“It wasn’t a volte-face,” she said with a slight sigh. “I wasn’t quite thinking what I was saying.”
He smiled rather at this explanation.
“You know, Liebling,” he shook his head regretfully, “the trouble with you and me is that we’re not complete worldlings or egoists or opportunists, or whatever we like to call it. We have a sad streak of romanticism in us, which is continually betraying us.”
“It won’t have a chance of betraying me often, when I’m married to Roger,” Hilma said, half to herself.
“No.” He considered that gravely. “No, I don’t somehow imagine Evelyn encouraging a romantic streak either.” And then, with a complete change of mood: “You know, I hope she and Roger have found each other. I feel they’d have a lot in common.”
Hilma laughed outright then.
“You’re really very absurd,” she told him. But he shrugged very slightly and smiled.
“What else should one be, Liebling, in what is, after all, a rather absurd world?”
She didn’t reply to that. After a short silence she said:
“Oh, I meant to ask you. Did the cousin—Evelyn’s cousin, you know—go to America after all?”
“Yes. He cleared off safely without making any compromising statements.”
“He didn’t—he didn’t even reproach you or anything?” She still looked slightly anxious.
“Oh, no. As a matter of fact, I didn’t see him again. I only heard from my manservant that he had left, according to his arrangements.”
“And you’re sure he didn’t say anything—by phone, for instance—before he left?”
“My dear,” he smiled rather dryly, “I can’t imagine that I should have heard nothing about it from Evelyn if that was so.”
“Oh, no, of course. I forgot.” She gave a slight sigh. “Then it’s all right?”
“It is all right” he agreed with that faintly indulgent smile for her nervousness.
“He’s not coming back very soon, or anything like that?”
He shrugged.
“I’m afraid we were not intimate enough for me to have any real information about his movements.”
“Then”—her eyes widened again—”then he still might turn up and make himself dangerous?”
“Liebling, is it your custom to cross all your fences before you come to them?” he asked with a smile.
“No.” She pushed back her hair with that characteristic little gesture that always drew his gaze to her. “I was only thinking—“
“What, my dear? What were you thinking?”
“That if he did come back, and if he did think it his business to interfere, you ought to know where to find me, oughtn’t you?”
“Should I, Liebling?” His smile was almost tender that time. “How sweet of you even to think of a reason why I ought to know how to get in touch with you. I feel on a level with the London police force now.”
“The London police force?” She gave him a puzzled frown.
“Oh, yes. You surely haven’t forgotten that you administered a very sharp snub to me. You actually wrote down your name and address for a miserable police sergeant who didn’t mean anything to you, while I had to stand by and look pleasant.”
“Oh, that!” she laughed. Then her eyes sparkled in their turn. “But that,” she pointed out demurely, “was because I was forced to.”
“Hm. Yes, I see the subtle difference. I haven’t perhaps been quite autocratic enough with you.”
She smiled, but the serious mood was returning now.
“No, please let’s be serious for a moment I meant what I said just now. You—you ought to know where to find me.”
“And I meant to ask you—why? The delightfulness of the arrangement I quite understand, but the necessity—no.”
“Well, I told you—suppose this cousin returned and wanted to make trouble, then I should have to explain to him, because—”
“I told you I wouldn’t have that,” he said in a curt tone she had not heard from him since he discovered her rifling his desk.
“But why not? There’s no danger in my being frank with him now. I couldn’t be involved in the murder case—it’s all explained and done with.”
He looked at her in a sombre way that brought those tiny crinkles round his eyes again, and made her wonder for the first time just how old he was.
“You would have to explain to him that there was a compromising letter—blackmail—an attempt to burgle his flat. It wouldn’t be very nice for you to have to tell a strange man all that,” he said quietly.
“But I’ve already had to tell a strange man all that.” The uncontrollable dimple appeared in the centre of her cheek suddenly. “A pretty horrible man, too, who threatened to send for the police if I didn’t tell him the whole story.”
