The lanky and leggy young man, who might have been between nineteen and twenty, was now sitting sprawled back in his armchair, one hand shading his eyes, staring out at the fields through the oriel window.
"Hello," said Holden, and stopped beside him.
"Oh!—Hello, sir."
Instinctively, as a schoolboy rises when a master enters the room, the young man had started to get to his feet; the newcomer grinned and waved him back.
"My name's Holden," he explained. "You're Ronald Merrick, aren't you?"
The young man stared at him. His face, ravaged by anguish only a few moments before, had smoothed itself out
"That’s right. How did you know . . . ?"
"Oh, I rather thought you were. Cigarette?"
"Th-thanks."
Holden saw instantly, as a light switch is clicked on, that he had made an ally. For this was the sort of young man who instinctively, out of a sixth sense, recognizes that congenial (and rare) type of schoolmaster whom he knows, whom he really respects, and in whom he sometimes confides as he will confide in no other person on this earth.
"Look, sir," pursued young Merrick, as he hastily scrabbled to light a match for their cigarettes. "Weren't you at Lupton before the war?"
"Yes."
"I thought I'd heard Tom Clavering speak about you! And: wait a minutel Didn't Celia tell Doris"—his eyes widened— "weren't you in MI5? Intelligence?"
"That’s right."
Ronald Merrick's dark-haired, rather Byronic good looks were set in a kind of glaze. Holden studied him as the young man sat there, half raised up out of his chair, in an old sports coat patched with leather at the elbows. He had the artist's face, the artist’s hands, the artist's discontent; but his jaw was strong, and Holden liked the set of his shoulders.
"You mean," young Merrick was so impressed as to be almost hypnotized, "you mess about in disguise? And get dropped out of planes in a parachute?"
"That sometimes had to be done, yes."
68
"Crikey!" breathed Ronald Merrick, and. his figure grew tense. He was obviously contrasting, in his mind, the wretched' ness of his own lot with what he conceived to be the bliss of messing about in disguise and foiling the Gestapo according to film versions of how this is done.
"Sir," he burst out hopelessly, and whacked his fist down on the arm of the chair, "why is life so... so...."
"Bloody?" suggested Holden.
The other looked a trifle startled. "Well—yes."
"Because it often is, Ronnie. I've been thinking exactly the same thing."
"You?"
"Yes. It depends on the nature of the trouble."
"Look, sir." Ronnie stared very hard at the cigarette between his clasped fingers. He cleared his throat "Do you know Doris Locke?"
"I've known her for a long time."
"And of course you know," his face darkened, "Mr. Marsh?"
"Yes."
"They're here now. In the Blue Drawing Room. I opened the door, I didn't mean to open the door, you understand; I just did. And they were..."
He stopped. Grinding out his cigarette on the glass top of the table, he jumped up in a fever of anguish and began to pace outside the embrasure. It never occurred to him to wonder whether or not Holden might understand what he was talking about; he simply assumed, like a sixth former in front of a master, that the latter would naturally be acquainted with any subject he chose to mention.
"You see, sir, I can't understand it!"
"Understand what?"
"It wouldn't be so bad," declared Ronnie, running his hands through his hair, "if I could only understand what Doris sees in him. I mean, a man old enough to be her father! See what I mean?"
"You were referring to Doris and—and Mr. Marsh?"
"Yes, of course. Mind you," added Ronnie, suddenly assuming a very lofty and disdainful attitude with his hand on the back of a chair, "I think I'm tolerably sophisticated myself. Broadminded, and all that these things happen. They're a part of nature, and we can't help 'em. If," he added anxiously, "you follow what I mean?"
"Yes. I think I follow you."
"But the point is, there ought to be decency in it!" Ronnie hesitated. "You take Mrs. Marsh; for instance. The one that died."
Holden's pulses gave a violent jump and throb, though he only continued to study the tip of his cigarette. "What about Mrs. Marsh?"
"Well she was all right. When she had an affair (mind; I'm not saying she did), then she chose somebody as old as herself: yes, and I should think a good deal older! But"—he dismissed Margot with a wave of the hand—"but Doris is different, don't you see?"
