘to imagine you as a governess.’

  ‘But is it so funny? I—I’ve got to do something like that eventually, you know.’

  ‘Oh, nonsense!’ He spoke impatiently. ‘You can’t be that. We’ll find something else for you.’

  ‘But why, Michael?’

  ‘Because, for one thing,’ he reminded her dryly, ‘to have been co-respondent in any divorce suit is not quite the best recommendation for a governess to have.’

  Oh!’ She gave a slight gasp. ‘Somehow I hadn’t thought of that.’

  ‘No?—It was the first thing I thought of when you told me about not marrying Phil. Or at least, I realised that your reputation is going to be an even more important thing to you now. I think, Patricia, we’re going to have to consider the whole position again.’

  ‘No!’ She hardly knew why she was so passionate about it—why it had become a fixed idea with her that Pat should not be allowed to profit by the position into which she had thrust her husband.

  Michael laughed a little unhappily.

  ‘Well, my dear, I’ve been asking myself whether there is, after all, so much difference between a contested and an uncontested divorce suit. Whether it wouldn’t be better—’

  ‘Michael, you know there is! You’re simply saying that because, you think it’s your duty to save my reputation. If you don’t contest the suit, it’s true I probably shan’t have much mud sticking to me, and she will be able to sponge on you for life, and, incidentally, you will be labelled among all your friends as the guilty party.’

  ‘I think I can stand that.’ He smiled slightly.

  ‘But why should you? If, on the other hand, you do contest it, there is every chance that our story will be believed.’

  ‘Not every chance, Patricia.’

  ‘Well then, a strong chance. And in that case you will get your divorce against her, and be able to cut her out of your life and—and start again or whatever you want to do. I think it’s worth some publicity for a chance of that.’

  ‘It would be a good deal of publicity, you know. The whole story is rather fantastic, even to us, who know the full reasons for it. I’m afraid it would provide some piquant headlines.’

  Patricia winced slightly.

  ‘It would be worth it,’ she maintained, ‘if you won the case.’

  ‘And if I didn’t?’ He thoughtfully put his cheek against the top of her head, rather as though he were not quite realising what he was doing, but liked the feel of her hair. ‘If I didn’t win, you would have become front-page news of a most unpleasant kind, for absolutely nothing.’

  ‘I’m prepared to risk it. It isn’t a case of being quixotic, Michael. It’s—it’s an absolute loathing of seeing a worthless person get away with a good thing. You said something once about my being intolerant—’

  ‘I did?’

  ‘Yes. That was about Pat too, if I remember rightly. Well, I am intolerant where her kind is concerned. The only other thing is, of course—’ her tone grew more uncertain—‘how far you’re willing to risk a very horrid position for yourself if you lost.’

  ‘For me? I don’t stand to lose much more in reputation one way than the other,’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking of your reputation. I was thinking that, if the case is dismissed because there were faults on both sides—or whatever the expression is for refusing a divorce—you would still be tied to her.’

  ‘There would be a separation, Patricia, whatever the result was.’

  ‘Yes. But you wouldn’t have any—any real freedom.’

  ‘Oh—’ He laughed slightly. ‘You mean—if I wanted to marry again. You needn’t worry about that, my dear. I’ve come to the conclusion that—in a rather different sense from Phil Magerton—I’m not the marrying sort either. At any rate, I don’t seem to have made much of a success of married life.’

  ‘Oh, Michael—’ she held his hand rather hard—‘don’t let yourself begin to thing to think on those lines. Any failure wasn’t your fault. It was hers.’

  ‘That’s always the easiest explanation, Patricia dear.’

  ‘But you know it’s true!’

  ‘Well,’ he laughed, and unexpectedly ruffled her hair, ‘it’s too late to start apportioning blame at this hour of the night. Don’t you think you could get some sleep now?’

  ‘I might.’ She felt less hideously wakeful and worn out now.

  ‘Like a hot drink?’ There was an indulgence m his tone which he usually reserved for his mother.

  ‘It—isn’t necess
ary.’

  He laughed.

  ‘But very pleasant, eh?’ he said, as he got up. ‘I shan’t be long.’

  By the time Michael came back, Patricia was already a little sleepy, but she took the hot drink and smiled at him gratefully.

  ‘Feeling better?’

  ‘Lots, thank you.’

  ‘And you won’t cry any more?’

  ‘Oh—no, Michael.’ She laughed rather embarrassedly. ‘I don’t often cry, you know. I’m a bit mad with myself for doing it this time.’

  ‘I know. Don’t think any more about it. Would you like to come motoring with me to-morrow?’

  ‘I’d—love it. Have you got time?’

  ‘It’s Sunday,’ he reminded her.

  ‘Yes, but I thought you might have something else you would like to do.’

  ‘No. I should like to go motoring with you.’

  ‘Not just with the idea of cheering me up?’ She smiled at him as she handed back the empty cup. ‘There isn’t any real need, you know.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Michael said, ‘it will have the admirable effect of cheering us both up. Now go to sleep, like a good child. Good-night.’‘Good-night,’ Patricia replied—with the pleasant feeling that perhaps the world was not such a bad place after all.

  CHAPTER X

  The next day’s outing with Michael proved to be even more delightful than Patricia had expected, although, in the end, since Isobel had a bad headache, they were compelled to take Deborah with them.

  They had lunch in the garden of an old inn, on the outskirts of Windsor forest, and Deborah had the novel pleasure of hearing herself described by the landlady as ‘a sweet little thing’.

  Patricia saw her looking unusually thoughtful after that, and couldn’t help wondering if she were turning over in her mind the possibility that one attracted even more attention by being good than by being naughty, If she once got hold of that idea, life should be a great deal simpler for Isobel.

  ‘But I’m afraid,’ thought Patricia regretfully, ‘with Isobel it would always be much more fun to be naughty.’