While she was wondering what on earth one was supposed to reply to this, he had turned on his heel and left her, and to this day she had never thought of a suitable reply—in words, that is to say. In actual fact, she took pleasure in proving him wrong every day of her life, by working harder and more conscientiously than any other assistant in the Laboratory.
Hope was no fool, and she had thought once or twice since that perhaps that had been his exact intention. She hated to think she had been made to do anything Errol Tamberly wanted—but she went on working hard, for the sake of her own self-respect, if nothing else.
When she married Richard she would probably go on working at the Laboratory for a time at least, but it would be pleasant to feel that she was an independent married woman and could turn her back at any moment on Errol Tamberly and his Laboratory—for it would be practically his, now that her father was dead.
As she reached this pleasant point in her reflections, the sharp ring of the door-bell interrupted her.
Hope glanced at the clock and saw that it was rather soon for the children to be home. It was just possible that Richard had got away a little early—
She ran quickly to the door and opened it, and her exclamation of pleasure and sudden flush and brightening of her eyes would have told the most casual observer that here was the one person in the world whom she most wanted to see.
“Oh, Richard, how lovely of you to manage to get away!”
“Darling girl, the praise isn’t due to me.” The tall, good-looking man who followed her into the sitting-room laughed and kissed her. “I hate to hand it to him, but it’s thanks to old Browning that I got away early.”
“Oh, well, it’s the same thing,” Hope declared. “Anyway, the important thing is that you’re here. The children won’t be home for half an hour at least. Shall I get you some tea?”
“No.” He smilingly put out his hand and drew her down on to the arm of the chair. “Stay here and let me look at you. That’s better than any tea. Tell me what you’ve been doing with yourself.”
“Nothing very much. I had the day off, you know, and took the children to the dentist this morning—routine, nothing else, thank goodness, but one has to do it every holiday, and Bridget declares her holidays are spoilt until that’s over. Then they went to the Zoo this afternoon with one of the older boys from Tony’s school, and I had Enid Feldon here to tea. We used to go to school together, and we’ve always kept in touch.”
“Did she know about—us?”
“No. She—she came specially to say how sorry she was about Mother and Daddy. She knew them both. We talked mostly about them. I thought of telling her, and then it seemed best to wait until I’ve seen Doctor Tamberly and everything’s arranged for the future and—”
“Is Tamberly arranging our future?” Richard smiled at her, but his tone was slightly dry.
“No. Of course not! I just thought—”
“Yes, I know. I’m only teasing you. Go on about your friend Enid.”
“Oh, there’s nothing much to say about her. She’s very warm-hearted and kind. She seemed to think the really important thing was that we shouldn’t be short of money.”
“It’s quite an important thing, I assure you.”
“Oh, yes, of course, but—it isn’t one of the biggest things, Richard.”
He tipped his head back and grinned up at her without saying anything, and she thought for the thousandth time how attractive those light grey eyes were in his tanned face and how much she loved the slightly untidy way his brown hair fell forward over his forehead. And when Richard smiled you knew at once that he knew all about the art of living, and that it was perfectly easy to work hard and enthusiastically and still preserve charm and a sense of proportion and general graciousness in life.
“Richard, why do you laugh at me when I say money isn’t one of the biggest things?” she exclaimed, half vexed and half amused herself.
“Because I love to hear how unworldly you are, in spite of your apparent common sense,” he assured her. “You wait until you are short of money and see how your sense of values changes.”
“That’s what Enid said,” Hope admitted with a smile.
“Hm-hm, our friend Enid seems a lady of worldly common sense.”
“Meaning that I have none?”
“No, darling—not meaning that at all. How should you know about something you’ve never experienced? Only you must allow a sordid-minded creature like myself to smile when you speak of being hard up or not hard up from a purely academic point of view.”
“Richard, you’re not sordid-minded!”
He laughed then, and pulled her down on to his knee and kissed her.
“Sufficiently so to know that what you speak of with such fine scorn can spoil almost anything in the world.”
“Richard, it can’t! Lack of money couldn’t spoil our love, for instance.”
“Not our love, perhaps, but our life,” he assured her, with a smile which had’ a certain element of gravity in it by now.
“You don’t really think that?” She leant back against his arm and looked up at him with wide anxious eyes.
“Don’t look like that, love.” He touched her cheek with loving fingers. “There isn’t a lack of money, so there’s nothing to spoil our lives.”
“Yes, but, for the sake of argument—”
“All right, purely for the sake of argument—” He smiled at her teasingly. “What do you want to say—for the sake of argument?”
“How could a lack of money spoil our lives. Aren’t our feelings stronger than any financial considerations?”
“Of course. But the general circumstances of living aren’t. Here we are, Hope—both of us people with rather expensive tastes. I don’t mean by that we couldn’t do without some of the things we have, but we are used to regarding as essentials quite a lot of things that some people regard as luxuries. We should feel miserable, restless, even slightly degraded without them. Go a little further down the scale and we should be genuinely unhappy, and a little further down still—and life would be impossible.”
“You mean life together would be impossible?”
