Читать книгу Shattering Glass - John Russell Fearn - Страница 8

CHAPTER FIVE

WEDDING DAY

TO Moira the few intervening days before her marriage passed so swiftly that she hardly noticed them. So the morning of the wedding inevitably came. The organist from Brinhampton village church played the wedding march on the grand piano, Betty Mills and her husband supplied the flowers. After the ceremony came the signing of the register—and the business was all over.

On the great desk in the center of the room were laid the offerings of countless friends from near and far. Helen surveyed them with her dark head on one side.

“I’ve looked through most of them—glanced, that is,” she said “It’s a funny thing but everything seems to be from somebody you know, Perry. As for you, Moira, nobody seems to care whether you’ve married or not. I don’t see a single thing addressed to you personally.”

“As if it mattered,” Perry retorted. “Everything here is intended for both of us, only you naturally would try to read something else into it. It’s just that Moira has very few friends who know her movements.”

“Oh, I see.”

Helen exchanged a glance with Betty Mills. Will Ransome looked at Dick Mills. Moira said nothing. She was studying the various gifts, among which were two heavy cut-glass decanters. Round the neck of one was a card that read: To Perry: Better to have loved and lost. Helen.

“Thanks for the thought Hel,” Perry grinned, as Moira pointed it out to him. “Do you expect me to drink myself to death?”

“Why not?” Helen suggested. “It’s about the best thing I can wish for you since I can’t have you myself”.

“I have the idea,” said Betty Mills, “that Helen doesn’t much care for this marriage. It’s stroked her the wrong way.”

“That I am afraid, is purely her own affair,” Perry replied indifferently. “And I don’t think we need attach all that importance to what she says. We all know Hel: too outspoken for her own good, sometimes. Anyway,” he added, “let’s have the wedding feast and then, my sweet, we’ve got to catch a train and boat for France.”

Moira nodded and accompanied him from the library. As she sat down at the dining table, Perry noticed her expression was curiously waxen and she scarcely noticed him; her thoughts were far away. She hardly heard the toast that Will Ransome proposed to the happy couple. She only seemed to become conscious of her surroundings when Perry placed a glass of cham­pagne before her.

“To ourselves, sweetheart,” he murmured, bending over her. “Didn’t you hear what Will said?”

Moira hesitated, then suddenly jumped up and put a hand to her forehead.

“No, I—I didn’t hear,” she said falteringly. “And—and I won’t drink either!” She glanced around at the startled assembly. “I hate champagne! I hate this stuff on the table! I hate all of you staring at me—!”

She wheeled and without another word, strode from the dining room.

Will Ransome sat down slowly and stared like a man who has seen a miracle.

“Well, I’ll be thrice darned!” he burst out. “Say, what did we do?”

Perry rushed upstairs to the bedroom the girl had been using. He tapped lightly on the door and entered. Moira was standing by the window hastily drying her eyes with a handkerchief.

“Dearest, what on earth’s the matter? What’s gone wrong?”

“I—I know my behavior was unforgivable,” Moira whispered. “It’s my nerves, I suppose. I’ve been under a big strain....”

“Strain? But good heavens, this should be the happiest morning of your life!” He caught her shoulders and forced her to look at him. “Moira, what is it? Downstairs you behaved just as you did in that cafe—abruptly, as though driven by a sort of impulse.”

“I often behave like that,” she said quietly. “All I ask is that you’ll forgive me.... Look, Perry, would you care very much if we didn’t go to France? I’m not at all keen on it, really.”

“But it’s to be our honeymoon! Hang it all, Moira, you’re simply tearing things up by the roots—”

“It doesn’t have to be the south of France for our honeymoon.”

“We—ll, no, I suppose not, but everything’s fixed up.” Perry gave her a worried look then sighed. “All right, call it off. I’ll reserve a suite at Claridge’s instead.”

“I’d rather we had our honeymoon here, dearest. I just don’t want to go away! Can’t I impress that point on you? I love this place; it’s so secure and peaceful.”

He smiled and patted her hand gently.

