"Now the impulse is gone," she agreed.
After dinner, Thea put on a light coat and they strolled along the seashore together. He was amusing and cheerful, and told her a certain amount about his work. Nothing in their conversation suggested that they had ever changed from the easy, friendly relationship that they had maintained in the early days. Certainly no one would have taken them for a honeymoon couple.
And when Thea finally said that she was tired and would go up to her own room now, he said, "Very well then. Good night, my dear. I shall be staying down some while longer. Sleep well. I'll see you in the morning."
It was all very casual and reasoning—and he didn't even kiss her good night.
So Thea went to her room and to bed, and there she was free to study Stephen's letter once more.
To a certain extent her conversation with Lin had cleared the position, of course. As he said, she was only technically Mrs. Lindsay Varlon, and there would be a time—quite soon, perhaps—when she would be freed by a quiet divorce.
(Did people like Lin ever figure in a "quiet*' divorce, she
wonderea uneasily, in passing.)
But until that happened, what was she to say to Stephen? If only he had been there! He had written very feelingly about the difficulty of expressing his position by letter. But it was nothing to the difficulty of explaining her position.
How could she sit down and, in cold blood, write a declaration that, though she appeared to be married to Lin, the whole thing was really a rather complicated masquerade—and that as soon as she was free from it, she would be very happy to marry Stephen? What man could be expected to regard that as a satifactory basis for a future marriage?
And what would Mrs. Dorley's feelings be? How would she like the idea of her son marrying someone who had already been married to her brother?
Why, in a ridiculous way, I'm Stephen's aunt by marriage! thought Thea, with a laugh of hysterical dismay. The whole thing is quite, quite impossible.
And tne farther any hope of marrying Stephen retreated, the more desperately did Thea long for just that situation.
Why didn 11 realize that was what I wanted? she thought wretchedly. Why did I resort to anything—anything—that would stand in the way of marrying Stephen, if the chance should ever arise?
But everything had looked so different a month or a week or even twenty-four hours ago. That Stephen would want to marry her had been something entirely out of her powers of reckoning then. If she had hoped vaguely for it, that was the most she could do. And meanwhile, there had been the urgent necessity of clearing her hopelessly complicated position.
/ don V know what else I could have done, knowing so little as I did, she told herself wearily. Who could have expected that a proposal was on the way, when it simply seemed to me that I haan V even had kind wishes for my recovery as soon as I might? Oh, I hate Geraldine! If she had seen that I received the letter when I should, everything would be different.
But Geraldine had not seen to it, and now the situation must be accepted for what it was. It was imperative that she should reply to Stephen's letter. Already she must appear to have delayed an inexcusable time. And it seemed to her that, whatever chance there might be of fuller explanations
later, at the present time she had better say as little as she could.
Thea slipped out of bed and, fetching her writing case, returned to bed and sat up for some while, staring at a blank sheet of paper and making small squiggles with her fountain pen from time to time on the outside of the writing pad. Finally she wrote:
I'm so sorry, Stephen dear, but by the time you receive this you will already have heard of my marriage to Lin, and you will know that there is only one answer I can give to your dear and kind proposal. I can't tell you how sorry I am to have to write anything that will give you pain but—that is how it is, Stephen, and I can't alter the facts.
There was another long pause while she considered whether she could, within the bounds of decency, hint that his proposal would have had a different reception if she had been free.
But it was impossible.
She had no right to try to saddle Stephen with an indefinite commitment. And she had no right to place Lin in such an invidious position. After all, he might say what he pleased about their marriage being almost fictitious, but he nad given her his name, his protection, and his support. It would be an inexcusable affront to his pride and a gross imposition on his generosity if she now made a crude effort to have another husband dangling in the oflRng.
With a sigh she returned to her letter and contented herself with adding no more than a brief explanation of the delay in answering Stephen's own letter, and an expression of her very good wishes to him and his mother.
It was a scrappy and unsatisfactory effort, she knew, but it was as much as she could achieve in the circumstances. When it was finished, she sealed it up in its envelope immediately, so that she would not be tempted to revise it or to depart from her stern resolve to accept the results of her )wn actions and not to dodge them at the expense of someone else.
Once she had mailed the letter—which she did at the first opportunity the next morning—and it had gone beyond hope of recall, she addressed herself with complete determi-
nation to the business of making something normal and reasonably happy out of her new hfe with Lin.
It was not as difficult as she had feared. For one thing, the honeymoon weekend, which had started with so much emotional upset, slipped away quite uneventfully. She and Lin caused a certain amount of interest and comment amon;^ the other visitors at the hotel, but as they spent most of their time either out of doors or in the privacy of their own suite, she was not made to feel too mucn as though she were living in the public eye.
The next day they went back to London, and Thea saw for the first time the place that was now to be her home.
Lin's large, comfortable flat was not a luxury place in the sense that Geraldine's apartment was. It was not nearly so modern or so much like a showplace at a housing exhibition. Occupying one floor of a large Queen Anne house near Westminster Abbey, it had lofty, beautifully proportioned rooms, with long windows to the floor, which enchanted Thea.
