Читать книгу Nothing Venture - Dora Amy Elles - Страница 8

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At nine o’clock on the morning of August 16th Jervis Weare was married to Nan Forsyth in the church of St. Justus, Carrington Square. It is a peculiarly ugly church. The heavy old-fashioned gallery which runs round three sides of it induces a perpetual dusk. Nan came out of the bright morning sunshine into the dusk, which smelt of pews and varnish and old age. It was a very depressing smell.

Mr Page gave her away disapprovingly, and he and the verger were the only witnesses. She looked once at Jervis, and saw him as a tall, aloof shadow. She could guess at the frown she could not see. When he took her hand and put the ring on it, his was hot and dry. He rammed the ring down, and there it was.

They got up from their knees and went into the vestry. She wrote herself for the last time Nan Forsyth.

“And now your father’s name here, Mrs Weare.”

It was the two things coming together that took her off her balance. Mrs Weare—and her father dead in a far country, not knowing. There wasn’t anyone to know or care. She had not told Cynthia, because there would have been too much to tell. Tears stung in her eyes; the register disappeared in a mist.

“Your father’s name—just here, please. Full Christian names.”

She closed her eyes for a moment hard, then, opening them, bent and wrote, “Nigel Forsyth,” and stood aside whilst Mr Page and the verger signed.

They came out into the sunlight again. Mr Page shook hands with them both and walked away. They watched him go. Then, as he turned the corner, Jervis Weare became aware that his wife was addressing him. Her voice had reached him, not her words. He saw her standing there in her grey dress and black hat, and said,

“I beg your pardon—I didn’t hear what you said.”

“I said good-bye,” said Nan.

He looked a little startled. Since their first interview they had not met till now. He said,

“Where are you going?”

“Back to Cynthia,” said Nan. “I haven’t told her yet.”

Jervis was not interested in Cynthia. He frowned and said,

“I think we must talk first.”

Nan said, “Why?” and got a hard look.

“One talks because one has things to say. I’ve got things to say, and I don’t propose to say them here. If you’ll come over to the house—”

They crossed the square in silence. Nan wondered what he was going to say to her. She had got hold of herself again. There was a blue sky overhead and a light fresh wind; the sun shone. She wished that they could have talked to one another under this clear sky.

Jervis’s room was not dark like the church, and the two windows were open to the garden. The air that flowed in had been warmed by the sun. She went and stood by the window so as to get as near to the garden as possible. Nan was always friends with a garden.

“What did you want to talk to me about?” she said, looking across to where he stood on the hearth, one foot on the fender and an arm lying along the mantelshelf.

“I wanted to tell you that Mr Page is seeing about that two thousand pounds. Have you a banking account?”

He saw her smile for the first time.

“Oh no,” she said.

“You will have to have one. You’d better see Mr Page about it, and when you have opened the account he will pay the money in. Then, as regards yourself, I have signed a settlement which gives you five hundred a year.”

The colour flamed into Nan’s face.

“Oh, you mustn’t!”

“Did you imagine that I shouldn’t make you an allowance?”

“I don’t want you to. I can get a job.”

Mr Jervis Weare assumed a lordly tone.

“As to that, you can please yourself. A hundred and twenty-five pounds a quarter will be paid into your account.”

The colour flamed higher. Women are strange creatures. She would take two thousand pounds for Cynthia without a qualm—it seemed a very right and just arrangement—but to take an allowance for herself was a thing that shamed her through and through.

“I can’t take it,” she said in a voice whose distress pierced Jervis Weare’s self-absorption.

He reacted with a feeling of acute annoyance.

“Do you mind considering my position for a moment? Do you really expect me to marry a girl and leave her penniless? For heaven’s sake be rational! Why should you have married me if you were going to take up a position like this?”

Why! Nan could have laughed and wept at the question. If they had been in the Palace of Truth, she would have said, “Oh, my dear! Why? To save you from being robbed. To save you from the sort of girl you might have married. To save you from picking someone up off the streets.” But since these were things to be hidden at any cost, she frowned, looked at him gravely, and said,

“I hadn’t thought of it like that.”

He jerked an impatient shoulder.

Nan looked away. Such a large creature. And how many years older than herself? Eight at least. But that jerk had put him back into the nursery before her eyes—a hurt, angry child; hurt and angry past his power of concealment. Her heart went out to him with a rush, and she looked away for fear he would see what was in her eyes. Her heart said, “Oh, my dear!” Her lips spoke quickly,

“I quite see your point of view; but it is too much—really.”

The hurt, angry child disappeared. A rather lofty stranger said in tones of icy politeness,

“The deed is already signed. I would prefer not to discuss the matter any more.”

