by Jane Arbor
He said slowly: “Of course I realize that you consider yourself bound by a sort of high ideal of loyalty to your engagement to Richard Guyse. I can appreciate that—”
Lysbet turned upon him, her eyes flashing. “I wouldn’t give you your promise if Richard didn’t exist! Don’t make any mistake about that!”
“No? I should have thought that if there weren’t any question of betraying whatever you feel for Guyse, you would find it easier to help Mrs. Tempest by making a marriage which need, ultimately, be no more than a nominal one. In fact I should think that even I might compare quite favourably with your very perfect gentle knight’ who might not appear so perfect after all if you knew the truth about him!”
There was a gasp of dismay from Lysbet as Eliot, watching for her response to his insinuation, was completely surprised to see the look of apprehension in her eyes. (So she wasn’t so sure of her Richard! That meant that he could leave it to her to embroider with her own fears the sort of suspicions at which he could only hint. So far, so good!)
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Well, haven’t you noticed that Guyse has, in Caroline Ware, an extraordinary charming secretary? And that their relationship isn’t exactly that of employer and employee? I mean, although Caroline is all meek deference to Guyse when he is there, even you must have realized that she knows him more intimately than a woman usually knows a man unless she is—shall we say?—his wife?”
The color had drained from Lysbet’s face as she answered: “They—Richard and Caroline—have been friends for a very long time.”
“Oh, yes, I know.” Eliot’s voice was studiedly light. “But people in Fallsbridge—I’ve got about a bit since I’ve been here, you know—do rather wonder that you’re content for them to continue in the sort of intimacy they have every opportunity to indulge—”
“I’m not interested in Fallsbridge gossip. Nor in your hints. If there is anything you know about Richard which you think I ought to hear, what is it that you know?” Lysbet’s control was nearly at breaking point as she realized that she was afraid to hear Eliot’s answer.
But he did not answer directly. He moved over to her so that he was very dose as he said meaningly: “Whatever it is that I know, I needn’t elaborate it. Because you know it too! Don’t you, Lysbet? Don’t you!”
“No! I—oh, let me go—let me go!” With a choked cry she turned away from him and with the back of one hand over eyes which were half-blinded with tears she ran from him out of the room.
Eliot drew a long breath as of relief and satisfaction. So the kid hadn’t slipped away altogether, after all!” That had been a clever move of his about Caroline and Guyse. Fallsbridge hadn’t uttered a word of scandalous talk about them, but that Lysbet knew something and feared more had been apparent in her face from the first moment when he had put a doubt of Richard into words. All he had hoped for was to produce the wedge of questioning fear which, to his surprise, she was already driving home into the secret places of her mind. Yes, it was pretty satisfactory. There might be hopes and prospects for him yet...
But upstairs Lysbet, in the brief sanctuary of her room, had flung herself by the side of her bed, crying with the defeated heart-wrung sobs of the utterly deserted.
On Tuesdays Richard usually came over to Falcons to dinner. He would telephone during the day, nominally to find out if he were expected but actually to snatch at the opportunity to talk to Lysbet during his working hours—a luxury he did not always allow himself.
On this particular Tuesday Lysbet awaited his call with a shivering apprehension. What was she to say to him? With all that was churning in her mind, how was her manner to him to be normal? Did she indeed want to be normal with him? Eliot’s cruel hints had more than renewed the shock of pain which she had felt at the sight of Richard and Caroline in his surgery; could she possibly behave as if she had seen nothing, heard nothing and believed in him with the same trust as before?
Eliot was out, and after a stormy, hysterical scene with Mrs. Tempest when she had begged Lysbet again and again to give Eliot at least some sort of spurious promise which would keep him quiet, the girl realized that she would again refuse to come down to dinner and would take it to her room. That meant a tête-à-tête meal with Richard. And she dreaded it.
She did not know that Richard had his worries too.
