Читать книгу Interference - Roland Pertwee - Страница 5

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For seven years, Faith and John lived as man and wife, the while he built up one of the most successful practices in London.

To Faith, her husband’s success was tantamount to the possession of a season ticket to Heaven. Her convent-bred soul, unaccustomed to the wide horizon of public life, was enchanted by the limelight which was being thrown upon John Marlay. The cries of newsboys announcing tidings of his discovery, the posters bearing his name in sensational characters, and all the rest of the block capital ebullitions from Fleet Street given as a pabulum to the reading public, afforded her a delight no words could describe. She knew that she had married the greatest man of the century, the dearest man of any century and the finest man of all time. Not unreasonably she was happy. Not unreasonably she gloried in the possession of a being beyond the reach or imagination of other women. But the natural shyness of her nature, or as moderns would put it, an inferiority complex, caused her to shrink from her own share in his greatness. Although intensely proud of the splendid, if rather inadequate title which had been bestowed upon him she felt that it was silly that she should have become Lady Marlay.

When giving her name to the parlourmaids or butlers at the houses at which she called, she whispered the word ‘Lady’ with such studied inaudibility that very often she had the good fortune to pass in as a mere Missis.

‘I want to be useful and necessary to him,’ she told Barbara, ‘but it seems dreadfully silly to be made sort of grand because of him. I am not a bit grand, and never could be; I’m only very, very happy.’

After that Barbara called her ‘Your Happyship’ when they were alone together; a cumbersome little joke which pleased Faith beyond expression.

‘You know,’ said Faith, ‘I don’t like those capable and competitive women one meets. I think I am old-fashioned.’

‘No, you aren’t,’ said Barbara; ‘But you are in love, and lovers are always slaves.’

‘I adore being a slave,’ said Faith and snuggled into a soft cushion, the gold tassel of which she waved joyously.

‘One doesn’t have to think—only feel, and feelings are ever so much nicer for women than thoughts.’

Barbara said nothing. She just wondered.

‘Have you promised Douglas to marry him yet?’

‘Nope.’

‘Why not?’

‘It’s good for young men to be kept waiting,’ said Barbara. ‘Good discipline.’

‘It isn’t,’ said Faith, warmly. ‘That’s a wicked thing to say. Douglas is a darling; he’s terribly fond of you, and, thanks to John, he is getting on awfully well now.’

‘Thanks to Uncle John we are all doing awfully well now,’ said Barbara, steering the talk into the channel where it was most likely to prove welcome. ‘By the way, Douglas is so sorry he stuck that photograph in the paper,’ she added.

A tiny island formed on Faith’s brow and her mouth straightened.

‘That’s all right, it doesn’t matter,’ said she. ‘I was foolish. After all, it was in Australia I met John. Did I ever tell you how I met John?’

‘Eight million times,’ Barbara replied, ‘but do it again if you care to.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Faith. ‘You won’t forget Friday week is his birthday.’

‘I shan’t have a chance to forget, darling, with you about. Have you bought him anything?’

Faith shook her head.

‘I have been looking at things.’

‘What sort of things?’

‘All sorts. I started looking at things round about ten pounds, then I thought that wasn’t expensive enough, so I made it twenty, and then all the nice things seemed to be thirty; but next to them were much nicer things which cost more and now I am afraid it will be a very expensive present.’

‘Yes, but what is it?’

‘I haven’t decided, I tell you, I am still deciding. I go up and down Bond Street every day. Perhaps to-morrow I will decide. I would like to give him a cigarette case, because you can get such beauties, but he doesn’t smoke cigarettes.’

‘Who doesn’t?’ said John entering, for the conversation was taking place in his consulting room after professional hours.

‘I said to Barbara that you didn’t smoke cigarettes.’

John cocked an eyebrow.

‘But the poor child isn’t mentally deficient. She has lived here for seven years. She must know that. What’s the game? Pursuit of the obvious?’