“I mean, darling, that, since sixpence has never yet been made to do the work of a shilling, it would be quite impossible for you and me to live on the salary which only just keeps me afloat in that stratum of society in which it has pleased God to place me.”
“You’re laughing!”
“Of course I’m laughing,” he agreed, and did so.
“But a little bit serious too?”
“Just enough to remind you that all this need not trouble us in the least since I had the good fortune and taste to fall in love with the daughter of a wealthy man. But I also, as you will observe, have the bad taste to admit that the circumstance is a fortunate one.”
She was silent, staring thoughtfully into the fire.
“Have I shocked you?” He kissed the tip of her ear.
“No. Of course not. It’s much more sensible to look facts in the face than to pretend quixotically that they aren’t there. I was only wondering, like a sentimental heroine, if you’d love me less if I were poor.”
“And you really want an answer to that?”
“Um-hm.”
“Well, I shouldn’t. I should love you exactly the same. Only whether we should have any prospect of marrying and being happy is another thing. I should probably have to be very noble and heroic in my turn and go away without telling you I loved you, because I should know I could only offer you a life in which you’d be miserable.”
Hope looked very serious for a moment. Then suddenly her mood changed and she flung her arms round his neck and kissed him.
“Oh, how silly we are even to talk about it. How silly I am, I mean, because it was I who started it. If darling Daddy had lived there would always have been my allowance, and—and now I suppose I’m what you’d call quite a rich girl. So there’s nothing to worry about, is there?”
“Nothin
g,” he assured her with a smile. “Except that I must go now, my darling. Your two infants will be in any minute now, and since we’ve agreed not to explain me to them until after everything is settled—”
“Yes, of course. I’ll be glad when this week-end’s over and I’ve done my duty by hearing whatever Errol Tamberly has to say. It’s so dreadfully unsettling not being able to make any real decisions or look ahead.”
He laughed and lifted her off his knee and stood up. “Well, don’t get the idea that Errol Tamberly holds our destinies in the hollow of his hand.”
“Good heavens! of course not. It’s only that, in a way, he’ll be speaking for—for Daddy and Mother.”
“I know.”
He kissed her very tenderly at that, and kept his arm round her as they went to the door together.
“Good-bye, dearest.”
“Good-bye, Richard. I’ll ring you up as soon as I get back from Orterville on Sunday night. Or if we stay overnight, I’ll ring up Monday lunchtime.”
“Right, dear.”
As he turned away, the door of the lift at the end of the corridor opened and Tony and Bridget were firmly ejected by the lift-attendant.
“No, you can’t work this ‘ere lift. I’ve told you so a hundred times before, and I tell you so the hundred and first time now. So run along, the pair of you.”
They ran along, shouting good-bye over their shoulder with a friendliness quite undiminished by this prohibition. As Richard passed them, he smiled irresistibly, and Bridget, who was on good terms with all the world, said, “Hello.”
“Who was that man?” she inquired interestedly, the moment they had come into the flat and Hope had shut the door.
“Just a friend of mine who called.”
“What sort of a friend?”
“How do you mean?—’what sort of a friend’?”
“Well, I mean—is he a friendly friend or just an acquaintance sort of friend?”
‘I think you might call him a friendly friend,” Hope admitted with a smile. “How did you enjoy yourselves?”
“It was lovely,” Bridget assured her. “But I wish I wasn’t too old to go on the elephants.”
“Elephants!” snorted Tony contemptuously. “I liked the insecks best. We saw some spiders that eat their young. Did you know there were spiders that eat their young?” Hope said that she had had a horrid suspicion of the fact. “Well, I don’t believe it,” cried Bridget, who was tenderhearted. “If they eat their young, how is it that there are any of them left?”
“Perhaps they only eat them when they’re very hungry,” suggested Tony. “And then when they get past a certain age p’r’aps the others don’t want to eat them after all. How young do you suppose the young have to be for the others to eat them, Hope?”
Hope, who saw this discussion stretching into infinity, said truthfully that she had no idea, and, talking of eating, weren’t they ready for their supper?
Fortunately this proved a welcome diversion and the subject of the infanticidal spiders was dropped.
“What time is our train down to Orterville tomorrow?” inquired Bridget, doing more than justice to the meal.
“We’re catching the two-thirty from Charing Cross. I understand Doctor Tamberly’s expected sometime before lunch, and I daresay his mother will want him to herself for a bit. If we arrive round about tea-time, that should be all right.”
“Did Doctor Tamberly fly back?”
“I think so. Yes—of course he must have because of the time.”
“I think he’s jolly brave,” Bridget said thoughtfully and solemnly. “You’d think he’d be afraid of an aeroplane after what happened.”
“Doctor Tamberly isn’t afraid of anything,” stated Tony with authority.
“I don’t see how you can know that,” Bridget countered quickly, resenting this assumption of superior knowledge.
“Well, I do know it.”
“You can’t know it. And, anyway, he is afraid of someone. He’s afraid of Hope.”
“Afraid of me!” exclaimed Hope, while Tony gave vent to a sound which was something between a snort and a hoot and clearly indicative of mirthful scepticism.