The thing which was worrying Lysbet he had already dismissed from his mind as a mere piece of nonsense on Caroline’s part. It had irritated him at the time but had disturbed him not at all. No, the real problem with regard to Caroline was whether to keep to his first outraged resolve to dismiss her at once for her negligence, or whether, having set his hand to the unruly plough of training her to a useful job, he ought to draw back at her first mistake.
It wasn’t her first by any means, his reason told him. In countless ways he had come to realize that she was unreliable except in routine work. But he had known most of what there was to be known of Caroline’s unreliability when he had taken her on as his secretary. And he had still done it—for loyalty to Adrian’s memory. Could he turn her adrift now?
Her very manner disarmed him. Upon her next appearance in the surgery she had looked at him with startled, red-rimmed eyes, and when he spoke to her she jumped as if the sound of his voice had cut across a nervous tension which she found almost unbearable. In a way—though he would never admit it—her obvious fear of him flattered him a little. And Caroline, who had decided that a ‘frightened fawn’ technique would be correct in the circumstances, was being a frightened fawn for all she was worth. With fair success, she judged, for so far Richard had not broached the subject of Mrs. Hartington again...
Lysbet and Richard dined alone by candlelight in the big dining-room at Falcons. But Lysbet deliberately kept the talk upon trivialities, so much so that once Richard looked quizzically at her and remarked: “You know, with all this domesticated small talk you’re subjecting me to we might have been married for years!”
Lysbet flushed and he hastened to add: “Don’t stop—I like it. I like feeling married. It’s what I’m here for!”
But Lysbet’s conversational efforts had been effectually checked. She sat silently, thinking: “Oh Richard darling, how can I doubt you when you say eager things like that? And yet—how can I believe in you when you and Caroline—when I saw you with my own eyes, and Eliot knows or believes he knows even worse than that?”
They went into the cosier library after dinner, Richard silently inviting Lysbet to sit near him by patting a low stool at his feet.
But she stayed at the other side of the hearth, leaning forward with her hands clasped between her knees as she gazed into the fire.
Richard, a little hurt at her refusal, looked curiously at her. He did not know that she was screwing her courage to the point where she could say what must be said to him, through lips which did not tremble.
His gaze compelled her own and at last she said piteously:
“Richard, you—you’ve got something to tell me, haven’t you? On Saturday, when I brought Ian back to the surgery I—saw you and Caroline—!”
“ ‘Saw me and Caroline’?” Richard’s echo of her words arose from momentary bewilderment rather than from the wish to gain time, which was what Lysbet read into it.
“Yes. You sprang apart from each other as I came in. She—she had been in your arms!”
Then Richard made his mistake. In his utter relief at the triviality of Lysbet’s worry he laughed. He did worse. Knowing that he was going to enjoy telling the foolish darling all about it in a minute, he said lightly: “Well, what of it?”
“What of it!” Lysbet recoiled as at a blow between the eyes.
“There’s no need to look so devastated, darling! I can explain.” To Lysbet’s ears his tone was still too unconcernedly light.
“Then she was in your arms? And you had been—kissing her? Richard—how—how long has this been going on?”
“Going on? My dear Lysbet, I’v
e told you—I can explain!”
Again Lysbet believed he was seeking to gain time. She said coldly: “Then oughtn’t you to?”
Richard looked at her, saw in her unguarded eyes the accusation she had meant not to make, and the hot temper which usually he had well in check, suddenly flared. How dare she judge him without benefit of even the defence which was at the tip of his tongue? He was damned if he would explain a word while she was in this mood!
In silent hostility they looked at each other, while Pride stalked with high-flung head between them.
Then: “Oughtn’t you to?” repeated Lysbet. “Don’t you owe me an explanation?”
Richard got violently to his feet, strode a few steps with hands thrust deep into his trouser-pockets and stared back uncompromisingly at her. “This is absurd. I’ve told you—I can explain the whole thing. But I’m not going to, in face of the sort of accusation you are making.”