Nan looked up with a sparkle in her eyes. And then the sparkle died, because she saw him suddenly so tired, so done. She could guess that he had not slept for nights, and, because she loved him very much, she could guess how his anger had ridden him at this fence of marriage and now had left him bogged upon its farther side. He had had one aim—to defeat Rosamund; to score in the game of wits; to keep what she had planned to take from him—and in order to win he had mortgaged all his future. Now that the game was won, he had no pleasure in it. He did not care whether he was a beggar or not. He saw himself tied to a stranger, and all that he wanted was to be rid of her as quickly as possible.

Nan gave a little nod.

“Very well,” she said.

Then she came up to him with her hand out.

“Good-bye.”

For the second time that morning their hands touched. He said “Good-bye” with an air of relief. Then, with her hand still in his, she looked past him and saw the photograph. It hung with other groups above the mantelshelf. Nan did not see the other groups at all. She saw a lawn set about with trees; an old man in a chair—Mr Ambrose Weare, whom she had seen once; a woman standing beside him—Rosamund Carew, whom she had never seen at all; and a third figure—a man walking across the lawn, his back to the camera.

It was at the third figure that Nan stared. Her hand tightened unconsciously on Jervis Weare’s hand.

“Who’s that?” she said.

He turned. Their hands dropped apart.

Nan stood on tiptoe, pointing.

“Who is that?”

He threw her an astonished look. She had a bright colour in her cheeks; her lips were parted. Before he could look away she flashed round upon him.

“Who is that man?”

Jervis became, if possible, a shade more distant.

“His name is Leonard—Robert Leonard—a connection of—my grandfather’s. I don’t think you are very likely to have met him.”

“Is he a friend of yours?”

His voice stiffened.

“A family connection.”

Nan’s right hand took hold of her left.

“You are thinking it’s very strange that I should ask questions about Mr Leonard, but I’ve got a reason. Will you please tell me where he has been for the last ten years?”

He took a little more serious notice of what she was saying. Ten years ago she would have been a child; her interest in Robert Leonard could not possibly be a personal one.

“Why do you want to know?”

“Because I think I saw him once ten years ago.”

“Once! Ten years ago! Good Lord! What sort of memory are you giving yourself?”

“Don’t you remember anything that happened ten years ago? I do—little things—all sorts of things—like little sharp pictures in my mind. When I saw that, I remembered him. Won’t you tell me what I asked?”

He laughed outright.

“Why, the photograph doesn’t even show his face!”

Nan wasn’t remembering a face; she was remembering just that square thickset figure, and just that turn of the head.

“Tell me,” she said.

“What do you want to know? Ten years ago—ten years ago .... well, exactly ten years ago he was over on a visit from South America staying with my grandfather. I remember that because I know he was staying in the house when I nearly drowned myself out on Croyston rocks.”

“Yes?” said Nan in a little half voice. “How—how did you do that?”

“Oh, slipped up on the rocks and banged a hole in the back of my head. The tide was coming in, and they only found me just in time.”

Nan had turned very pale.

“Mr Leonard found you?”

“Oh no—he wasn’t anywhere about. It was an American fellow who was taking photographs.”

Mr Ferdinand Fazackerley rushed into Nan’s mind—important, efficient, and immensely talkative. And then he was gone again, and she saw the beach, the jagged rocks which hid the pool, and the thickset figure of a man coming from behind the rocks and walking away towards the headland. He was walking away from her, and he was walking away from Jervis, who lay half in and half out of the pool with a hole in the back of his head and the tide coming up. She said breathlessly,

“I want to know about Mr Leonard. What happened to him after that?”

“He went back to South America.”

“At once?”

He stared at her.

“I don’t know—I was ill.”

“And when you got well—was he there then?”

“No, he’d gone.”

“Where is he now?”

“Down at Croyston. He’s got a chicken farm.”

“Is that—near your house?” It was a child’s question asked in a child’s troubled voice.

“Three and a half miles,” said Jervis Weare.

“Thank you,” said Nan.

She put out her hand again.

“Good-bye,” she said.

Then just by the door she turned. He had crossed to open it with mechanical politeness. Her movement brought her round facing him as he stood with his hand on the door. Her lips were parted, and that direct gaze of hers puzzled him. It was evident that she wanted to say something. But what did she want to say, and would she say it, or would that astonishing nerve of hers fail to bring her up to the scratch? If he had known that what Nan wanted to say was, “Won’t you stop bothering about this wretched business and go off and play golf or something, and—and—go off to bed early and have a drink of hot milk the last thing?” would he have been moved to laughter, or to furious anger, or just possibly to something else? Nan wanted most earnestly to say these things, but her nerve failed before the bored politeness with which he was waiting for her to go.

This time she went without saying good-bye.