neither he didn’t know how to resolve the silence without sounding abject or belligerent, either of which, in his experience, would be fatal. The tension which strained at his nerves she didn’t seem to feel, she was so lost in her own thoughts.
“I couldn’t do anything else,” he said helplessly, aware of the defensive note but unable to exorcise it.
She started, and raised to his face eyes in which he could read nothing, wide and dark and motionless, like those of a woman in shock.
“It was mine,” he said, despairingly abrupt, “I could do what I saw fit with it.”
“I know,” she said mildly, and somewhere deep within her uncommunicative eyes the faint, distant glimmer of a smile began.
“I suppose I’ve disappointed you, and I’m sorry about that. But I couldn’t have been happy about it if I’d, , , “
She moved towards him suddenly with a queer little gesture of protest, and, “Oh, do be quiet,” she said, “idiot, idiot! I could shake you!” She came at him with a rush, taking him by the shoulders as though she intended to put the threat into effect, and then, slipping her arms under his and winding them tightly about him, hugged him to her and hid her face in his chest. “I love you, I love you!” she said in muffled tones against his heart.
He didn’t understand, he was hopelessly at sea. He never would be able to make sense of it, he’d be just as mystified about what he’d suddenly done right as about all the things he’d been doing wrong. Maybe he’d even come to the conclusion that she was simply female, illogical and responsive to a firm touch, and strain his innocent powers to keep the whip hand of her. It didn’t matter, as long as he believed her. “I love you,” she said. His arms had gone round her automatically, he held her carefully and gingerly, as though she might break and cut his fingers, but with the warmth of her solid and sweet against him he had begun to tremble, astonished into hope.
“I’m sorry about the money, Jean,” he stammered, floundering in the bewildering tides of tenderness and fright and returning joy that tugged at him. “But we’ll manage without it between us. I know you think it was irresponsible, but I couldn’t help it, I couldn’t feel it was mine. Oh, Jean, don’t cry!”
She lifted her head, and she wasn’t crying at all, she was laughing, not with amusement but with pure joy. She put up her face to him and laughed, and she looked like the woman in the drawing. “Oh, do shut up, darling,” she said, “you’re raving!” And she kissed him, partly to silence whatever further idiocies he was about to utter, partly for sheer pleasure in kissing him. It was quite useless to try to put into words for him the revelation she had experienced, the sudden realisation of how rich they were in every way that mattered, he and she and the child that was coming. With so much, how could she have fretted about the minor difficulties? How could she have felt anything but an enormous pity for old Alfred Armiger, who had so much and couldn’t afford to give any of it away? And how, above all, could she ever have feared dissatisfaction or disappointment with this husband of hers who had nothing and could yet afford to make so magnificent a gift?
“You mean you don’t mind?” he asked in a daze, still breathless. But he didn’t wait for an answer. What did it matter whether he understood how this sudden and absolute fusion had come about? It wouldn’t pay him to question how he had got her back; the wonderful thing was that he had. All the constraint was gone. They hugged each other and were silent, glowing with thankfulness.
It was the unexpected tap on the door that broke them apart, the prim double rap that invariably meant Mrs. Harkness, and usually with a complaint. Leslie took his arms from round his wife reluctantly, put them back again for one more quick hug, and then went to open the door.
Mrs. Harkness was looking unusually relaxed and conciliatory, for Professor Lucas’s influence still enveloped her as in a beneficent cloud.
“A boy brought this note for you a little while ago, Mr. Armiger. He said you were to have it at once, but as your visitor was still here I didn’t care to disturb you.”
“A boy? What boy?” asked Leslie, thinking first of Dominic, though he knew of no particular reason why Dominic should be delivering notes to him at this hour of the evening, nor why, supposing he had any such errand, he should not come up and discharge it in person.
“Mrs. Moore’s boy from just along the road. I thought it wouldn’t hurt for waiting a quarter of an hour or so.”
“I don’t suppose it would. Thank you, Mrs. Harkness.”
He closed the door, frowning at the envelope with an anxiety for which he knew no good reason. The Moore boy also attended the grammar school, and was much the same age as Dominic and probably in the same form; he might easily be a messenger for him at need. But what could be the need?
“What is it?” asked Jean, searching his face.
“I don’t know, let’s have a look.” He tore the envelope open, still lulled by her warmth close against his arm, and aware of her more intensely than of all the other urgencies in the world, until he began to read.
DEAR MR. ARMIGER,
I’ve asked Mick Moore to bring you this on the dot of half past eight, because I need help with something at nine o’clock, and it’s desperately important, but I daren’t let it out more than half an hour before the time. If my father knew about it too soon he’d knock the whole thing on the head, but if he only knows just in time to be on the spot as a witness I hope he’ll let me go through with it, I hope he won’t be able to stop me. I don’t want to telephone home myself because it might be Mummy, and I don’t want to scare her. I don’t want her to know anything about it until it’s all over. So I thought the best thing was to leave this message for you.
This is what I want you to do. Please get on to my father and tell him to have the police watching the corner of Hedington Grove and Brook Street at nine o’clock. There’ll be a car there waiting to pick me up and drive me back home to Comerford. Please make them follow it, be sure they do, it’s urgent. I’ve done something to make things happen, but they have to be there to see it, otherwise it will all be wasted, and no good to Kitty after all.
If anything comes unstuck for me, please try to help Kitty, I don’tmind as long as she comes out all right.
Thanks.
DOMINIC FELSE.
“What the hell!” said Leslie blankly. “Is he fooling, or what?”
“No, not about Kitty, he never would. He’s dead serious. Leslie,” said Jean, her fingers clenching on his arm,