“I’m not accusing you, Richard,” said Lysbet wearily.
“You are. You’ve as good as asked me how long I’ve been philandering with Caroline. If you believe that then I’m afraid I can’t help you.”
“Then it doesn’t matter to you that Fallsbridge is gossiping about you and Caroline?” It was a taunt which Lysbet had never meant to use against him.
Out of his own knowledge of his integrity Richard was able to shake his head confidently. “I don’t think my reputation will suffer from any relationship of mine to Caroline,” he said quietly.
“But you don’t care that I can suspect you and be given no explanation!” cried Lysbet from the sore places of her heart.
Richard took his hands from his pockets and pulled down his jacket in the characteristic way she knew well and had come to love.
“We’re getting things utterly out of proportion, Lysbet,” he said. “I’m going home, now. We must talk about this another day. Will you say ‘Good night, to me?”
Lysbet stood up, turned to face him slowly. “You mean—you’re not going to give me an explanation?”
“Not tonight. You’re in no mood to accept it—to accept anything I could say.”
“Then—” She was fumbling at her engagement ring and now she drew it off and put it into the hand he was holding out to her in farewell.
Richard looked down at it and then back at her in amazement.
“You—you mean this?”
“As long as you intend to keep from me just what Caroline means to you!”
By now Richard knew that he had been wrong, first to tease her and then to stand aloofly upon his dignity, refusing the explanation for which she had asked. But rage at the injustice she was doing him was almost choking him as he turned upon his heel.
“Then it’ll be a hell of a long time!” he said as he went out, banging the door behind him.
He drove back to Fallsbridge in a blind fury directed more against himself than against Lysbet. She couldn’t mean to break with him finally over such a triviality. They would make it up in a few days of course. Maybe they would even be able to laugh about it later. But he felt sure, however drastic had been Lysbet’s reaction, that he had been wise not to take the thing any further tonight. Between them they had engendered too much of a white heat of anger and suspicion.
It was all Caroline’s fault really, of course. That settled it. He would give her her notice tomorrow ... No—he was damned if he’d do anything of the sort; That would be to admit to something which didn’t even begin to exist! Let Lysbet think what she must—even at the cost of his almost outworn patience Caroline should stay.
In the library at Falcons Lysbet sat on by the fire, her ringless hand lying emptily upon her lap as she looked at it in wondering dismay.
Richard had gone. She herself had sent him away. And with him had gone the only real bulwark between herself and Eliot’s evil. It could not make any difference to her contempt and hatred for him, but she knew with cold apprehension that, once he knew he had helped to separate her from Richard, he would use the facts for his own ends. And he would have to know. There was no way of preventing that.
CHAPTER TEN
On the next morning after she had broken her engagement Lysbet woke to the heavy realization that it was true, that it had really happened, that it wasn’t just a bad dream. She had done the very thing she had told herself she must do—she had accused Richard. He had refused her an explanation and at its very first test their love and their trust of each other had crumpled.
“I ought never to have let it happen like that!” she thought desperately. “I ought to have made him explain—or else have accepted his refusal to discuss it last night when we were both so angry. Surely, surely he’ll realize the awful mistake we’re making? We can’t do it—we mustn’t!”
But then pride whispered: “He would have explained—if he hadn’t been seeking to gain time—time to explain away something which really happened—something which you saw happening with your own eyes. Wait. Let the first step towards making it up come from him!”
And so, while she waited in vain for a letter, a message, a telephone call, a visit, Richard’s own self-questioning was going on, though less despairingly that hers. For he was buoyed up by the knowledge of his own innocence in the deeper issue: Presently, when him of having an affair with Caroline over a period, he would be the first to go to her to say, “I’m sorry. I ought to have told you all about it straight away. We can’t break upon such an issue—we mustn’t.” But meanwhile he, too, would wait a little. There would be no harm done in allowing a few days to teach them both their real value to each other...
