Authors: Elswyth Thane
“Don’t try to trap me, Stephen, and put words into my mouth!”
“Then I’ll use my own words. Drop all this and marry me.”
She sat looking down at the table in front of her. She was thin, and her lips were soft and drooping. She looked tired too. Stephen waited, watching her, his hands locked on the white cloth beside the silver he had pushed aside.
“Suppose I asked you again not to make it harder for me?” she said at last.
“That’s my idea exactly. Everything you do now is too hard. I want you to let it all go. I want to make a new life for you. I want you to try it my way.”
“I can’t do that. I could never look them in the face if I quit now.”
“Who?”
The waiter brought their food, and they were silent till he had gone, and then began to make a pretence of eating.
“Look who in the face?” he persisted.
“All my friends. Everywhere.”
“Take my friends, then. They’d be delighted.”
“I can’t,” said Evadne with her gentle, infuriating obstinacy, and Stephen took a grip on himself. “We’d better not talk about it any more,” she added, like an elderly nanny.
“Darling—be honest with yourself, if with no one else. Look round you at the world today—listen to the news from the Continent—and then tell me what you expect to accomplish, you and your friends.”
“A new world,” said Evadne, and her chin came up. “A world of good fellowship and understanding and tolerance, where these dreadful things can’t happen.”
“That’s a lot of nice words. But don’t you see—so long as any sizable chunk of the same old world prefers violence and tyranny you only make it easier for them to prosper if you—”
“The light can spread,” said Evadne.
“Not fast enough, now.”
“Then you give up!” she cried tragically. “You
invite
disaster!”
“
Au
contraire.
I never give up. Hadn’t you noticed?” Briefly his fingertips brushed her hand that held the fork, in a caress so subtle that it could hardly have been seen at the next table, yet she felt her heartbeat quicken. “I love you. You love me. Why can’t we get married?”
“But I—d-don’t—” she faltered.
“You can’t look me in the eye and say you don’t love me.”
“Well, of all the conceit!” She tried to smile, met his eyes, and was lost.
“Say it, then. I dare you.” And when she only sat looking at him helplessly—“You see?” he said without triumph. “I told you. You can’t do it. Darling, what happened last year, when you left Farthingale like that? What made you suddenly decide that this thing of ours was impossible? Haven’t I earned an answer to that?”
She dropped the fork against the plate, clasped her hands, almost wrung them, in her lap, as though he had tried to catch and hold them against her will.
“There’s no
time!
” she gasped defensively. “There’s no
time
now to be in love and be happy, Stephen, things are—mounting up all round us!”
“Scared?” he asked softly, watching her.
“Yes, frightfully.” She ducked her head in shame. “You don’t know what it’s like—you’re a man. But I’m the family coward, you may as well know that. Rather than sit here helpless while bombs fall on London I’ll do
anything!
I’ve
got
to! I’ve got to do
something!
”
“I know one thing you can do.”
“What’s that?”
“Marry me. They won’t bomb Williamsburg.”
“
Run
away?
”
She stared at him in horror, and he laughed.
“Fine coward
you
are!” he said.
“But I am, I—can’t sleep for thinking of it, and I get the shivers and the shakes. When I think what’s been happening in Spain—”
“Sure, anybody with any imagination feels that way.”
“
You?
”
she asked incredulously.
“Me.”
“You’re—scared too?”
“Yeah, and let me tell you something.” He pointed a long, bony finger. “So is Victor.”
“But he’s—”
“And if he says he isn’t, he lies in his teeth. They’re all scared, that’s what makes them act the way they do! They’re all whistling past the graveyard, and don’t you believe different.”
“But Victor’s trying to
do
something!”
“Such as?”
“He’s trying to
stop
it. He’s asked me to help him.”
“How?” said Stephen sceptically.
“Well, he—he says—”
“How?” Stephen repeated relentlessly.
“He believes in international co-operation and—understanding.
He says if only we all spoke German there wouldn’t be so many misapprehensions and—”
“How if they all spoke English, would it work the same way?”
Her lips tightened.
“You always make fun of Victor.”
