Away Went Love (9 page)

She was trembling as she put on her hat and coat and left the building, but whether it was with happiness or nervous reaction she found it hard to say.

It was always very difficult to realize that a crisis had passed, of course. If only she could take in the fact fully, she was free to draw breath and rejoice that her troubles were over. The slender chance, on which she had not dared to count much, had yielded the most extraordinarily full result. She actually had in her handbag the cheque which was to save Richard.

By the time she reached home, she felt worn out with excitement and the anxious day through which she had gone, but her first impulse was to telephone Richard.

Here she received a disappointing check. He was not yet home, for the telephone bell rang unavailingly.

Well, she would telephone later—or he would quite possibly call in of his own accord. After all, he knew that she had hoped to make some sort of attempt today, and would naturally be anxious to know with what result.

Meanwhile, she prepared to relax in the delicious consciousness that she need not worry any longer.

What a curious man Errol Tamberly was, she thought, gazing absently into the fire. Whoever heard of anyone making a proposal of marriage in such an extraordinary form?

Well, it wasn’t even a proposal. Just a sort of take-it-or-leave-it affair in which marrying him would seem like a penalty for having guessed wrong.

‘But why did he ever suggest it?’ Hope asked herself puzzledly. ‘Am I to suppose he’s in love with me? But that’s too ridiculous. I can’t imagine Errol Tamberly in love with anyone. And certainly not with me!’

She was not, of course, so naive as not to know that people married for all sorts of reasons besides being in love. But which of those reasons could possibly apply to her?

No one knew better than he that she had no money—and anyway, he was under no necessity to marry a rich wife. She had what were known as “good connections,” of course, for her father had been a popular and well-known man. But Errol Tamberly had never shown signs of being a social climber, and, if he were, he could surely have found a better means of climbing than herself!

Some men, of course, married in order to have a good hostess and someone who would run their home on oiled wheels. Well—with all becoming modesty, she thought she could fit that role quite satisfactorily. But then surely he already had someone who could do that in the person of his mother.

His mother. Hope paused thoughtfully over that rather inexplicable person.

“I shouldn’t be terribly surprised to find that they disliked each other intensely,” Hope said aloud—and was surprised to find that she had arrived at that conclusion.

Perhaps he wanted her painlessly removed from his house, and thought the best way was to acquire a wife. It seemed the very slenderest of reasons for the proposal he had put forward, but it was the only one that occurred to Hope at the moment, and she lay back in her chair, sleepily revolving it in her mind, while her tired, stretched nerves gradually relaxed.

Afterwards she realized that she must have fallen asleep and slept for something like an hour. Then the sound of a bell roused her. In the first sleepy moments she thought it was the telephone. But the next minute she realized it was her front-door bell, and joyfully rushed to answer it.

Outside stood Richard—such a worried-looking Richard that she flung herself into his arms and cried, “Oh, darling, it’s all right! I’ve got it!” without even waiting for him to come into the little hall.

“You’ve—” He turned rather pale, and seemed for a moment unable to complete his sentence. And, as she tucked her arm in his and led him into the sitting-room, she found herself reassuring him and repeating over and over:

“It’s quite all right. There’s nothing to worry about any more. I’ve actually got the cheque here with me.”

Once he was sitting down, she ran for her handbag and took out the cheque—coming back to kneel beside him and show him the precious proof of what she was saying.

“Why—I can hardly believe it even now.” The color came back to his face as he handled the cheque. “How on earth did you do it, darling? You must be a witch.”

“No—not really. Only I have a persuasive tongue,” she told him with a laugh. “And—and Doctor Tamberly’s really a very generous person, you know. He likes to pretend he isn’t, but—well, you see for yourself.”

She was afraid he might ask for a more detailed account of the conversation, but fortunately the one tremendous fact that the money had been forthcoming absorbed all his interest for the moment.

“You see—the cheque’s made out to me—”

“Naturally.”

“—But I told him it was—was largely for you. So I’ll pay it into my account tomorrow, and I’ll give you a cheque on my account before you go this evening. You can cash it in a couple of days and put back the money—and then we’re safe, Richard. Oh, isn’t it marvellous?”

“Marvellous,” he agreed, beginning to smile and look much more like his carefree, attractive self again. “Phew! it’s the first time I’ve drawn an easy breath for several days, Hope.”

“I expect it is,” she said, and gave him a sympathetic kiss.

“I suppose—there’s no catch in it?” he said presently, re-examining the cheque as though he thought it might change to a sixpenny postal order in his hand.

“Why, no, Richard dear! See—I’ll write out the cheque for you now. But don’t present it until I’ve had time to clear Doctor Tamberly’s cheque through my account.”

“All right.”

He watched her with almost painful eagerness as she crossed to her desk, took out her cheque-book and began to write.

“There! That’s the end of our troubles,” she declared, as she came back and handed the cheque to him.

He kissed her, and then grinned as he asked:

“What does it feel like to write a cheque for five hundred pounds?”

“Pretty good—in the circumstances.”

