himself.
How much did a layman know about palpitations? he wondered. Did a woman like Lorna know that palpitations due to a few too many aspirins, a purely temporary allergy, had no significance at all? Might it not be as well to prepare her in some way for the news about Beatrice?
He toyed with the idea, then cut off a corner of liver and gave it to the corgi, and watched the dog eat it and look up for more. He put the idea aside. There was no point in trying to be too clever.
Lorna had finished the liver and bacon, and had turned towards the fire. She was peeling an orange, saying nothing, throwing the peel in the fire. Bartels mentally picked up the idea again, turned it round and round, and over. Why not? What harm could it do? One mustn’t overdo it, of course. Just toss the sentence out casually.
“Hearts can be a bit tricky,” he said absently, and left it at that. He was tempted to elaborate, but he resisted the urge, and congratulated himself upon his artistry.
“Yes,” said Lorna, still staring into the fire.
“Cigarette?” Bartels extended his case.
Lorna shook her head silently, began dividing her orange up into segments. The corgi, seeing nothing further was to be gained in the way of liver, walked to the grate and curled up for a nap.
After a while, Bartels said: “What’s the matter? You’re very thoughtful.”
“I’ve good cause to be.” She looked at him and smiled sadly.
“Why? What’s the matter?”
Some premonition of disaster, or the unaccustomed sadness on Lorna Dickson’s face, gave Bartels a curious feeling in the pit of his stomach. He shifted uneasily in his chair.
“What’s the matter?” he asked for the third time. “For heaven’s sake tell me; don’t just sit there.”
“Barty,” she began. “I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about what I’m going to say-there is no other man who means as much to me as you and never has been since Ronald was killed.”
She paused while Bartels, wide-eyed, still and unblinking, heard the wild tolling of alarm bells above the crash and surge of breakers on a rocky beach, and above that, louder and louder, the roll of drumbeats, in his breast, his head, every part of his body even to his fingertips.
Lorna was looking him straight in the face now. Her lips were slightly parted, her serenity was disturbed, but the inner beauty, glimpsed through the grey-blue eyes, was untarnished.
She rose and came and sat on the arm of Bartels’ chair, and put her arm round his shoulders, and pressed him against her side.
“Barty, I don’t think we can go through with this thing, dearest. I have given it a lot of thought. I don’t think it’s fair to Beatrice, and above all, it might be dangerous for her.” She hesitated, groping for the right phrase. “Above all, I don’t think it’s even fair to you-or me.”
“Why?” whispered Bartels.
The alarm bells had ceased tolling, the breakers had receded, leaving exposed the jagged black rocks of despair. But the drums were still beating louder and faster than ever.
“Why, Lorna? Why? Lorna, darling Lorna, you can’t let me down now. Not at this stage.”
She began to stroke his light brown hair, trying ineffectually to flatten the bits which stood up on the crown of his head.
“Do you wish me to marry you to avoid letting you down? From a sense of duty? Is that what you are suggesting?”
“This is only a passing qualm, Lorna.”
He tried desperately to sound cheerful. “You’ll feel better tomorrow. Come on, let’s have a drink! What’s yours?”
He tried to get out of the chair, but she gently pushed him back. “Not now, my dear. This is not a time for drinks. This is the moment for clear thinking and talking.”
He sat back in the chair, then, very still, his eyes staring at the ceiling, pale and drawn, the firelight reflected in the lenses of his spectacles.
“Don’t you see?” said Lorna miserably. “Don’t you see? If anything happened to her, we should never forgive ourselves. She would always be between us.”
“Would she?” asked Bartels bitterly. “Would she really? So they say in books of fiction. She would always be between us. Her shadow would come between us. Our happiness would turn sour. I know, I know, I’ve read about it. I wonder whether it is true. I doubt it.”
“I, for one, can’t risk it.”
The plans, the precautions, the hesitations, the fears, all were pointless. Beatrice was to die, a sacrificial victim on an altar of failure.
Even if Lorna changed her mind before he left, when she heard that Beatrice was dead she would think that he had taken matters into his own hands, had told her the truth; and that Beatrice had had a heart attack as a result. Lorna would never forgive him or herself.
He heard Lorna say: “I know what this means to you.” He thought how often people said that, and how little they really knew. He heard her add: “Believe me, I would like to have married you more than anything. But not this way.”
“Not this way,” he repeated softly.
That’s what he had said when Beatrice had her little palpitations and was so scared and unhappy.
Not this way. My freedom, yes, he had said, but not this way, not by her death; and later he had modified it, and said, not by her death in fear or pain.
“Don’t let’s come to any final decision tonight,” he implored her, but again he thought: What’s the use? If Beatrice dies, Lorna will blame me and herself.
“I think it’s as hard for me as for you,” said Lorna. “And I’ve already come to the decision. I shall feel no different tomorrow.”
Suddenly, she put her arms round him and placed her cheek against his brow, as he had to her earlier in the evening.
“Oh, my dear, I know it’s hard, but try not to take it too badly. Let’s see if we can’t get through to the end of our lives now without causing too much damage.”
After a while he said, quite simply: “All right, if that’s what you want.” He put her from him, firmly but not roughly, and rose to his feet. “Mind if I have that drink now?”
Lorna went over to the drinks table, poured him out a whisky, and handed him the glass.
“Aren’t you drinking?”
She shook her head, and stood by the grate, both hands on the mantelpiece, looking down into the fire. He drank half the whisky without a pause.
“What about us-now?” he asked.
“I think we should break it up,” whispered Lorna. “Half and half is no good, Barty.”
“All right,” he said, and drank off the remainder of the whisky. “As you wish.” He replaced the glass on the table.
“Don’t you think it better?” asked Lorna, still staring into the fire.
“As you wish,” said Bartels again. “I am going now. Thank you for your past kindness. Also for tonight’s supper.”
Lorna swung round quickly from the mantelpiece.
“Don’t let’s part like that, Barty, dearest.”
“Like what?”
“In bitterness.”
She made to put her arms round his neck, but he drew back.
“Don’t let’s part like that, either.”
She let her arms fall to her sides. “You think I’m beastly, I know, I’m sorry about that. I didn’t want that to happen.”
Bartels sighed and shook his head impatiently.
“I think you might have let me know a little earlier, that’s all.”
He was beginning to feel the panic rising inside him, in recurring waves; rising and subsiding, then rising again. Provided Beatrice adhered to her plans, he had time to get back. But he had to leave at once to be on the