"Doris is on a different plane. Spiritually, and everything else, from all these other people. Naturally, I know there's never been anything of what you could call wrong between her and Marsh." This idea, to Ronnie, was quite plainly inconceivable. The mere thought of it so revolted him that he shied away from it.
"It's only," he argued, "a sort of adolescent fad. It always happens in books. The only trouble is," his voice rose, "what does Doris see in him? It isn't as if he were some dashing kind of bloke that women would fall for. I—I met Doris in London last night Took her dancing. I asked her if I could come down to Widestairs today. She said yes; only I couldn't go with her, because she'd be in the car," his face wrinkled up, "with Mr. Marsh. Even when I got to Widestairs, she was hiding from me. I came over here, hoping to find her..."
And again he found her.
At that moment, as Ronnie Merrick's voice trailed away, three persons appeared in the Long Gallery.
From the south end, up the little flight of carpeted stairs from the Painted Room, appeared Sir Danvers Locke. From the north end, down the little flight of stairs from the Blue Drawing Room, came Doris Locke and Thorley Marsh.
All three stopped and stood motionless.
The Long Gallery, with those curiously portentous and somehow menacing figures at each end, gave back no sound of footfall. Through three great windows, diamond panes of clear glass, purplish-tinged dusk touched the line of portraits hanging against the opposite wall. It touched a glint of gilt or ebony in portrait frame, but it softened the richer, more somber colors of the portraits themselves.
Sir Danvers Locke moved first.
They heard his footsteps creak and crack, slowly, down that gallery with its long strip of brownish carpet. Doris and Thorley advanced to meet him. They met in the middle, just by the embrasure of the oriel window where Holden and Ronnie Merrick were standing. Yet Holden had the feeling that he and Ronnie were forgotten, unnoticed, in that meeting of eyes.
Locke, in his early fifties, remained lean and fastidious looking even when he wore country plus fours. He carried a cap in one hand and an ash stick in the other. The iron-gray hair, the high intellectual forehead, the thick dark eyebrows, the prominent cheekbones and rather beaked nose, even Locke's mouth which should have worn its usual serene smile: these features were without expression, polite and waiting.
It was Doris, flushed and bright eyed, who broke the silence.
"Tell him, Thorley!" she cried. Thorley smiled, a little nervously. "Tell him,Thorley!"
You could see Thorley, under the line of watching portraits, adjusting his face as clearly as a man adjusts a necktie.
"Locke old man," he said in a low, hearty, sincere voice, "I hope you're going to congratulate me. Doris and I have decided to get married."
And nothing happened, during a long silence. Locke did not even nod or move. Thorley, who had started forward with his hand outstretched, stopped uncertainly. Thorley's eye fell on Ronnie Merrick, and his expression grew as black as thunder; but Thorley spoke quite pleasantly.
"I think we can excuse you, young man," he said.
"Yes," said Ronnie, abruptly coming to life like a young man who has been hypnotized. "Of course. Sorry to have intruded. Congratulations."
And he marched out of the gallery: long-legged, utterly disdainful, but bumping into a little chair before he r
eached the stairs to the Painted Room.
"Ronnie!" Doris cried out uncertainly, with a ring of contrition in her voice. "Wait! I didn't mean to be so . . . !"
"He's all right," Thorley told her reassuringly, and patted her arm. "Let him go. But your father..."
Doris's father, at the moment, had caught sight of Holden. Locke's face lighted up with the old smile, of virile charm, which made him seem a dozen years younger. Putting down cap and walking stick on the table, he grasped the wanderer's hand.
"My dear Holden," he exclaimed, "I'm delighted to see you back again! We're all delighted to hear your 'death' was only (what shall I say?) a ruse de guerre. No"—as Holden made a strong, embarrassed attempt to follow Ronnie—"no, don't go. I think you ought to remain. Tell me, my dear fellow: how was Italy? And did you get into Spain?" "Father!" cried Doris.
"Yes, my dear?" Locke dropped Holden's hand and turned around.
