Читать книгу The Chinese Shawl - Dora Amy Elles - Страница 8

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Perhaps the moment was not so inopportune. Everything had gone at racing speed—a race without rules, without bounds. Laura at least was thankful for the halt. She went into the cloakroom and did the best she could with her face, but a powder-puff has its limits. She could, and did, tone down the carnation in her cheeks, but there was nothing to be done with the shining look which met her in the mirror, or with the new soft line of her lips. She considered what the powder-puff had effected, and decided that it was a pity. The colour had been very becoming. She found she was smiling, and before she could change her mind again she pulled a handkerchief out of her bag and was wiping the powder off. Then she went out and found Carey in the hall.

He took her down a flight of steps into a small irregularly shaped room which seemed to be quite full of people, but when they had threaded their way among the tables, there was the one he had reserved, set right into the corner. They sat facing one another across it.

Laura discovered that she was hungry—frightfully hungry. And the food was extraordinarily good—hors d’œuvres, and a fishy thing, and a sweet with layers of cocoanut and chocolate frozen hard, and a hot chocolate sauce.

Carey made a charming host. He looked at her as if he loved her, but he talked of all the things which Laura liked talking about—safe, interesting things which had nothing to do with the race which had taken them so far and at such a break-neck speed.

It was over the coffee that she told him why she had been angry.

“My cousin Agnes Fane wants to buy the Priory and leave it to Tanis. I don’t know why that made me so angry, but it did. One minute I was sitting there just polite and interested, and he was telling me all about the feud and the relations, and the next minute I felt as if I was going up in a puff of flame exactly like a firework. It was a horrid feeling.”

“It must have been.” His voice was sympathetic, but his eyes laughed.

“I’ve got a temper—I told you I had—but I’ve never been so—so unreasonably angry. It’s rather frightening, because I did feel as if I could have done anything—” She paused, and then repeated the last word. “Anything.”

He saw that she had turned quite white, and that she really did look frightened. He said in a steadying voice,

“What did you do?”

Her colour came back again with a rush.

“I just said that I wouldn’t think of selling, and when he tried to persuade me I listened for a bit, and then I got so boiling that I couldn’t any more, so I came away.”

Carey said thoughtfully,

“So he tried to persuade you—”

Laura nodded.

“He’s Cousin Agnes’s lawyer too. He knows her awfully well. Aunt Theresa says he wanted to marry her. Anyhow they’re very old friends, so of course he would be on her side.”

“He oughtn’t to have a side.”

Laura laughed.

“Why, he couldn’t help it. He’s known her for simply ages. He’s fond of her—you can see he is. I’m horrid, but I’m not so horrid that I would expect him not to be fond of her, and not to try and get her what she wants. It’s all quite reasonable, you know. I can see that now I’ve stopped boiling. Tanis has been like her daughter—it’s quite natural she should want her to have the Priory. And as Mr. Metcalfe says, I couldn’t live there myself, because I’ve only got a hundred a year besides the rent Cousin Agnes pays me, and if she died nobody might want it, or if they did they mightn’t give me as much. It’s all quite reasonable.”

“But you’re not going to sell?”

“I don’t feel reasonable about it at all,” said Laura.

He poured her out another cup of coffee. Then he said in a tentative voice,

“You’re fond of the place?”

She shook her head.

“I’ve never seen it. There are photographs which belonged to my father—I used to get a sort of thrill from looking at them and thinking, ‘It doesn’t matter who lives there. It’s mine really—it belongs to me.’ And I used to plan what I would do with the rooms. Most of the furniture belongs to Cousin Agnes, but there are some old bits that have been there ever since the house was built. I used to plan curtains and chintzes, but of course it was just a game. Aunt Theresa always told me I couldn’t possibly live there unless I married someone with enough money to keep it up, and she always finished up by saying I wasn’t in the least likely to do that.”

He looked up, began to laugh, and then was suddenly grave again.

“Is she making you a good offer?”

“Twelve thousand pounds. Mr. Metcalfe said it was very generous.”

“It’s a fancy price. You know, you ought to go down and see the place. Can’t you do that?”

“I couldn’t unless Cousin Agnes asked me.” She hesitated, and then came out with, “I think she’s going to.”

“You’ll go?”

“I don’t want to.”

“Don’t be silly! Of course you must go! For one thing, it will smash this feud business, and for another, don’t you see, you may simply loathe the place, and then it’s too easy.”

“Suppose I don’t loathe it—suppose I fall passionately in love with it?”

“That’s quite easy too—you dig in your toes and wait for a handsome husband and three thousand a year.”

“If he had three thousand a year he’d probably be hideous.”

“Then you’d have to go on waiting.”

She looked at him with the frank, confiding look he liked so much.

“Do you know the Priory? Shall I like it? Have you been there?”

“Oh, yes, I know it quite well.”

“Shall I like it?”

“I don’t know, my dear. Anyhow you ought to go down if Miss Fane asks you.”

Laura nodded reluctantly.

“I suppose I ought.” She brightened. “Perhaps she won’t ask me.”

The afternoon went by. They saw a play, but in each of them the current of thought and feeling ran too strong to leave any but the most surface attention free. Each was too conscious of the other to know what was passing on the stage. There was light, and colour, and music. The players came and went and said their lines. The curtain rose and fell. And all the time the unseen current ran like a race.

They came out into the dark and found a taxi. Blackness shut them in. Carey said suddenly,

“They don’t know whether I shall be able to fly again.”

Something in his voice brought Laura out of her dreams. She said in the quick, soft way she had,

“Oh—why?”

“That crash—it’s done something to my sight. I can’t judge distances any more.”

“You’ll get all right—I’m sure you will.”

“I may. It’s one of those things they don’t know about. It’s hell.”

She put out her hand and found his.

“You’ll get all right—I know you will.”

They sat like that with the dark going by them. Neither of them spoke. When the taxi stopped and they were standing under Cousin Sophy’s porch, he broke the silence to say,

“No one knows except you.”

Laura didn’t say anything. She put out her hand again in a groping gesture. It brushed his arm, and suddenly he was holding it to his face, kissing it.

“Laura! Laura!”

She reached out and held him.

“Don’t mind like that! Oh, Carey, please!”

“I’m a fool—I’ve no right—”

She shook him a little, or tried to.

“You’re not to talk like that! I won’t have it! You’ve got to be sensible and give yourself a chance. Why, it isn’t any time yet. You’ve been worried—strung-up. You haven’t given yourself a chance.” But in her heart she was saying, “Tanis hasn’t given him a chance.”

She came very near to hating Tanis then. It was like coming near to the open mouth of a furnace. The heat rushed out. It took her breath and blinded her. She shrank in the wind of it, and was afraid.

Carey felt her tremble. She put up her face to his, and when he touched it it was wet. She said through tears,

“Please, Carey, please! It’s going to be all right.”