‘I shan’t tell you,’ said Faith. ‘It was a private talk.’

‘Was it indeed, beloved?’ said John. ‘Couldn’t you have found something more interesting to tell her? That I have never climbed Mount Everest and that I don’t keep a wombat.’

‘You could climb Mount Everest if you wanted to,’ said Faith, ‘and I don’t know what a wombat is.’

‘You don’t know what a wombat is?’ he replied severely. ‘Then how do you imagine Hobbs hits up his centuries?’

‘Is that what it is?’ said Faith, shot a quick glance at him and marked the tiny crinkle on the side of his nose, which was always there when he was making fun of her. Faith pouted and said, ‘You are always making fun and taking me in. It is most horrid of you.’

‘My precious.’ He stooped and kissed the nape of her neck. ‘I took you in seven years ago, and you don’t suppose I am going to give up doing so now. By the way, a society tuft-hunter was here this afternoon and wants me to go as a lion to one of her dinner parties.’

‘As a lion?’ Faith remarked. ‘Dressed up as a lion?’

‘No, mutt, as a star turn, a very important man—but cheer up, I am not going.’

Faith cheered up.

‘Do you think you ought to refuse these invitations?’ she asked. ‘Who was it asked you?’

‘Lady Edina Paris.’

‘But she is a very grand person, awfully grand. She is the daughter of the Marquis of Cleland. Whatever did you say? Whatever excuse did you make for not accepting?’

‘I told her,’ said John, carefully, ‘that I was dining alone with a woman.’

‘What woman?’

‘You, my sweet one.’

‘Oh, you didn’t, did you?’ said Faith, pink and glowing. ‘How awfully brave and lovely of you.’

‘I am both brave and lovely,’ said John. ‘If you doubt it, vide the illustrated page of yesterday’s Daily Mail where the ink had run and I was presented to the public looking like an explosion in a pickle factory.’

‘Do you mean to say it was beastly?’ said Faith with heat. ‘I shall write to the Editor and tell him if he can’t make you look as nice as you do look that we shall tell our friends to give up buying that paper.’

‘Um,’ said John. ‘There’ll be a nasty slump in the shares if you carry out that threat. Care to do a theatre to-night?’

‘I’d love it.’

‘You, Babs?’

‘I am going to dance with Douglas.’

‘Right, we two then. A spot of dinner at the New Devonshire, and then whatever you care to see.’

It did not take them long to dress. The night was fine and dry.

‘Let’s walk,’ said John, taking Faith’s arm in his. ‘It’s only a step away.’

They paused on the doorstep, lit by the light of a street lamp. The photographers and pressmen had gone with the darkness.

A few pedestrians moved this way and that and a few long cars like patent leather shoes with rubber soles drifted noiselessly east and west.

By the railings of the house opposite a woman was standing; a tall, arresting figure whose features were hidden behind a veil.

As John and Faith came from the house she moved into the road towards them, craning her head forward; then with a nod of affirmation retreated to the pavement.

The movement attracted Faith’s attention.

‘Did you notice that woman,’ she asked John when they were twenty paces away, ‘the woman opposite?’

‘No, I don’t think I did,’ he replied. ‘Why?’

‘No reason,’ she replied, ‘except that she was wearing a veil, and one never sees a veil nowadays.’

‘Sometimes a veil is a kindness,’ he said. ‘What a night it is, little Faith. Look at the twinklers up there in the sky. One seldom sees the stars in London.’

The pavement funnelled into the narrows of Lansdowne Passage.

Faith turned her head for another glance at the tall figure now fifty yards away.

Her hair as she turned brushed John’s cheek, and stooping he pressed his lips for an instant on the top of her head.

‘Nobody loves anybody better than I love you,’ he said, and there was a boyish huskiness in his voice.

Her arm tightened convulsively against his.

‘I just adore you,’ she said.

John laughed.

‘If we go on like this we will get run in,’ said he.