Twilight, Julia Frankau [100 books to read in a lifetime txt] 📗

to let you know that I have an appointment with James Capel’s lawyer for Monday the 29th inst.

In desperation he wired back, “Name terms, Kennedy,” and paid reply. There were a few patients he was bound to see. The time had to be got through somehow. But at twelve o’clock he started for Carbies. Margaret had not expected to see him again. She had said good-bye to him, to the whole incident. Her “consciousness of rectitude,” as far as Peter Kennedy was concerned, was as complete as Mrs. Roope’s. She had found him little better than a country yokel, and now saw him with a future before him, a future she still vaguely meant to forward only vaguely. Definitely all her thoughts were with Gabriel and the hours they would pass together. She was meeting him at the station at three o’clock. She remembered the first time she had met him at Pineland station, and smiled at the remembrance. He might cut himself shaving with impunity now, and the shape of his hat or his coat mattered not one jot.

Not expecting Peter Kennedy, but Gabriel Stanton, she was already arrayed in one of her trousseau dresses, a simple walking-costume of blue serge, a shirt of fine cambric, and was spending a happy hour trying on hat after hat to decide not only which was most suitable but which was the most becoming. Hearing wheels on the gravel she looked out of the window. Seeing Peter she almost made up her mind not to go down. She had just decided on a toque of pansies… she might try the effect on Peter. She was a little disingenuous with herself, vanity was the real motive, although she sought for another as she went downstairs.

Peter was in the drawingroom, staring vacantly out of the window. He never noticed her new clothes. She saw that in his eyes, and it quenched any welcome there might have been in hers. It was her expression he answered with his impulsive:

“I had to come!”

“Had you?”

“You mustn’t be satirical,” he said desperately. “Or be what you like, what does it matter? I’d rather have shot myself than come to you with such news…” Her sudden pallor shook him. “You can guess of course.”

“No, I can’t.”

“That blasted woman!”

“Go on.”

“She has written again. Sit down.” She sank into the easychair. All her radiance was quenched, she looked piteous, pitiable. He could not look at her.

“I came up here yesterday afternoon, meaning to tell you. You were so damned happy I couldn’t get it out.”

“So damned happy!” she repeated after him, and the words were strange on her white lips, her laugh was stranger still and made him feel cold.

“You haven’t got to take it like that; we’ll find a way out. I suppose, after all, it’s only a question of money…”

“I cannot give her more money.”

“I’ve got some. I can get more. You know I haven’t a thing in the world you are not welcome to, you’ve made a man of me.”

“It is not because I haven’t the money to give her.” She spoke in a strange voice, it seemed to have shrunk somehow, there was no volume in it, it was small and colourless.

“I don’t know how much she wants. I have wired her and paid a reply. I daresay her answer is there by now. I’ll phone and ask if you like.”

“What’s the use?”

“Well, we’d better know.”

“He said that is what would happen. That she would come again and yet again.” She was taking things even worse than he expected. “He will never give in to her, never…” She collapsed fitfully, like an electric lamp with a broken wire. “Everything is over, everything.”

“I don’t see that.”

She went on in that small colourless voice:

“I know. We don’t see things the way Gabriel does. I promised to tell him, to consult him if she came again.”

He hesitated, even stammered a little before he answered:

“He… he had better not be told of this.”

She laughed again, that little incongruous hopeless laugh.

“I haven’t any choice, I promised him.”

“Promised him what?”

“To let him know if she came back again, if I heard anything more about it.”

“This isn’t exactly ‘ it.’ “This is a fresh start altogether. I suppose you know how I hate what I am saying. The position can’t be faced, it’s got to be dodged. It’s not only Gabriel Stanton she’s got hold of…”

He did not want to go on, and she found some strange groundless hope in his hesitation.

“Not Gabriel Stanton?” she asked, and there seemed more tone in her voice, more interest. She leaned forward.

“Perhaps you’d like to see her letter.” He gave it to her, then without a word went over to the other window, turned his face away from her.

There was a long silence. Margaret’s face was aflame, but her heart felt like ice. Peter Kennedy to be dragged in, to have to defend herself from such a charge! And Gabriel yet to be told! She covered her eyes, but was conscious presently that the man was standing beside her, speaking.

“Margaret!” His voice was as unhappy as hers, his face ravaged. “It is not my fault. I’d give my life it hadn’t happened. That night you had the heart attack I did stay for hours, prowled about… then slept on the drawingroom sofa. Margaret…”

“Oh! hush! hush!”

“You must listen, we must think what is best to be done,” he said desperately. “Let me go up to London and see her. I’m sure I can manage something. It’s not… it’s not as if there were anything in it.” His tactlessness was innate, he meant so well but blundered hopelessly, even putting a hand on her knee in the intensity of his sympathy. She shook it off as if he had been the most obnoxious of insects. “Let me go up and see her,” he pleaded. “Authorise me to act. May I see if there is an answer to my telegram? I sent it a little before nine. May I telephone?”