But it was unfortunate for Richard that the passing of his mere ‘few days’ was a period long enough to enable Eliot to act. At the end of it reconciliation to Lysbet was a hope that was too late...
She, Mrs. Tempest and Eliot were taking breakfast together in rather diffident silence a few mornings after the quarrel with Richard, when Mrs. Tempest, who was reading the morning paper, uttered a sudden exclamation and looked across at Eliot. The newspaper shook in her hands as she said in a low voice: “Eliot—are you responsible for this?”
Eliot glanced up from the excellent meal he was making. “Me—responsible for the news? God forbid!” he said flippantly.
“You know perfectly well what I mean! You—you had this insertion put in the paper in order to force our hands! Lysbet—” she turned to the girl agitatedly, “did you know anything about this?”
Lysbet took the proffered newspaper listlessly, only to find her attention arrested at sight of her own name confronting her in print.
‘The engagement is announced between Eliot Connor Bradd, only son of the late Mr. Arthur Connor Bradd ... and Lysbet Marlowe, only daughter of the late Mr. Edward Marlowe...”
It was with a totally unnatural calm that she folded the paper before addressing Eliot. Then she said with dangerous quiet:
“How dared you? How dared you?”
With a gesture as of asking permission from Mrs. Tempest Eliot lit a cigarette jauntily.
“Well, to be frank, I thought it was high time that matters were a trifle more dearly defined, my dear Lysbet. After all, if I’m prepared to forego a certain amount of income over the next month or two I expect at least some concrete prospect for my pains. It’s some time ago now that I first stated my terms. I’ve been pretty forbearing on the whole, but I’d begun to ask myself what forbearance was doing for me? So I had that notice sent to the London papers as well as to The Fallsbridge Gazette. It appeared to me that it would show us all where we stood. Especially—” he added with a meaning flash of his eyes towards Lysbet’s engagement ring finger, “—since I gather that there aren’t any remaining, er—sentimental barriers to the making of the announcement.”
Lysbet’s gaze held his during the whole time he was speaking. Then she said again: “How dared you!”
Eliot shrugged. “My sweet Lysbet, I wish you wouldn’t keep on saying ‘How dare I!’ If I hadn’t dared a lot of things in my adult life
even at this moment, I should probably be pen-pushing in a Cape Town office, if no worse. I may have lost a lot of ‘daring’ but I’ve gained a lot too. And I like to have things that way. After all—if you don’t like things that way!—why pretend that the remedy doesn’t lie in your hands or in Mrs. Tempest’s? You’ve only to ring up the Society editors of the papers in which the notice appears. I’ll willingly give you a list of the ones I sent it to—”
Without a further glance at him Lysbet rose from the table. “I’ll ask you for it later,” she said. Then she went out of the room.
Despairingly Mrs. Tempest said “Eliot—how could you?”
Eliot sighed in mock resignation. “ ‘ How could I?’ and ‘How dared I?’ Obviously I did both. Equally obviously it was high time—”
“But Eliot—what do you gain by all this? What do you hope to gain by trying to force the child into a loveless marriage with you even if she gave you your promise for my sake?”
“I thought I’d made that clear. I ought really to turn the question round and put it to you. I may appear to have everything to gain by marrying Lysbet, but on the other hand I have very little to lose if I don’t. You, on the contrary, have everything to gain by my marrying her and everything to lose if I don’t. It’s surely worth your while to lend your persuasion to support the rather forceful measures I’ve taken. I’m sorry you don’t like them, but it could have been done more quietly if either of you had been disposed to meet me half-way.”
“But I can’t persuade her! I’d be ruining her whole life!”
Eliot made a grimace. “Oh, come,” he mocked. “I’m not as impossible as all that. And at least I’m not now in rivalry with the local G.P. There seems to have been a rift there. And in any case there surely needn’t nowadays be any question of ‘whole lives’ involved?”