“Oh, Liebling!” He laughed and took her hand. “Was I very brutal with you?”
She nodded, her smiling blue eyes on his face.
“Yes.” He looked reflective. “I remember. I thought: ‘Now don’t be fooled. She’s so lovely that she probably thinks she can get away with anything. Be firm with her from the beginning.’“
“How sweet! And terribly ingenuous. It goes with the little boy part of you,” she told him gravely.
“My God! The what?”
“You heard me.”
“There isn’t the very slightest element of the little boy about me.”
She nodded emphatically, so that the moonlight glimmered palely on her bright hair.
“Yes, there is. When you wanted me to ask questions about you and show curiosity, you were just like a little boy hoping for notice. That,” she added with a smile, “was why I had to do what you wanted.”
“Oh, Liebling, don’t.” He put his forehead against the hand he was holding.
“Why not?”
“Nothing. Except that it hurts a little.”
“Oh—I’m sorry.” Just for a moment her other hand hovered over his bent, dark head. But she took it away again resolutely and said: “Well—well, we’re getting rather far away from the name and address, aren’t we?”
“I suppose we are.” He looked up immediately. Then: “So you want to give me your name and address?”
“No,” she said slowly, “as a matter of fact, I don’t want to. I think it might be—might be—”
“Unwise?”
“Well—not in our best interests, shall we say? But on the other hand, I can’t risk your being involved in something that might wreck your marvellous engagement, just because I wasn’t there to make explanations.”
“I see.”
He took out a notebook, tore a leaf from it, and gravely handed her the page and a pencil.
“Suppose you write it down—as you did for our friend the police sergeant.”
She took the pencil, glanced at him doubtfully for a moment, and then—seeing that he was looking away from her into the black and silver of the moonlit garden—she slowly wrote down “Hilma Arnall” and then added the address.
“Block capitals for clearness,” he reminded her, smiling, but still without looking at what she was doing.
“I have,” she told him. And when she looked up and saw his smiling profile, she caught herself wondering if Evelyn thought it wonderful to kiss him.
“Now fold up the paper.”
Amused and faintly puzzled, she did so.
“It’s done,” she told him. “Is this a game?”
“No, Liebling.” He turned to her then. “It’s deadly serious.”
He took out his pocket-book and held it open for her.
“Now put it in there—under the flap.” She did so rather gravely, as though it were a matter of great moment. “I promise you,” he said, with that serious smile, as he replaced the pocket-book, “that I shall not unfold that and look at it unless what you’re so afraid of actually happens.”
Hilma’s eyes widened with sheer astonishment.
“Do you mean to say you can keep yourself from looking at it?”
He nodded, still with that smile.
“Well,” Hilma said slowly, “I call that a pretty stiff test of character.”
“I thought,” he agreed gravely, “that it wasn’t a bad test myself. For a second-rate person, of course.”
She laughed then—softly and with much more feeling than she knew. Then with a quick sigh, she rose to her feet.
“Do you know we must go in? We’ve been here much too long already. I’m sure Roger must have grown tired of looking for me.”
Just for a moment he sat looking up at her, as though she were a picture that one must impress on one’s mind. Then he stooped and picked up a bright scrap from the path.
“Your mask, Liebling.” And he held it out to her.
“Oh, of course.” She was a little scared to find she had so far forgotten realities as to have been on the point of returning without her mask.
She put it on, and he stood up then, putting on his own as he did so. She was queerly, emptily conscious that he had not kissed her this time.
There was no reason why he should, of course. There was, on the contrary, every reason why he should not. But the disappointment remained, all the same.
Perhaps there was faint comfort in the fact that he held her hand as they passed through the shadows of the yew alley. But then almost immediately they reached the doorway to the stairs and he said quietly:
“Go on ahead. We mustn’t go in together. Goodnight Liebling.” He opened the door for her and very gently pushed her inside.