“Do what you like.”

“You loathe me.”

“I wish you had never been born.”

He was gone ten minutes… a quarter of an hour perhaps. When he came back she had slipped on to the couch, was lying in a huddled-up position. For a moment, one awful moment, he thought she was dead, but when he lifted her he saw she had only fainted. He laid her very gently on the sofa and rang for help, glad of her momentary unconsciousness. He knew what he intended to do now, and to what he must try to persuade her. Stevens came and said, unsympathetically enough:

“She’s drored her stays too tight. I told her so this morning.” But she worked about her effectively and presently she struggled back, seeming to have forgotten for the moment what had stricken her.

“Have I had another heart attack?” she asked feebly.

“No.”

“I told you you were lacing too tight. I knew what would happen with these new stays and things.” She actually smiled at Stevens, a wan little smile.

“I feel rather seedy still.”

Peter took the cushion from her, made her lie flat. Then she said in a puzzled way, her mind working slowly:

“Something happened?”

There was little time to be lost and he answered awkwardly, abruptly:

“I brought you bad news.”

She shut her eyes and lay still thinking that over.

She opened them and saw his working face and anxious eyes.

“About Mrs. Roope,” he reminded her. They were alone, the impeccable Stevens had gone for a hot-water bottle.

“What is it exactly? Tell me all over again. I am feeling rather stupid. I thought we had settled and finished with her?”

“She has reopened the matter, dragged me in.” She remembered now, and the flush in his face was reflected in hers. “But it is only a question of money. I’ve got her terms.”

“We must not give her money. Gabriel says…”

He would not let her speak, interrupting her hurriedly, continuing to speak without pause.

“The sum isn’t impossible. As a matter of fact I can find it myself, or almost the whole amount. Then there’s Lansdowne, he’s really not half a bad fellow when you know him. And he’s as rich as Croesus, he would gladly lend it to me.”

“No. Nonsense! Don’t be absurd.” She was thinking, he could see that she was thinking whilst she spoke.

“It’s my affair as much as yours,” he pleaded. “There is my practice to consider.”

She almost smiled:

“Then you actually have a practice?”

“I’m going to have. Quite a big one too.

Haven’t you told me so?” He was glad to get the talk down for one moment to another level. “It would be awfully bad for me if anything came out. I am only thinking of myself. I want to settle with her once for all.”

Her faint had weakened her, she was just recovering from it. Physically she was more comfortable, mentally less alert, and satisfied it should be so.

“Perhaps I took it too tragically?” she said slowly. “Perhaps as you say, in a way, it is your affair.”

He answered her eagerly.

“That’s right. My affair, and nothing to do with your promise to him. Then you’ll leave it in my hands…”

“You go so fast,” she complained.

“The time is so short; she can’t have anything else up her sleeve. I funked telling you, I’ve left it so late.” He showed more delicacy than one would have given him credit for and stumbled over the next sentences. “He would hate to think of me in this connection. You’d hate to tell him. Just give me leave to settle with her. I’ll dash up to town.”

“How much does she want?”

“Five hundred. I can find the money.”

“Nonsense; it isn’t the money. I wish I knew what I ought to do,” she said indecisively. “If only I hadn’t promised…”

“This is nothing to do with what you promised … this is a different thing altogether.”

He was sophistical and insistent and she was weak, allowed herself to be persuaded. The money of course must be her affair, she could not allow him to be out of pocket.

They disputed about this and he had more arguments to bring forward. These she brushed aside impatiently. If the money was to be paid she would pay it, could afford it better than he.

“I’m sure I am doing wrong,” she repeated when she wrote out the cheque, blotted and gave it to him.

“He’ll never know. No one will ever know.”

Peter Kennedy was only glad she had yielded. He had, of course, no thought of himself in the matter. Why should he? In losing her he lost everything that mattered, that really mattered. And he had never had a chance, not an earthly chance. He believed her happiness was only to be secured by this marriage, and he dreaded the effect upon her health of any disappointment or prolonged anxiety. “Once you are married it doesn’t matter a hang what she says or does,” he said gloomily or consolingly when she had given him the cheque.

“Suppose… suppose… Gabriel were to get to know?” she asked with distended eyes. Some reassurance she found for herself after Peter Kennedy had gone, taking with him the cheque that was the price of her deliverance.

Would Gabriel be so inflexible, seeing what was at stake? The last fortnight in a way had drawn them so-much closer to each other. They must live together in that house within the Sanctuary at Westminster. Must. Oh! if only life.would stand still until next Wednesday! The next hour or two crushed heavily over her. She knew she had done wrong, that she had