The furnishings, without being all strictly in period, had that ripe and mellow air belonging only to things that have been accumulated with thought and loving care over a long period, by someone with taste and imagination and sufficient money to indulge both. Beside it, the furnishing of Geraldine*s apartment appeared like the work of one afternoon, supported by a blank check and little else. And as Thea looked round it on that first day, she thought—as she had never thought in Geraldine's apartment—/yee/^af/ home here.
"I suppose it's rather a typically bachelor place." Lin also looked around, as though in some way he saw it for the first time. "If you passionately want to change things—"
"Oh, but I don't, Lin!" She was shocked at the very suggestion. "I think it's a wonderful place. Besides ...." She stopped, not quite sure that what she was going to say was tactful.
"Besides?" he queried, smiling at her.
"Well, I was going to say that I'm really iust a—a sort of temporary visitor here, and it would hardly be for me to suggest changes."
"Oh, Thea—" He gave a half-vexed little laugh. "Don't describe yourself like that!"
"But it's true, isn't it?**
"We don't know about that," he said, with that sudden obstinate thrust of his lower lip. Then, as she looked slightly startled, he took both her hands and smiled down at her. "If you talk that way, I won't feel I can make love to you, and I'm quite sure I shall want to if you persist in looking so lovely in all your new clothes,'' he told her lightly.
She wished she knew what to make of him when he spoke in this half-laughing way. He couldn't mean seriously what he had said, and yet....
She compromised by saying, "Well, however long I stay here, I'm sure I won't want to change anything. It's beautiful flat, Lin. It has real personality."
Finally he introduced her to the discreet-looking middle-aged couple who looked after him and the flat.
"Donkins and his wife have rooms downstairs in the basement," he explained. "But they give up twenty-three and a half hours out of the twenty-four to looking after us, Isn 't that right, Donkins?''
Donkins smiled austerely and said, "After ten at night w don't come unless we're summoned, madam. But there's , bell in the kitchen that rings downstairs in our flat, so we're always available."
"I see. Thank you, Donkins. But I shall try not to trouble you any more than Mr. Varlon does," Thea said.
To herself she was thinking: So that means Lin and I an quite alone here at night. Well I suppose that's all right. . suppose—I don *t mind.
But she did mind. She minded quite ridiculously. Anc that night, on an impulse that caused her some shame anc that she found impossible to explain to herself, she ver) quietly locked her bedroom door.
As THE FIRST WEEK of her married life slipped away, Thea was not particularly surprised to find that everything waj made remarkably easy for her. Apart, that was to say, from her own personal misgivings and flutterings, as she rathei
contemptuously termed them in her more common-sense moments.
Without any embarrassing discussion, Lin saw to it that she had an extremely generous allowance, which she could spend exactly as she pleased; and as for the running of the fiat, it was perfectly obvious that Donkins and his wife knew more about this than she ever would, though they made a polite practice of deferring to her as though the decisions were really hers.
Lin was out on most days and some evenings, though he was usually available if she wanted him for any special reason, or to accompany her anywhere. Quite often he took her out in the evening, either to dine and dance or to a theater.
Everything went very smoothly, and a second week had gone past before Thea woke up to two unpalatable discoveries. One was that she was living an entirely useless and lazy life and was bored because she had nothing to do. The other was that, in some strange way, she and Lin were farther away from each other than they had ever been in the days when she had been living at Geraldine's apartment instead of his.
Not that they were on anything but excellent terms— though it was true that nowadays he seldom found reason to kiss her, and never with the tenderness and warmth that he had occasionally shown when she was ill in the hospital. It was just that they never seemed to break through the agreeable, too-perfect crust of formal amiability. Something had gone out or their relationship, and Thea wondered with remorseful anxiety if the fault were hers, and if so, what she could do about it.
Is it something to do with my inner awareness that it's Stephen with whom I want to be? she asked herself. Does he know that something is different in me, and feel that he, too, must draw farther away?
She valued her friendship with Lin—she had always done so—and now it seemed that because they were living in the same flat and were, in the purely technical sense, married, they had lost their happy, easy intimacy.
rm going to talk quite frankly to Lin about it, Thea suddenly decided. It's ridiculous if we can't be candid with each other. I think I ought to have told him about Stephen,
too. I've got to decide whether Fm really Just filling the time as decently and painlessly as possible until Stephen comes home—in the hope that somehow we can marry then—or whether I have to give up all thought of that and make some other life for myself.
She was so full of the idea of a heart-to-heart talk with Lin that it irked her to think he would not be in until the evening. The whole of a long summer day lay in front of her.
And suddenly she decided that she was not going to spend it either in the flat or in town. Everything to do with that part of her life made it so difficult to think things out clearly—to get back to the carefree, objective way in which she had always been able to regard her affairs in the old days.
Fm going into the country for the day, Thea decided. And because she had very little knowledge of the country round London, she decided to start from the one place she knew well—the station nearest to where the Dorleys had lived.
/ might even go and have a look at the house, *' she told herself once she was in the train, speeding away from the noise and heat of town. Even if it's shut up, there will be the garden to see. And she rememSered with a pang how Mrs. Dorley had so kindly promised her happy times m the garden when summer came.
