John smiled grimly.
“One would think, from the way you’re talking, that we’ve all had a merry time!” he said.
“It’s been a ghastly time,” she responded, “but it’s had some mighty good effects. Quite a number of the survivors have had a shake-up they badly needed. Do you know, I believe even Bultin is one per cent. more chastened! And Anne has discovered sanity and escaped from Earnshaw. But let me go on with my list. The ruined picture. Was that a tragedy?”
“I never saw the picture,” answered John, “so I can only guess.”
“Guess that it deserved to be ruined, and you’ll be right! Of course, Thomas, the butler, is out of a job; but that attractive maid—do you remember I remarked on her looks the first afternoon?—she’s doing the serial-story stuff, and following her erring man to reform him.”
“Do you mean she’s going, too?”
“Handed in her notice, I hear. I’ll give her a big tip.…And dear Grandma Aveling, who has done her last jig-saw—ask Anne if that’s a tragedy, though the blinds will remain down to-morrow?…I’ve seen her. Anne asked me to. I was rather afraid—I loathe illness, though I can stick it—but Grandma Aveling gave me an entirely new idea about death. I—I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything more lovely. So perhaps this week-end has done me a bit of good, too!…Well, that only leaves the dog. I can’t find anything redeeming about that.”
“You’ve missed out a stag,” said John.
“Are you going to be trying?” she asked.
“I hope not. But hunting people—when they’re nice, as most are—always baffle me. Hunting is the one thing you and I won’t agree on.”
“It was one of a thousand things the late Mr. Leveridge and I did not agree on,” replied Nadine. “Which almost brings the conversation back to us, doesn’t it?”
“Yes,” he nodded. “Nadine, will you marry me?”
She looked at him solemnly as she answered. “That was the way to ask me. I knew you would do it. But this is the way to answer you. No, John. Even in this short time, I’ve learned to love you too much.”
To her surprise, he was not depressed.
“That’s as good as I could expect in two days,” he smiled. “You’ll let me have your London address?”
“It won’t be any good.”
“You never know.”
“How old are you?”
“Forty-three.”
“Do I take off twenty years?”
“About that.”
“And I am—”
“As old as you feel,” he interrupted.
But she shook her head.
“A woman may be as old as she feels, to herself,” she said, “but to a man she is as old as she looks.”
“Very well,” he answered. “You don’t look bad to me.”
“Idiot! Use your vision, and now put twenty years on me! When you’re forty-three, and pretty girls of twenty-three are flitting all round you, will I look as good to you as I look now?”
“I say, Nadine!” he exclaimed. “You don’t think much of men, do you?”
“Men can’t help it, any more than women can,” she retorted. “It’s not a question of ethics, but of simple common sense—of facing things as they are, and not as you want them to be. But even putting aside the question of age, what do we know about each other?”
“Only that we love each other,” he replied. “That seems enough.”
“May I risk hurting you?”
“Of course.”
“You were in love with somebody else two days ago.”
“I guessed it was going to be that. I’m not hurt. You were right to remind me—only, as it happens, I didn’t need to be reminded. You see, this is quite different.”
“It always seems quite different, John, and it’s always the same.”
“That’s another thing we’ll disagree about, Nadine,” he smiled. “And I win, either way.”
“How?”
“Why, if I’m right, it will be different, and if I’m not, and all love is the same, you and I won’t do any better by looking elsewhere. So why try?”
She gave a despairing little laugh.
“Just a small boy!” she murmured.
“Do you dare come six inches closer to the small boy?” he challenged.
“That’s our trouble,” she answered. “I daren’t!” She bent forward, then drew back quickly and jumped up. “It’s unfair! I won’t do it!” she exclaimed. “Yes, of course I love you, and of course you love me. But—you’ll deny this—you were ready to tumble into anybody’s arms. Well, that train tumbled you—and my wretched feminine instinct finished the job. If you’d turned out to be clever or cynical or immoral, we’d have been a match, and at this moment might be planning to buy tickets for Monte Carlo. We’d have kissed more than just once. And ahead would have been half a dozen glorious months, which would have ended naturally or stormily, according to our moods.” She had turned away from him. Now she turned back and faced him squarely. “I don’t want any stormy memories of you, John. I don’t want you to have any unhappy ones of me. Believe me, my dear, I know best. Some queer freak of chance has made us fond of each other—just now—but we haven’t been designed for each other. I’d give you the hell of an experience—”
“You’re not forgetting, I haven’t asked you to go to Monte Carlo with me?” he interrupted. “I’ve asked you to marry me.”
“—and I dare say that presently you’d bore me stiff. No, I’m not forgetting that. I’m remembering it hard—and thinking for both of us.…The tragedies of this week-end are shouting warnings at us!” she exclaimed. “All due to physical passion, or physical misfits!”
“You didn’t call them tragedies a little while ago,” he reminded her.
“John, that’s the small boy arguing again, and you know it! They ought to have been tragedies! Instead, they were just releases!”
“All right, Nadine—I’ll try and grow up in my arguments,” he said. “Are you going to take the warnings yourself? Are you going to give up physical passion?”
“I’m going to give up the misfits!”
“Now I’m going to risk hurting you. Did you give your husband the hell of an experience?” She frowned at him. “Was that a misfit?”
“We didn’t fit anywhere!” she retorted.
“Did he regret marrying you?” The frown remained, but she was silent. “Did you regret?”
“John—you’re impossible!”
“You can’t have it both ways. I’m impossible when I’m a small boy idealising you, and I’m impossible when I’m a man realising you. I’ll tell you something. In my first conversation with Taverley, he read me like a book, and he warned me against you. In the strict, always-play-cricket Taverley manner. You wouldn’t have been offended if you’d heard him. He warned me in much the same way you’re warning me yourself. Well, I didn’t take his warning, and I’m not taking yours. Life’s a risk, however you look at it—isn’t it?—and I prefer to take the risk with somebody I’ve made a solid start with.”
“Do you call ours a solid start?” she asked.
“It seems to me astonishingly solid,” he replied. “Anyway, there hasn’t been any moonlight.”
“No, but there have been other things equally devastating. Give me your hand a moment.” He held it out, and she took it. “I know we had to have this conversation, John. It couldn’t be otherwise. But we’re both confused—tired—too close up to events to see them clearly in perspective. We mustn’t rush into this madly.” His heart rejoiced, but he said nothing. “I’m speaking as your companion now, in a very queer world. You’ve no idea how queer it is that a man like you should want a woman like me—and that a woman like me—”
She withdrew her hand.
“Yes, mad, John, absolutely mad. I’m nearly ten years older t
han you are.”
“I’ll still love your white hairs.”
“You say all the hackneyed things so convincingly!”
“I’ll repeat the most hackneyed thing of the lot. Will you marry me?”
“Will you ask me again in six months—if you want to? Then we’ll both know.”
“It’s a bargain, Nadine. I’ll keep it.”
Then silence entered the room and lingered for a while. It was the silence of life, destined to be broken. Not far above them lay the completer silence of death, no less happy.
“Nadine,” said John suddenly. “I wonder—would it be possible—understood?—if you helped me upstairs to see Grandma Aveling for just one moment before we go?”
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