Читать книгу Danger Calling - Dora Amy Elles - Страница 5

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The letter came next day.

Lindsay woke up to the sound of Poole drawing up the blind. He must have been sleeping more soundly than usual, for, as a rule, if the knock at the door did not rouse him, the firm manner in which Poole put down the tray with his early cup of tea did. The tray was already by his side, and, propped against the edge of it, a letter from Marian Rayne. He hated reading letters in bed, but it was Poole’s habit to pick out Miss Rayne’s letters and bring them in with the tea. He could, of course, have told Poole not to do this; but he was aware that if he did so, he would drop tremendously in his estimation. Sometimes he felt as if living up to Poole was rather a strain. He ran the flat and all that was in it, and there were times when Lindsay suspected that he ran Lindsay Trevor, and times when he wondered how Poole and Marian were going to get on together.

Poole was the perfect servant, but like all perfect servants he had very strong views as to how this perfection should be maintained. He had saved Lindsay’s life twice in the last year of the war, and had looked upon him, respectfully but quite firmly, as his own property ever since.

When he had pulled up the blind, he turned from the window, displaying a pale clean-shaven face, sandy hair rather thin on the top, short sandy lashes, grey eyes, and a rather wooden cast of countenance. He told Lindsay the time and withdrew. In exactly a quarter of an hour Lindsay would hear him turning on the bath water.

Meanwhile Lindsay took a look at the weather, and thought what a beastly day it was—one of those unconvinced sort of fogs that are havering about whether they will turn to rain or settle down into a real pea-souper. He thought December was a pretty good month to be getting out of England, and wondered where they would fetch up for Christmas. They hadn’t been able to make up their minds about that.

Then he yawned, stretched, sat up, and reached for Marian Rayne’s letter. It was very light and thin. She usually wrote as she talked, just running on and on. This envelope couldn’t possibly hold more than a single sheet. He felt a little cheated as he switched on his reading-lamp and opened the letter. There was only one sheet, and on that sheet there were only a few blotted lines:

“Lin, I can’t marry you. It’s no use—I can’t. If you love me the least little bit, don’t try and make me change my mind. I can’t do it.

“Marian.”

He read the words, and then he read them again. He read them very slowly. He read them for the third time. Everything seemed to have come to a full stop.

He went on reading the letter, but he couldn’t make himself feel that it had anything to do with Lindsay Trevor. It was like something read in a book. Afterwards it reminded him of trying to read Dutch—if you know English and German, the words all look perfectly clear and plain, and yet you can’t make a page of it mean anything. He couldn’t make Marian’s letter mean anything.

He put it down and drank his tea. Then he took the letter up and began to read it all over again. Marian wasn’t going to marry him; he had hold of the words. But she didn’t say why. She only said, “Lin, I can’t marry you.” Why? She didn’t say why; she just said, “I can’t marry you—I can’t.”

He found that the hand in which he was holding the letter had started to shake a good deal. He tried holding it with the other hand, but it wasn’t any better, so he put the letter down. There is nothing that makes you feel more of a fool than to see your own hand shaking like a bit of rag in the wind.

Then all at once the thing got through to where he could feel it. Marian—Marian wasn’t going to marry him. It had got right through like fire that has been smouldering in a garment and suddenly reaches the flesh.

Lindsay sat there with the letter in his hand and the words of it burning themselves slowly into his consciousness—slowly, deeply, surely. The moments slid into minutes, very long minutes. And then, when realization was full, he forced himself to face it.

It was a relief to find that he could think quite clearly. The feeling of shock and pain seemed to be quite separate from his thinking. He looked again at the letter. Marian was not going to marry him. She gave no reason, and he knew of none—he knew of none. Something surged up in him at the word. There are words that touch the springs of agony. No reason—none—none. Other words pressed in through the breach made by this surging something—No more—never. He beat them back, closed down the breach, and turned ordered thought upon the catastrophe.

He had spent the week-end with the Raynes—the house very full, and so not much time alone with Marian; but no quarrel, no coldness—or none of which he had been aware. Marian was pale. He saw her for a moment like that, looking in, as it were, upon the havoc she had made—watching it; a little pale, a little pensive; black hair just pushed from her forehead, black lashes just drooping over grey-green eyes. The impression was startlingly distinct. He went resolutely back to the week-end. She was pale. Mr Rayne had joked about it—“Too many dressmakers!” he said. “Why does a girl want ten times as many dresses as usual just because she’s going to get married? She can’t wear more than one of them at a time—can she?”

It shocked him horribly to realize that he was looking back to the week-end of only two days ago as if it were something far away in the past. He was separated from it by a dim gulf. It was far—it was endlessly far away. It was like a country which one has left behind one long ago.

He got out of bed and put Marian’s letter away in a dispatch-box. As he turned the key, the worst of the stunned feeling went. The fighting thing in him got up, raging. If she thought she could just chuck him over like that without a word—well, he would show her she couldn’t. Half a dozen lines on a blotted sheet.... He would show her. If she’d got a reason, she was damned well going to give him the reason. And, if she hadn’t got a reason—if she hadn’t got a reason.... His thoughts seemed to run slower. If she hadn’t got a reason, wasn’t he well rid of a woman who would break a man’s life for a whim?

He said it, and tried to mean it; but he couldn’t—not at once—not quite at once. This was Tuesday. They were going to have been married on Saturday. ... “I can’t marry you, Lin—I can’t.”

He heard the bath water running.