She was the only passenger to alight at the little-used country station, and the languid porter seemed astonished to have to collect even one ticket at this time in the day.
She walked out into the village and along the almost deserted main street. But the solitude suited her mood. She thought: / will walk out and look at the house and garden, and then I'll eat my sandwiches in the wood where Stephen took me that first day. I might even sit and eat them in the garden, if I don't feel too much like a trespasser who might be prosecuted.
It was all very peaceful and beautiful, and in these surroundings it seemed to Thea that she had exaggerated her personal problems to an absurd degree. She would talk to Lm that evening, and they would somehow find their old, happy relationship again. A relationship that was all the more important to her since she had lost her companionship with Stephen, at least temporarily and possibly forever.
The field path brought her out into a wide country lane, less than a hundred yards from the house, and the moment she caught sight of the house she realized that she was indeed m luck. The upper windows were open, curtains fluttered in the breeze, and a lazy little plume of smoke wound slowly upward from the kitchen chimney.
Evidently this was Emma's day for visiting tne place and "opening it up.'* That meant that she could stay quite a while, and perhaps hear news of Stephen and his mother that her own scanty information haa not covered. If Emma's sister lived fairly near, she might even be able to stroll over and see Darry.
Thea quickened her footsteps and almost ran up the short driveway to the front door. The door stood open and, rapping with her knuckles on one of the panels, she called: "Emma! Emma, where are you?"
Emma emerged from the kitchen immediately, beaming with gratified pleasure and surprise.
"Why, Miss Thea, this is nice," she said heartily, and Thea saw she either knew nothing of her marriage or just chose to ignore her new status.
"Wasn't I lucky to find you at home!" Thea wrung her hand. "It was just chance. I suddenly thought it was too lovely a day to waste in town, and came out here on the spur of the moment."
"And how are you now. Miss Thea? You look blooming enough, I will say that. But come and sit down and I'll get you some lunch. I've been wondering this great while when you were coming. You don't look as if you'd just left hospital."
"Oh, I haven't, Emma. I left hospital nearly three weeks ago. You see. I... I—oh, there's sucn a lot to explain."
"I daresay there is, but time enough to do that when you've had lunch," declared Emma, who subscribed to the theory of"first things first."
"Oh, don't bother about lunch," Thea said. "I've got some sandwiches and I'll eat them in the garden—or in the kitchen while I talk to you. I don't expect you have much in the place just now."
"I have that, Miss Thea," Emma exclaimed rather indignantly. "Darry and me do ourselves well, just as Mrs. Dorley said we were to."
'*0h, you haven't got Darry here, have you?" Thea cried delightedly.
"Why, of course I have." Emma looked surprised. *'He*s in the garden this minute, sleeping oiF his dinner and getting ready for his tea."
"Do you mean you Ve brought him here for the day with you?" And then, as she saw Emma's astonishment deepen, *'Oh, of course! How silly of me. You're back here now. I somehow imagined you were away for a good while and that you would still be away. How is your sister, by th
e way?"
"My sister, Miss Thea, dear?" Emma spoke with something like alarm as well as astonishment. As though she thought rd had a bat on the head instead of a crushed hand, thought Thea.
"Why, yes, Emma. The sister you went to nurse. It was a sister, wasn't it? When you closed the house, you know, and-"
"Closed the house?" Emma was indignant now. "I never closed the house, Miss Thea. Mrs. Dorley's instructions were to keep the place open and look after Darry, and no sister'd make me do other if Mrs. Dorley had told me just that. I haven't got a sister, anyway, and I don't know what you mean, Miss Thea."
Thea groped for a chair and sat down.
"Just a moment," she said slowly. "Let's get this right. You haven't been away from the house—I mean, not to stay away—since Mrs. Dorley left?''
"Certainly not, Miss Thea. Not one night."
"Then when Mr. Varlon came down to see you, just after my accident—"
"Mr. Varlon hasn't been down here. Miss Thea, since you came with him that day."
"Not-at all, Emma?"
"No, Miss Thea. Not at all"
CHAPTER NINE
For a whole minute Thea could find nothing to add to her bewildered inquiries.
Emma, on the contrary, appeared to have accepted the fact that rather wild talk might be the natural accompaniment to any form of convalescence. She reverted to what she considered the really important matter of the moment.
"Til get your lunch. Miss Thea, dear,*' she repeated, and the *'dear'* was the sole indication that she thought poor Miss Thea was just a little queer after her illness.
"Can I come into the kitchen with you while you get it?" Thea asked, with the vague idea that further questions might elucidate the mystery.
"You come along," Emma said kindly. And Thea followed her into the big red-flagged kitchen, and sat in the basket chair that Emma seemed to think proper for her state ofhealth.
"Emma—" she watched Emma going busily to and fro— "you said you'd been expecting me for a long time. I suppose you mean that you had a letter from Mrs. Dorley saying I would come here from hospital."
Harlequin Omnibus: Take Me with You, Choose What You Will, Meant for Each Other Page 55