The waiter came, and hesitated at sight of their almost untouched plates, and Stephen waved him away.
“You didn’t answer my question, did you?” he said compassionately. “There’s something you won’t tell me, about what happened last year. Did you ever kill anybody?”
Her honest astonishment made him smile.
“No, of course not!” she said.
“Then what are you afraid of?” he asked reasonably. “They don’t hang you for anything else. Whatever it is somebody is holding over your head—apart from the Nazis, I mean—let ’em drop it, I’ll pick up the pieces.”
“It’s not—blackmail, if that’s what you mean.”
“Look, honey, I’ve told you before, I’m not fooling. Maybe it’s none of my business why you choose to live the way you do, maybe you’ll hate the sight of me if I keep on, but I want the answer and I’m going to have it. It would save a lot of trouble if you—”
Evadne sagged against the back of her chair with a little hopeless sigh.
“You say you love me, and then all you do is add one more thing to what there is already.”
“I’m sorry,” he said humbly.
“Then let it go, Stephen. Don’t
hound
me.”
“My dear, I wouldn’t—I couldn’t—” Words failed him.
“But you
are.
You only make it worse like this, I—”
Again the waiter hovered, anxious to bring them something they would eat, and Stephen said, “How about an ice? Or a pastry?”
“Just coffee, please.”
“Just coffee,” said Stephen, and motioned for the plates to be taken away, and when they were alone again, “Honey,” he
said without any visible exasperation, “you wrote it down last year in the only letter I’ve ever had from you that we must start all over again, when I came back to London. So we did. I tried my best to convince myself that I was seeing you for the first time—but it was just the same, anyway. I fell in love all over again, and I’d never stopped being in love from last time, you must have known I couldn’t just turn it off with a tap.”
She looked at him long and levelly.
“I thought at least you were trying,” she said.
“Didn’t you even read my letters?” he asked.
“What letters?” said Evadne coolly, and now his eyes probed hers in what seemed an endless pause.
“You didn’t get any letters from me,” he said then, rather flatly, and with no interrogation. “You thought I didn’t write any.”
“Naturally.”
“But I did.”
“Did you remember to post them?” she smiled.
“With my own hand. There was no room for accidents at
“Then what became of them?” And as she asked it she saw the answer which had already occurred to him, and her eyes widened. “You don’t think somebody
took
them!” she gasped.
“What do
you
think?” said Stephen.
“
Hermione?
”
“Who else?”
The waiter brought the coffee. In the silence which came with him, Stephen moved the sugar nearer her cup, but she did not see.
“But we—you can’t prove that she did,” Evadne said, when the waiter was gone.
“I can’t even prove that I wrote them, I suppose. But I sent one to Farthingale, on a sort of hunch, and we may be able to find out something about that one.”
“But
Mummy
would never—”
“No. But she may just have forwarded it, so it arrived the
same way as the others. How does your mail come, at the flat? Think, now. How do you get your mail, as a rule?”
“It’s pushed through a slot in the door. Hermione is usually the first one up in the morning, and she—” Evadne fell silent, looking down into her cup.
“She picks it up. You get your letters through her hands.”
“Why, yes, I—of course there’s more than one post a day.”
“Do you always meet the others yourself?”
“No, I—never take much notice, my letters aren’t very important—”
“There were only five of mine altogether,” he said. A reasonable amount of vigilance and luck would have done for them all.” He waited. “You don’t seem—altogether incredulous,” he remarked, and she would not look up from the cup.
“She didn’t want me to marry you,” she said thoughtfully. “But I
had
asked you not to write, and so when nothing came I thought—”
“You thought I was learning to be happy with somebody else as you advised,” he suggested, and she nodded vaguely. “You were wrong,” he reminded her gently, and waited.
Finally, with an effort, she raised her eyes to him.
“Do you suppose she read them?”
“Probably. But don’t worry, they weren’t love letters, exactly. I didn’t let myself go, that is, I only wanted to keep in touch with you till I could get back, and I wanted you to know that I meant to come back, even if I had to start all over again. When you didn’t write I remembered you had said in your message that you wouldn’t know what to answer, and I supposed you were just determined to have it your way. But you didn’t really think it was going to be as easy as that to get rid of me.”
