Nothing Venture (16 page)

“I've fallen on my feet! I congratulate myself—you're too angry to do it for me of course—but I'm about to apologize.”

She took a step away from him and said in a low voice,

“Why didn't you believe me?”

He came nearer and took her by the arm.

“You saw Rosamund.”

“Yes.”

“What did you think of her?”

“She's beautiful.”

“Yes. What else?”

“I don't know.”

“I thought I did. I thought I'd known her for ten years. I thought I could have said just what she would do and just what she would say in any given circumstances. I thought she was beautiful, rather cold, fond of the good things of the world, indifferent to public opinion; not a great brain, but socially clever; truthful enough, and quite honest, as far as honesty goes; and with a decent family feeling for my grandfather and the place, and perhaps something a little warmer than that for myself. We got on well. We didn't make demands upon one another, but we behaved affectionately. I wasn't in love with her, and she wasn't in love with me; but we were pretty good friends, and I had a theory that friendship would make a better foundation for marriage than a lot of what passes for falling in love—and if I'd been the blindest young jackass that ever went chasing after a chorus girl under the impression that he was following an angel into the Garden of Eden, I couldn't have come a more colossal crash. To say that Rosamund let me down simply doesn't come within a hundred miles of it, and I'm not taking any more chances. She didn't break my heart, because she hadn't got it to break. And now I'll beg your pardon—provisionally—ratification to follow when I've actually seen those letters from your father.”

He had been holding her lightly all the time he spoke. Now his hand dropped from her arm.

“Are you going to make me pay for what Rosamund did to you?” said Nan. She had not meant to say it, but the words said themselves hot and quick.

“Probably,” said Jervis.

When his eyes laughed and the corners crinkled, Nan had it in her heart to pay her uttermost farthing without counting the cost. She said,

“And if I won't pay?”

Jervis did not answer in words. He frowned, turned abruptly away and, picking up the volume of
Who's Who
, went over to the shelf and put it back in its place. He stood for a minute or two looking at first one book and then another and whistling softly to himself. The tune bothered Nan because she couldn't put a name to it.

She would have given the world twice over to undo what Rosamund had done to him. She wondered whether she would ever be able to undo it. Just now, when his eyes had laughed, she had seen the bitterness and the hardness that were under the laughter. It hurt more than when he frowned. He frowned easily, and it meant very little; but when he laughed, her heart ached for him.

He turned away from the book-shelves and came back to the window. His face wore a bantering look.

“Well? What's the great idea? I should really like to know.”

She said, “What do you mean?”

“Well, I'd like to know just why you married me, and just what's at the bottom of all this nonsense about Robert Leonard. A deaf and dumb idiot can see that you've got it in for him—and I must say I'd like to know why.”

Nan tipped her head back, met his eyes, and said seriously,

“He's trying to kill you.”

“Yes, you said that before—he rode me down in a taxi, and he arranged for the bridge over the ravine to rot in the spray. Come, you know, it's not good enough! But what I
do
want to know is why. What has poor old Leonard done to be cast for the part of first murderer? It seems a bit far-fetched, don't you think? And it would interest me quite a lot to know what put it into your head.”

“It's no use my telling you,” said Nan—“you wouldn't believe me.”

“I'm afraid I shouldn't. But you're probably of a very hopeful disposition—you might try.”

She shook her head.

“It wouldn't be any use.”

“How can you tell if you don't try?”

A smile just touched her lips and was gone again.

“You're never going to believe anyone again. It would be waste of time.”

“You might convert me.”

“Could I, Jervis?”

“I don't think so, Nan. But then that makes it all the more exciting for you. There's always an off chance.”

She had been standing looking up at him; now she came a step nearer.

“He
is
trying to kill you.”

“How intriguing! Have you any notion why?”

“It's something to do with the money.”

“I'm afraid that's where you slip up. Poor old Leonard's not in the running—he wouldn't get a penny. It's distinctly to his interest to let me linger on and touch me for an occasional fiver.”

“Does he do that?” (That meant that he was hard up—perhaps desperately hard up.)

“He does,” said Jervis. “So you see I'm more use to him alive than dead.”

“If he killed you—” said Nan. She stopped, because it was a dreadful thing to say.

“Yes—do go on. If he killed me?”

“Rosamund would get everything.”

He gave her a sharp glance. So she was working round to his will. She evidently didn't believe in letting the grass grow under her feet.

He nodded.

“You seem to know all about it.”

“I typed Mr Weare's will.”

“Well?”

She looked at him in silence.

“You'd got as far as ‘Rosamund would get everything.' Aren't you going on?”

“No—it's no use,” said Nan.

Jervis laughed.

“Rosamund gets everything—so in case Robert Leonard should feel an overpowering urge to remove me and marry Rosamund, it might be a good plan if I put temptation out of his way by making a will in your favour. Is that it?”

Nan felt as if something in her must break. She didn't know whether it was her pride or her love. There was a feeling of anguished strain.

She said, “No!” with a little cry.

“Unfortunately my hands are tied, so I can't oblige you. I can make a settlement on my wife, but King's Weare and enough to keep it up on goes to Rosamund under my grandfather's will, failing a direct heir.”

“I knew that.”

“Then I don't quite see what you were driving at.”

She came quite close.

“He is trying to kill you,” she said. “I don't know why—I think it's because of the money. Perhaps he wants to marry Rosamund—I don't know. But I know that he's trying to kill you.”

He looked down at her with hard amusement.

“You're very serious over it.”

“I am very serious.”

“And why? Don't you want to be a widow?”

“No,” said Nan, very pale.

Jervis laughed outright.

“What an odd taste, my dear!”

