Ten seconds in time! Holden was reflecting. Ten seconds in time, that conversation with Celia, and the repressed emotion of months pouring out of it. The green twilight of the trees, damp and fragrant Celia with her hands pressed together, slender and gray-eyed; with brown hair like Margot, but otherwise utterly unlike her vivacious sister. Ten seconds —and then everything torn away. He became aware that Warrender was cursing him very comprehensively.
'You blithering
'Yes,' Holden assented calmly. 'I think so now. And yet,' he shook his head, staring at the desk as Warrender did, and yet you know, I'm not altogether sure I wasn't right'
'Pfaa!' said Warrender.
'Think for a minute, Frank. In 1939 the Devereuxs had Caswall with umpteen-hundred acres. They had a big house here in town, out Regent's Park way. And money. Plenty of money.' He reflected. 'I don't know how well off they are now. Rather better off, I should think; because Thorley was an up-and-coming man in the city, and I understand he's made a good thing out of the war.—In honest business, of course!' he added hastily, as he saw Warrender
'Oh, ah? Maybe, I'm cynical. Well?'
'And, in 1939, what was I? A languages master at Lupton, with three hundred a year and my keep. Fine old public school, yes. Cosseted life, nothing to worry about But a wife? I think not'
'But now you're Sir Donald Holden, with a bucketful of cash!'
'Yes.' Holden's tone was bitter. 'And not very glad to have two brothers, far better men than I'll ever be, die in action so that I could come into the title. Anyway, about Celia . . .' 'Well?'
'I'm older now. I suppose, on the whole, I did make an ass of myself. But if s no good debating that I've lost her, Frank, and serves me damn well right'
Warrender jumped to his feet
'Don't talk such blithering rubbish! What do you mean, you've lost her? Is she married?'
'I don't know. Very probably, yes.'
'These other people: are they—still about?'
'Still about, I believe. Except Mammy Two; she died in the winter of '41. But the rest are well, so far as I know. And happy.'
'When was the last time you saw Celia?' 'Three years ago.' 'Or wrote to her?' Holden looked at him.
'As you yourself pointed out, Frank,' he replied carefully, 'from the time Jerry started cracking up you had a number of jobs for me. I was in Germany in '44. In '45 you sent me straight to Italy after Steuben. And, in case it's escaped your memory, for the past fifteen months—fifteen months, mind! —I've been supposed to be dead.'
'Hang it aw, I've apologized) It was damn careless of Kappelman not to . . .'
'Never mind the official side, Frank. Let's face it.'
Perhaps it was the blazing sun at the window that made Holden's scalp feel thick and hot. He moved away from the window, his thin brown face—reserved, moody, dogged—as unfathomable as the eyes. He stood knocking his knuckles, over and over, restlessly, on Warrender’ s desk.
'When we're in the services,' he said, 'we get the mistaken idea that people and things at home always stay the same. But they don't stay the same. They can't be expected to. If s an odd thing, too. Last night, my first night in London, I went to see a play ...'
'A play!' scoffed Warrender.
'No; but wait a minute. It was about a man who returned after they supposed he was dead. He raised merry blazes, and cut up all kinds of a row, because his wife wasn't still cherishing him with a grand passion.
'But how could she be expected to? Changes, new faces, the passage of years—This grand passion is a notion out of the Roman de la Rose; it died with the Middle Ages, if it ever existed. When one man's gone, a woman eventually finds she can be just as comfortable with another, and that’s —well, it’s only sensible. As for Celia, after the thundering fool I made of myself all that time ago . ..'
He paused for a moment, and then added:
'Last night, of course, I didn't know I was supposed to be dead. But I did know there'd been a severance, a blind gap of years. Not a word on either side. I got up and crept out of that theater like a ghost. And now I've had it' He started to laugh. 'By George, I've had it!'
'Nonsense!' observed Warrender. 'Are you still—er— keen about the girl?'
Holden nearly exploded.
'Am I still. . . !'
'All right,' Warrender said coolly. 'Where is she? Is she still living with Margot and this What's-his-name, or where is she?'
'When I last heard of her, she was still with Margot and Thorley.'
'Well, we'll assume she's stall there. And where are they now? In town, or at Caswall?'
'They're in town,' answered Holden. 'The first thing I picked up in the lounge of my hotel last night, when I got back from that infernal play, was a copy of the Tatter. There was a photograph of Thorley, looking as sleek as his own Rolls Royce, stepping out in front of the Gloucester Gatehouse.'
'Good!' Warrender nodded briskly. He pointed to the battery of telephones on his desk. 'There's the phone. Ring her up.'
There was a long silence.
'Frank, I can't do it.'
'Why not?'
'How many times must I remind you,' inquired Holden, 'that I'm supposed to be dead? D-e-a-d, dead. Celia isn't a strapping, uninhibited girl like Margot. She's—excitable. Mammy Two used to say ...'
'Say what?'
'Never mind. The point is, suppose Celia answers the phone? She's probably married and not there anyway,' Holden added, a little wildly and irrationally, 'but suppose she answers the phone?'
'All right,' said Warrender. 'This Thorley bloke, I presume, has got an office in the city? Good! Ring him there, and explain the situation. Now look here, Don!' Warrender glared at him, the gray hair over the worn face. 'This thing is getting you down. You're already thinking of yourself as a bloody outcast and Enoch Arden. And if s got to stop. If you don't ring, I will.' 'No! Frank! Wait a minute!'
But Warrender had already reached for the telephone directory.
CHAPTER II
And now, in the evening, with the last faint light beyond the trees of Regent's Park, and on the other side of the street—as he passed St. Katharine's Precinct—the tall Regency houses looming up whitish in gloom, Donald Holden still could not feel any less apprehensive, or consider that anything had been settled.
For a time he stood gripping one of the iron bars of the railing round St. Katharine's. Then he moved forward, his heart beating heavily.
A little paved drive, shut off from the main road by trees and a wickerwork fence which had replaced the old iron railings, curved in a crescent past these houses. The house where Celia probably was, and where Margot and Thorley certainly were, was Number 1: the house nearest him at the corner.
Massive, solid as ever! Towering up in smooth white stone, its two storeys above the ground floor buttressed by fluted Corinthian columns set massively into the facade, and supporting a shallow roof peak on which were a few battered statues. Any change here?
Yes. Though even in the dusk its lightless windows shone, new glass clean polished, across one edge of the facade ran a tiny zigzag crack. One of the roof statues stood a little askew against the darkening sky. Regents Park had got it rather badly in the blitz, but he couldn't remember seeing that crack before. It was probably . . .
Well? Go on!
It was certain, as certain as anything could be in this world, that the whole family now knew he was alive. Yet Frank Warrender's telephone call to Thorley's office in the city couldn't have been called an unmitigated success. Again Holden pictured Warrender, with that portentous and stuffed air Frank always assumed at the telephone, dictatorfly attacking the staff. The information that Colonel Warrender, of the War Office, wished to speak to Mr. Thorley Marsh on a matter of vital importance, had brought first a scurry of voices and then the ultrarefined tones of a male secretary, obviously perturbed.
'I'm sorry, sir,' the secretary replied. 'Mr. Marsh is not at the office.' (Holden's heart sank.) 'He phoned that