"Aren't you," gasped Doris, with her high color making the blue eyes seem paler, and shivering all over, "aren't you at least going to pay at-attention to me? I've been in love with Thorley for months and months and months. We're going to get married just as soon as ..."
"As soon as," remarked Locke, politely running his eye over Thorley's clothes, "as Mr. Marsh gets rid of that deep mourning he is now wearing?"
Silence.
It was a deadly thrust, however thin and lightly held seemed the rapier. Locke rolled an upholstered chair around so that its back was to the window, and sat down. Behind him lay the darkening moat, and the dim green fields dotted with a few beech trees. Thorley, deeply hurt and really shocked, stared back at him.
"I thought," Thorley burst out, "you were a friend of mine!"
"So I am," assented Locke, and inclined his head.
"I love her," said Thorley. It was impossible to doubt, apparently, his honesty or his deep feeling. Doris, still clutching at Thorley's sleeve, looked up at him with eyes of sheer adoration. Holden, in spite of himself, could not help feeling oddly touched.
"I love her," Thorley repeated, with real dignity. "Is there any reason, financial or—or social, why we shouldn't marry?"
"None whatever."
"Well, then!"
Locke crossed his knees comfortably.
"Let's put aside," he suggested, "certain considerations which (I suppose) don't matter. Young Merrick, who, with your exquisite courtesy, has just been kicked out of here..."
"I know. I'm sorry." Thorley passed a hand across his forehead. "But the damn little nuisance—!"
"The damn little nuisance, as you call him, is the son of my oldest friend, Lord Seagrave. He is also, I am inclined to believe, something of a genius."
Thorley, baffled, appealed to the ceiling.
"An artist!" he said.
"I beg your pardon," corrected Locke. "He is a painter. Whether or not he is an artist remains to be seen. There are very few good painters nowadays. They are afraid of color, and they are afraid of detail. Ronald is not He is now studying under Dufresnes, the only teacher in Europe," Locke lifted long fingers and snapped them, "worth that; and we shall see. Still! This is not important."
"I know that" retorted Thorley. "And I'm glad (if you'll excuse my saying so, old man) you have the sense to see it too. Then what’s the devil's so wrong if Doris and I get married?"
"You see no objection?"
"No!"
"Perhaps not" said Locke. "But before my daughter becomes your second wife, I should prefer to be sure how your first wife died."
Around the window-embrasure behind Locke's chair ran a window seat of padded red velvet Holden, dropping his long-dead cigarette on the floor, had crept into it All this time Holden had been experiencing the extraordinary sensation that one of the portraits—a Devereux lady of the seventeenth century, with wired ringlets—was looking at him fixedly. So strong was the illusion that he had to wrench his gaze away, even to look at Thorley, when Locke's quiet remark exploded.
Doris, who evidently had heard nothing of the undercurrents, dropped her hand from Thorley's arm and was staring at her father in bewilderment. Thorley's voice grew thick.
"You've been talking to Celia!" he said. "I beg your pardon?" said Locke.
"You've been talking to Celia," Thorley almost shouted. "The little devil's as mad as a coot and..." "Easy, Thorley!" said Holden, and got to his feet "I assure you," interposed Locke, turning round his dark arched brows and prominent cheekbones for a brief glance at Holden, "I haven't been talking to Celia. I haven't even seen her. I understand the poor girl has been," he hesitated, "ill."
"Her illness," Holden said bitterly, "consisting in the statement that Thorley had treated Margot brutally, and probably driven her to suicide."
But Holden stopped there. He couldn't literally and physically couldn't, pour out the whole grisly story. He didn't quite know why. But he couldn't He left it there, in the air, while Locke stared around and Doris uttered a gasp.. . "Indeed!" was Locke's only comment
"That's a he!" said Thorley.
"Indeed?" Locke inquired politely.
"I tell you, it's a lie," Thorley repeated, with white earnestness. "I think I must be the most misunderstood man on earth. But," he moistened his lips, "about Margot's death. If you haven't been talking to Celia, who have you been talking to?"
"Nobody," answered Locke calmly.
"But nobody's said anything about it!"