“It’s quite true. That time Mrs. Tamberly and he took us to the pantomine last Christmas I asked him if he didn’t like you in that silver fox fur Daddy had given you for Christmas. And he said, ‘Most impressive,’ and I asked him what he meant by that and he said, ‘Quite lovely but very terrifying,’ so there you are.”
“He didn’t say that?” exclaimed Hope, flushing unexpectedly.
‘He did.’
“What impertinence!”
Bridget drank cocoa and stared at her sister over the rim of her cup.
“I don’t think he meant it to be impert’nent,” she said reflectively.
“I expect he meant it for a joke,” Tony explained boredly.
“But it’s not funny,” protested Bridget.
“No. But perhaps he thought it was. People often think things are when they aren’t,” Tony pointed out with innocent cynicism.
“Quite so,” said Hope hastily, and privately decided not to wear her silver fox fur tomorrow after all. Not that it mattered what silly thing Errol Tamberly had said to Bridget at the pantomine. But, anyway, she wouldn’t wear it.
However, when tomorrow came, it brought with it the kind of cool, treacherous wind in which an English April excels. It was obviously a day for a fur with one’s suit. It would be ridiculous to leave it off simply because of some silly remark made some months ago. And anyway—
Hope wore the silver fox fur, and was glad that neither of the children seemed to find the fact noteworthy.
The journey down to Orterville took something over an hour, and all three of them were a good deal subdued by the thought of what lay ahead. Hope was the only one of the three who actively disliked the idea of having to discuss their intimate concerns with Dr. Tamberly, but the children—young though they were—were quite capable of realizing that, making this visit, they were also making the last approach possible to the parents they had loved and lost.
Until now it had sometimes been difficult not to believe that, though there was no home to go to during these holidays, that was only because their parents had prolonged their stay abroad, and next holidays all would be as it always had been. This meeting with Dr. Tamberly, who had so recently come from the scene of the tragedy, was going to bring it all much nearer and make it more horribly believable.
Once or twice Hope glanced anxiously at Bridget, and noticed that though she looked out of the window with great attention and apparent interest, her mouth quivered from time to time.
‘They’re such good children!’ thought Hope, full of anxious love for them. ‘Richard and I must marry as soon as possible and have a home for them to come to in the holidays.’
She slipped her hand into Bridget’s and squeezed it sympathetically, receiving in return a fervent handclasp and a rather unsteady smile.
Orterville was little more than a country halt, and when they got out of the train there was only one solitary figure, walking impatiently up and down the platform.
“There’s Doctor Tamberly,” exclaimed Bridget, coming to a dead stop as he walked towards them.
Then at the sight of him—so familiar in himself, so reminiscent of other more familiar figures—the tears which she had been keeping back with difficulty for the last hour suddenly became uncontrollable, and with a sob she flung her arms around Errol Tamberly and buried her face against him.
Without hesitation, the big, dark man picked her up off the ground, kissing her and holding her close in a way that rather astonished Hope.
“She’ll—she’ll be all right in a minute,” Hope said, a good deal moved herself.
“Yes, of course. Come along. I’ve got the car waiting.”
He carried Bridget out of the station, Hope and Tony following rather solemnly behind.
“It’s a good job we’ve got him, really, isn’t it?�
�� whispered Tony. And Hope—who had certainly not regarded Errol Tamberly in that light—said surprisedly:
“Y-yes. I suppose so.”
Bridget recovered quite quickly, but seemed glad to be installed in the front of the car with Dr. Tamberly, while Hope sat in the back with Tony. Both children, she noted with surprise, seemed to derive considerable comfort from Errol Tamberly’s presence, possibly because he represented a real grown-up to them, and gave them a sense of security which a mere elder sister failed to impart.
Very little was said on the short drive to the house, and Hope, from her corner of the back seat, spent the time studying Errol Tamberly—or as much of him as could be seen from her somewhat diagonal point of view.
His hat was pulled rather far down and slightly to one side, so that it almost touched the one thick dark eyebrow which she could see. It was a strong, uncompromising face. Not exactly a handsome face—certainly not in the way Richard was handsome. The bone-structure was good, but on the heavy side, the eyes dark and penetrating and a little frightening, and one certainly could not imagine that rather full, firm mouth saying “No” and ultimately changing it to “Yes.”
Her father had always maintained that he was a good friend. That might be so, but of one thing Hope felt certain—he would be a most formidable enemy.
None of them had ever been to the Tamberly home before, and both the children exclaimed with pleasure at the sight of the long, uneven mellow brick house, with ivy climbing up the tall chimney-stacks.
“Oh, isn’t it pretty! Look at that yellow moss in among the red tiles,” cried Bridget, greatly consoled.
“And doesn’t it look old! Is it very old? Is there a ghost inquired Tony hopefully.
“Oh, no! I hope not. I don’t want a ghost,” Bridget protested anxiously. “There isn’t a ghost, is there, Doctor Tamberly? I couldn’t bear it.”
“There’s no ghost,” Dr. Tamberly stated categorically, and lifted Bridget out of the car, before he turned to open the front door.
Away Went Love Page 2