“All right, sweetheart, if that’s the way you want it. I knew I was marrying a girl with strange tastes, so I suppose it serves me right. Here we are—and we’ll stay. Now come downstairs again and let the folk see you. They just can’t understand your behavior.”

Perry opened the door for her and she preceded him along the corridor. He caught up with her as they reached the stairs. When they entered the dining-room, conversation ceased and inquiring eyes turned to Moira.

“I owe each one of you, and Perry in particular, a profound apology,” she said quietly. “I had no right to behave as I did. I can only say that it was a sudden attack of nerves. As I’ve told Perry, I’m affected that way sometimes.”

“You’re sure you’re all right now?” Betty Mills inquired. “You don’t feel ill or anything?”

“No, Betty, my health’s all right, thanks—but I certainly don’t feel up to going away. Perry has agreed that we’ll honeymoon here, and just so as things won’t get too dull, for Perry anyway, I want all of you to stay for, say a week.”

“Of all the extraordinary ideas!” declared Will Ransome. “Can’t say when I’ve ever heard of anything like it!”

“It’s certainly original,” Helen commented. “The thing that amazes me is that you should want me to stay. I haven’t been particularly pleasant towards you, Moira....” She gave a slow, cynical smile. “It’s not that I’m apologizing; I’m just pointing it out.”

“I can understand your feelings and that’s why I’m not resentful,” Moira replied. “I’d probably feel the same if after years of struggle to get the man I wanted I discovered a stranger had walked in and taken him. I don’t hold it against you.”

“Thanks,” Helen said, still looking vaguely astonished. “Now that’s settled I suppose we can consider ourselves one big, happy family?”

“We’ll stay over, of course,” Betty said.

Perry tried to enliven things with dancing in the ballroom to radio and piano. Moira danced divinely, whether it was with him, Dick Mills or Will Ransome, but it was purely mechanical. Her mind was elsewhere.

They adjourned to the drawing-room around ten o’clock.

“Of all the crazy set-ups this is about the craziest,” Helen murmured, just loud enough for Perry to hear. “For goodness sake, Perry, give me a cigar­ette before I burst out weeping!”

Perry handed her his cigarette case and she selected one.

“Look, Perry, are you sure you did the right thing?” she asked anxiously. “Did you ever see such a line-up for a wedding night? Since we came from the ballroom everything has just died on its feet. Betty and her hubby playing cards, and that fat-headed brother of mine drawing sketches, and me racking my brains trying to think of something original and amusing. As for your wife...!”

Perry shifted position uncomfortably and shied away from Helen’s suddenly questioning gaze. He knew her well enough to realize that her emotions were not really as brutal as her words implied. Helen Ransome had the un­fortunate drawback of seeming downright vicious, until one managed to discover that she had a welling generosity somewhere deep inside.

“I’ll admit,” he said moodily, glancing over at Moira, “that I didn’t expect it was going to be like this. It’s disturbing, to say the last.”

“You’ve never told me yet why you did decide to marry her. Quite all right if you don’t want to, of course, but I’m not exactly a stranger. Hang it all, Perry, I can give you everything any woman can—and a darned sight more than this broody hen you’ve picked.... What started it? I’m inter­ested.”

“I don’t quite know.... She seemed exciting.”

“Exciting!” Helen stared blankly. “Moira?”

“Well then, mystifying,” Perry amended. “I was just feeling thoroughly browned off with everything and everybody in general when she came running out of the night and bumped into me. Then....” He sketched in the finer points of this experience, his voice low, and in the end smiled a little whimsically. “So, feeling attracted to her, chiefly because of the apparent element of danger and the fact she needed protection, I decided to marry her.”

“Then,” Helen said, wondering, “you don’t really know anything about her? She just came out of the night and, when everything’s boiled down, you’ve taken her on trust?”

“I don’t know any more than she’s told me. Her parents are dead; she, worked in Bristol as a secretary; they cut the staff down and—”

“Just about the crazy sort of thing you would do,” Helen interrupted.