"Of course not. Certainly, at least, not in your hearing. But—my dear Marsh!"
"Well?"
"Your wife, in perfect health, dines at my house and goes home with you, and in less than twelve hours she is dead. I say no more. But if you imagine that nobody hereabouts has wondered at it, or has even thought about it, you've been living in a fool's paradise."
"I see," muttered Thorley. And he turned his head away.
But it was different with Doris.
After that one gasp, there had flitted across Doris's face such a wild, contemptuous, half-pitying look that she became incoherent. Her blue eyes, half tearful with hero worship, turned toward Thorley as toward a martyred champion fighting in a ring of enemies. Thorley gave her a brave smile and a half-humorous shrug of the shoulders, to imply that they were fighting together.
And so they were. Tough little Doris, with a mutinous underlip, braced herself as she saw her father bend forward to speak.
"Doris?"
"Yes, father?"
"Understand me, my dear. I don't say there's anything at all in these rumors against our friend Marsh."
"No, father?" (Her frantic lips half-breathed the words, "How nice!")
"I daresay there isn't, and I hope there isn't But it concerns your welfare. That's the only reason why I mention it at all."
"So now," Doris cried out suddenly, "you're pleading with me."
"I shouldn't exactly call it pleading, my dear."
"Shouldn't you? I should." Her voice rose to a small scream. "If s all very well for you to sit in the corner, like Voltaire or Anatole France or somebody: that is, when we're in public and not at home. But you see now I'm determined to marry Thorley (yes, and I can get married at nineteen; don't think I can't) and now you're pleading with me!"
"That was another matter, my dear, which I hadn't mentioned. After all, there is a considerable difference in your ages."
"Really?" said Doris, very pleased with herself. "Oh, I don't think that'll make much difference." "How can you be sure of that?"
"Weill" She lifted her shoulders and laughed. "I suppose by such a long time of what the lawyers call 'intimacy.'"
"Doris!" exclaimed Thorley, genuinely shocked that this should be mentioned in public. Thorley made fussed gestures which implored the others to be calm.
Danvers Locke was as white as a ghost.
"Intimacy." He managed to swallow the word.
"That's right, father. I'll use a cruder term if you like."
Locke's arms were extended along the arms of the chair, his fingers gently tapping.
"Oh, father dear! Ages before."
"So that," Locke spoke with an effort, "if anyone got the notion that for your sake (your sake!) Mr. Thorley Marsh might have hastened his wife's departure... ?"
"Locke, for God's sake!" said Thorley.
"Oh, why not be frank about it?" Doris demanded. She turned to Thorley with her eyes brimming over. "Darling," she said, "are you ashamed of loving me? I'm not ashamed of it. I'm proud. But I want them to understand you. I want them to see how fine and brave and noble you are."
"Yes, Thorley," observed Holden, not without dryness. "You might begin telling us how fine and brave and noble you are."
"Just one moment, please," said Doris, darting in immediately to defend her now-groggy champion. "If there's going to be any ghastly rot talked about how people behaved, let me say something. I—I shouldn't have said it else."
Here Doris swallowed hard.
"You—you always want to attack Thorley," she went on.
"And, of course, he's too contemptuous to say anything, or you'd hear a lot. Thorley’s been my lover. But who was Margot Marsh's lover?"
Locke started to get up from his chair, but sat down again. It was Holden who walked across to Doris.
"Margot," he asked, "had a lover?"
"Yes!" sniffed Doris.
"Who was he?"
"I don't know." Doris threw out her hands. "Thorley didn't know himself."
Doris's flares of rage were never of long duration. This one, under her father's cold and steady eye, began to flicker and falter. She caught at Thorley’s arm for support. Yet she fought back.
"That Woman," she gave Margot the capital letters of sheer hatred, "That Woman was so intolerably prudish—oh, dear me, yes!—and she'd never done anything like that before —oh, dear, no!—that she was terribly, terribly secret about it. You'd have thought it was an awful sin or something. She was wild about him toward the end, though, whoever he was. Absolutely wild. You could see the signs. And . . ."
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