Then the door closed behind her, and she was alone on the stairs.
For a moment she had a wild, inexplicable desire to run out again into the night, away from nice, kind, dependable Roger and all he represented to—what?
Then the moment of madness passed, and she began to climb the stairs—slowly, as though she were very tired.
It was not, of course, very easy to explain so long an absence to Roger, but Barbara, who happened to be standing near him, rushed all unknowing into the breach.
“Oh, my dear, you must have damaged your dress badly!”
“My dress?” For a second Hilma could not even think what her dress had to do with it. But fortunately the mask hid some of the puzzlement in her eyes, and she recovered almost at once. “Yes, it was rather a business, but the attendant made a marvellous job of it. I’m so sorry, Roger, that I was missing such a long time.”
Roger accepted the explanation with a moderately good grace, while Barbara secretly thought:
“Poor Hilma! She looked quite dazed. I suppose a spoilt frock is an absolute disaster to her. She wouldn’t get another for ages—not till Roger starts buying them for her, most probably. It must be dreadfully humiliating. Thank goodness she’s marrying money. They’ll all need it”
After that Hilma danced once more with Roger. There was nothing else to do. There hadn’t been at the beginning of the dance, of course, and yet there had seemed to her a sparkle and a promise of excitement in every note of the music then.
Now everything was changed. Flat, dull and pointless. Where was the sense of moving round and round to the same kind of tunes? And how silly everyone looked with a bit of material plastered across their faces. Roger had been quite right—it was a stupid business. It made one wonder even why one had come.
Then she caught sight of a slim dark girl in a wonderful wine-red frock, and her partner was tall and dark and familiar.
Hilma knew then why she had come to this dance. She had not known beforehand. How could she? But she had had to come, of course. Otherwise there would have been no meeting in the garden.
On impulse she said to Roger:
“Look, do you see that girl there in the red dress? Don’t you think she looks wonderfully chic and smart?”
Roger glanced across the room.
“Oh—yes. But she has some reason to. That’s Evelyn Moorhouse, you know.”
“Do you mean the banker’s daughter?”
“Yes. I should imagine Owen Moorhouse left her enough to buy all the smart clothes she wanted” Roger added with a laugh. “As a matter of fact, I was introduced to her while you were away just now. She’s a very charming girl.”
“Is she?” Hilma said, and very much wanted to laugh in her turn. So their little joke had not been quite so absurd, after all.
Then she felt her amusement fade. Evelyn Moorhouse, indeed? Well, she would be an irresistible “catch” for any genuine opportunist, of course.
Hilma was glad suddenly that it was time to go home.
When they got outside, there was the usual confusion over taxis and cars, and Hilma stood waiting for several minutes while Roger went to discover his car. She moved to the side of the great doorway, to avoid the jostle of people around her, but even as she did so a hand closed lightly round her wrist.
“Liebling”—his voice was very low indeed—”shall I see you again?”
“Oh, but I thought we’d said good-bye!” She spoke almost in a whisper, too, but her agitation was patent in her voice.
“I thought so, too. Forgive me, but—Not even once more, my dear?”
She saw suddenly some yards away a worried, rather fussing Roger making his way towards her. He had not yet picked her out in her new position, but he would at any moment. Not taking her eyes from him, she spoke in a rapid whisper.
“On Sunday afternoon. Richmond Park, near the Robin Hood Gate. Half-past three.”
Still she didn’t look at him. She heard him say softly, “I shall be there.” Then she moved forward through the throng to Roger.
“Oh, there you are.” Roger smiled and took her by the arm. “I’m sorry I was such a long time. Half the cars in London seem to be collected round here, but I’ve found mine now. It’s just down this side street. If you don’t mind walking a little way it will be quicker than waiting until it has time to draw up.”
Hilma didn’t mind walking, it seemed. She didn’t really mind anything. She was thinking of Richmond Park on a Sunday afternoon—near the Robin Hood Gate.