Before she knew what he was going to do, he took her by the elbows, swung her off her feet, and kissed her on the mouth. He was still laughing when he put her down. She was as white as a sheet and trembling violently.

“Why, what's the matter?” he said.

She turned and ran out of the room.

XXI

Jervis stood frowning at the door. What a to-do about a kiss! He threw up his head and laughed. He didn't know why he had kissed her, and he certainly didn't know why she had run away. One could not have expected a shrinking delicacy from the girl who had offered herself to a stranger for two thousand pounds on the nail and a settlement of five hundred a year. No—to do her justice, she hadn't asked for the five hundred a year; she had only stood out for her two thousand down. Still, she could hardly expect to be considered unapproachable. And after all, what had he done? Swung her off her feet, kissed her lightly, and put her down again. Yet he felt an undoubted sense of guilt, and it angered him. Her lips had been soft and cold; he had felt them tremble; when he put her down, she had the look of a child unbearably hurt. Preposterous! She had offered herself to him; he had married her—and she was to look like that for a kiss!

He stepped over the low window-sill and walked up and down the terrace smoking, until the sun went down into a rose-coloured haze.

Monk found him there watching the sunset. He presented a long envelope and a message.

“Mrs Weare has gone to bed with a headache, sir—and these are the papers you wished to see.”

Jervis took them to the study.

So she had gone to bed with a headache. He wondered if he had made her cry. A faint tinge of triumph just touched his mood. He had lived ten years in the same house as Rosamund, and he had never seen her weep. He had kissed her a hundred times, and he had certainly never felt her tremble. Nan's lips had trembled when he touched them—she had trembled from head to foot and had run away—she had looked as if she was going to cry. Perhaps she was lying in the big four-post bed crying her heart out. He had a picture of her in his mind, lying there in the shade of the red curtains, with her head on her arm and her face hidden, weeping scalding tears. For some obscure reason the picture gave him a feeling of pleasure.

He tore open the long envelope which she had sent him. There were half a dozen letters on thin foreign paper, and a slanting pencil scrawl signed Nan. It said:

Here are my father's letters—some of them. Please let me have them back.

There was a blister on the corner of the paper. It looked as if a drop of water had fallen there.

He sorted out the letters and read them through. They were the rather stiff letters which a man writes to children with whom he has no other than a formal relation.

I hope you and Cynthia are doing well at school. There's nothing like a good grounding. Your aunt says Cynthia is very backward and does not try to learn. I am very sorry to hear this. You will both have to earn your living some day, as I have nothing to leave you. Life out here is precarious.

Jervis had a tenderness for children. He frowned at the letter as he read it. It was dated July 1919. Nan would have been eleven. Good Lord! What an exhilarating letter for a kid of eleven to get from a father on the other side of the world! It must have been about the last letter he wrote her too.

He turned to another.

Your aunt says Cynthia is troublesome. I don't know what to do about it. I can't possibly get home until the war is over—and one can't say when that will be. I can be of use here because the Arabs know me. You must try and manage Cynthia and not let her worry your aunt, for if she doesn't see her way to continuing to take charge of you, I do not really know what I can do.

That was May 1918. Nan would have been ten.

There was another, written a few months earlier.

M
Y
D
EAR
N
AN
,

I have had your letter, and the snapshots of you and Cynthia. In answer to your questions—You are not at all like your mother. I am afraid you take after my side of the family. Your mother was very lovely, and everyone loved her. She took love and admiration as a right. Cynthia has a look of her.

All the letters were signed in the same way:

Your affectionate father

N
IGEL
F
ORSYTH
.

Somehow Jervis found them pathetic. Outside of the signature there was not much affection in them. He got a picture of the man, worried and without an idea of what to do with two little girls in England. And he had a picture of the child who had hoarded these letters—a child who wanted to be like her beautiful mother, and wasn't; who had to shoulder the responsibility which Nigel Forsyth was laying down. It was Nan, obviously, who had to placate “your aunt,” to manage Cynthia, and to bear in mind that she had got to earn her own living. He was prepared to bet that she had had to earn Cynthia's living too.

He put the letters back in their envelope and went upstairs.

He stood listening at the door between his room and Nan's, and then knocked upon it. There was no answer. And yet he was quite sure that it was not sleep that was behind the door; he had the feeling that the whole room was waiting to hear him knock again. Instead, he tried the handle, and found, as he expected, that the bolt was fastened on the other side. As the handle moved with a faint creaking sound, he heard the soft padding of feet and the merest ghost of a growl. Next instant Bran was snuffing at the crack.

Jervis was conscious of an ironical amusement. His wife locked her door and suborned his dog to guard it against him!

He knocked again, a good deal louder, and became aware of a movement that was not made by Bran. It was a very soft, almost inaudible movement. It suggested to him that Nan was sitting up in bed—putting back the bed-clothes—slowly, slowly. Bran pushed against the panel and snuffed the key-hole.

With his lips against the crack, Jervis said,

“Nan—are you awake?”

There was a silence. Then he heard her move. She came barefoot to the door and leaned against it, whilst Bran beat with his tail upon the carpet.

“Nan—” said Jervis.

She said, “Yes,” in a whisper. It was an uneven whisper, and it told him for certain that she had been crying.

“I didn't mean to wake you.”

There was no answer to this.

“I've brought you your letters.”

Again no answer.

“Won't you open the door and take them?”

He knew that she was leaning against the door. He heard her hand slip on the panel, but she did not speak. He wondered why her hand had moved. It was not to open the door.

An impatience of her silence gave him a touch of bravado.

“I've come to ratify the apology. Aren't you going to open the door?”

She said, “No”—or he thought that she said, “No.” Afterwards he wondered whether her silence had said it for him.