“I’d asked for it,” she said, and he saw that her eyes were full of tears.
“Well, are you going to stand for this from her, or are you going to have a show-down?” he asked. “It might have done a good deal of harm, one way or another.”
“I—don’t know what to do,” she said helplessly. “I can’t just—walk in and
accuse
her,
out of the blue.”
“Why can’t you? If I go along with you and say I wrote five letters and where are they, what can she say?”
“We can’t do it that way. Are you
sure
you had the right address?”
“There was the one to Farthingale. Your mother has the right address.”
“But if I ask Mummy about that one she’ll know there’s something up. I don’t want the family to—”
“Why protect Hermione now? She’d done about the lowest thing anyone could, hasn’t she?”
“If I’m sure she’s done it,” said Evadne slowly. “I must be
sure.
I must have a little time on it.”
“The last time you said that it took a year.”
“I know. You’ve been very patient.” She gathered up her gloves and purse. “Let’s get out of here. I want to think.”
He paid the bill and they left the restaurant and paused on the curb looking for a taxi.
“Let me come along with you now and settle this thing,” he urged, as one drew up beside them.
“No, please, I—want to think.” She was troubled and sad. “If she’s really done that, it’s very serious. Things can never be the same. I can’t—I really can’t put up with anything like that. You’d think she’d know we’d find it out sooner or later.”
“Not if I just took offence and drifted away. She may have gambled that I wouldn’t come back to London at all, if I didn’t hear from you. In which case, I wouldn’t give much for her peace of mind right now.”
“Perhaps. Thank you for the luncheon, Stephen. Please let me go now, I’d rather think this out by myself.”
He had no choice, and the cab drove away.
Evadne had given the driver the Bayswater address automatically, and found herself already at Lancaster Gate before she had achieved any sort of coherence in her thoughts. She stopped the cab there and walked diagonally into the Gardens towards the Pond.
It had come as an odd relief to know that Stephen had not kept silence for the past year. Inconsistently she had taken his apparent obedience to her request as dismissal or desertion and it had hurt more than she knew. But now instead there was this new, numbing betrayal of her trust by a friend she had stuck to in defiance of everybody, risking even the loss of Stephen for ever for the sake of what she felt was a greater need than his, if only because it was noisier, and an older loyalty of her own. She was still hoping as she came to the Broad Walk and paused there that some perfectly simple, decent explanation could be made if only she could keep her head and handle the thing wisely without getting Hermione upset. She stood looking up and down the Broad Walk in the afternoon sunshine. If she turned to the right the Walk led to a gate at the bottom of the Queen’s Road five minutes from the flat. If she turned left she would come to the sanctuary of the little sunken garden which lay behind the old brick Palace.
It was a great time-waster, that square hidden garden, bewitching its habitués into daydreams and loitering. On a sudden weakening Evadne sought it now with a twinge of conscience for putting off a little longer this new embarrassment between herself and Hermione. The pleached walk which bordered the garden was almost deserted and she stood in its deep shade with her elbows on an iron gate and watched a long-legged, paddle-footed bird playing at the edge of the pool, surrounded by the formal blaze of bloom. She had never brought Victor here during their walks in the park, he did not know it existed, for part of its enchantment was that its devotees felt a strange reluctance to share it with any but the most select companion, and most often liked to approach it alone with a
childish selfishness, cherishing a sweet pretence that it belonged exclusively to them, a secret haven from their own besetting realities. But she thought of Stephen as she stood there, and wished that he could see it now, with the sun across it, and the busy bird, and the stillness, and the colour…. It was one more sign among many that she loved him, if she wanted to bring him to the garden….
Sighing, she walked on, turned a corner, and paused again at another opening with a gate, basked again in the brief, stolen peace. Finally, having made the square, she came again to the entrance and emerged resolutely into the Broad Walk and set out for the Queen’s Road gate. Even as she entered the automatic lift in the lower hall of their building, she told herself that she did not quite believe that things could be the way they looked. And she discovered with a guilty sense of reprieve that some people had come to tea which she had entirely forgotten about.