On the way home she was rather silent. But Roger didn’t apparently notice anything amiss. For one thing, he was a good deal more talkative than usual himself. He had enjoyed his evening considerably more than he had expected, and now he felt very well disposed towards the world.
“It was odd, running into Toby Elton like that, wasn’t it? I’d no idea he ever went to that sort of thing.”
“Who was that, Roger?” She realised that her thoughts had been wandering unpardonably again. In fact, Roger looked very slightly offended.
“Toby Elton. The man I told you about. It was he who introduced me to Miss Moorhouse, you know.”
“Oh, was it?” She made a valiant effort to follow intelligently. “Let me see, weren’t you at Cambridge with him?”
“Yes, that was the fellow. Magnificent cricketer. But of course, that was twenty years ago.” Roger smiled reminiscently.
Twenty years ago! and a contemporary of Roger’s. That did really rather make one think. Yes, she supposed, Roger must be all of forty. More than fifteen years older than she. But then one could hardly expect to have everything.
She was glad when they arrived home.
Roger kissed her good-night just before the car drew to a standstill. He never indulged in affectionate farewells unless he had first made sure that his chauffeur’s attention was otherwise engaged. The chauffeur, of course, remained entirely unaware of this thoughtfulness, but at least it saved Roger a good deal of embarrassment.
Hilma silently let herself into the darkened house. She knew her mother and father would have been in bed a long while ago, but she was not specially surprised when, half-way through undressing, she heard their door creak softly.
If Hilma had been out somewhere really exciting, Mrs. Arnall usually found it irresistible to come and enquire about her evening, and, at the discreet little tap, Hilma smiled and sa
id softly: “Come in, Mother.”
Mrs. Arnall came in, in the inevitable pink wrap.
“Well, Hilma dear, how did you enjoy yourself?”
“Wonderfully.” Hilma looked at her with brilliant eyes that confirmed that beyond question.
“Oh, I’m so glad. I do like you to go to a few decent places sometimes.” Mrs. Arnall said plaintively. By “decent” places, she meant places to which they would have gone in their happier, prosperous days.
“You haven’t been lying awake, waiting to hear my report, have you?” Hilma carefully drew off her best pair of tights.
“No, no, I’d been to sleep. The sound of the car woke me.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Mother.”
“No, that’s all right. I like to hear all about it straight away.”
Hilma smiled and bit her lip. This was almost as pathetic as her father’s jaunty assurance when he went off to face another failure. Her mother spoke like someone receiving news of home when in a foreign land.
“It was a gorgeous scene.” Carefully Hilma tried to reconstruct it for her, describing the rooms, the dresses, even referring once to the moonlit grounds. “And there was an atmosphere of—of adventure, Mother. Rather as though anything might happen.”
“I know.” Her mother nodded. “So cheap and nasty when everything isn’t done just so, but the nicest thing possible when it’s done with taste and money.”
“Yes, I suppose so.” Hilma was hardly listening. She was living again some of the best moments of that evening—and they had nothing much to do with the brilliance of the scene in the ballroom.
“You know, Hilma dear”—her mother sat in a low chair, her hands thoughtfully clasped round her knee—”it gives me such a comfortable feeling to know that Roger can take you anywhere like that when you want to go. I should so hate to think that, after you were married, you should ever have to skimp and contrive and worry as I have done.”
“Oh, Mother”—Hilma turned quickly and glanced at her compassionately—“I know. You’ve had a rotten time really, haven’t you?”
“Well, at any rate I had a good time first,” her mother admitted. “I’m never sure whether that makes it better or worse. I mean, perhaps it helps, never to have known how gay and rich and comfortable things can be. Or perhaps it’s some sort of comfort to look back on good times and hope, however stupidly, that they’ll come again. Anyway, I suppose none of these things matter so much when you’re getting older, except for the day-to-day irritation of it. But when you’re young—” She stopped and shook her head.
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