“And to think that lucky hound Tamberly can afford to do it without even batting an eyelash!”

“I wouldn’t put it that way exactly,” Hope protested. And then, because she felt in some obscure way that justice was not being done, she added earnestly, “He’s been awfully good about this, hasn’t he?”

“Awfully,” Richard agreed carelessly. “But I suppose he’s keen on you, just as I said.”

“Oh,
no,
Richard, he isn’t!”

“You funny girl—why does the idea upset you?”

“Because—well, anyway, I’m not upset, only—Oh, let’s talk of something else.”

Richard laughed.

“Willingly. How are we going to celebrate this enormous stroke of luck?”

“Celebrate it?”

“Why, yes, darling. You don’t suppose we can be rescued from the depths of despair, presented with five hundred pounds and watch the prison gates retreat all at once, and do nothing about it.”

“Oh, but—” She wished uncomfortably that Richard wouldn’t refer to prison gates quite so lightheartedly. Had he already quite forgotten that what he had done
was
a prison matter, judged on an impartial basis? One didn’t, surely, joke about such things.

“But what?” he wanted to know, watching her with such tender, smiling eyes, that her critical mood faded.

“Only that I don’t think we ought to—to spend money over this, do you?”

“Why not?” Richard wanted to know with genuine surprise. “Our financial worries are at an end—temporarily. Don’t you think we’re justified in spending a pound or two on an evening’s enjoyment, to celebrate the fact?”

“Well, no, Richard, I don’t.”

“Why, darling girl, it isn’t like you to turn skinflintish at a moment of rejoicing!” Richard exclaimed in amused reproach. “I never heard you plead passionately for economy before.”

“I’ve never had to think very seriously about economy before,” Hope said slowly.

“Well, don’t think about it now,” Richard advised her. “It’s the most deadly subject for reflection ever invented.” And he laughed.

“But, Richard—one can’t dismiss it just like that. We’ve got to start thinking about things on rather a different scale in future, haven’t we?”

“Have we?” He traced an affectionate finger down her cheek and smiled at her.

“You know we have. We’re not going to be a bit well off when—when we marry, are we?”

She wished her voice hadn’t trembled just before that phrase. And she wished her stupid imagination wouldn’t represent it to her that Richard’s expression changed just a shade at that point.

But the next moment he had caught her close and had kissed her.

“Look here, my serious-minded sweet, we’ll think on the most economical lines you like, once this week’s over! But on one simple celebration I do insist. Any complaints?”

“Well—no, of course not,” she admitted with a laugh, for when he put it like that, the prospect really was rather irresistible. And, of course, in a way, they would be celebrating the fact that their marriage had now become possible again. Perhaps one might be allowed just a little bit of extravagance over that. “But let’s make it not very expensive, Richard,” she begged. “I mean
—really
not expensive. You and I can rejoice on very little, when we have so much to make us happy already.”

“Very well.” He yielded at once, and with such good grace that she wondered why she had been almost agitated only a few minutes ago.

Well, it had been a nerve-racking and wearing day. No wonder she was a little tired and nervy and easily upset. Tomorrow she would be all right. And by the next day—when Richard proposed they should have their “celebration,” since he had to work late at his office on the morrow—she would be as ready as he to be gay and carefree and even just a little bit extravagant.

“I must go now, darling, though I hardly know how to tear myself away,” Richard said. “But to tell the truth, I hardly slept a wink last night, and you don’t look to me as though you had any too good a night either.”

“No. It was pretty broken and restless,” Hope admitted with a rueful smile.

“My dear”—Richard was suddenly quite serious—“don’t think that because I joke, and talk light-heartedly about celebrations and so on, I don’t know what you’ve done for me.” He was standing up now and putting out his arm; he drew her to his side and looked down fondly at her.
“I’m the kind of fool who always jokes most about the things he feels most deeply.”

“Oh, I know, I know, dear!” Gone were all her misgivings about his light-hearted reference to prison gates. “It’s all right, Richard. I think
I
take things a little too seriously sometimes.”

“You had every reason this time,” he told her with a rueful smile. “I realize perfectly that it’s you who had all the unpleasantness. You simply dreaded this interview with Tamberly, didn’t you?”

“Oh—well—” Even that seemed less dreadful now in happy retrospect.

“I know you did.” He wouldn’t allow her to minimize it. “You’ve been simply wonderful, darling, and I’ll never forget it.”

Hope kissed him and happily bade him good night. Twenty-four hours ago she would never have believed that she could ever be so happy again. It was like getting well again after a severe illness, or escaping from pr—Well, that came a little too near the literal truth.

Humming happily to herself, Hope got ready for bed. But, tired though she was earlier in the evening, she lay awake some time, thinking over the change in her hopes and expectations.

So she had been right—and the cynical Errol Tamberly had been wrong.

She had taken what he had represented as a grave risk, and, as a result, her happiness was now secure.

When they had their evening’s celebration on Wednesday, Richard and she would discuss the real plans for their marriage at last. They had faced the fact that they would be comparatively poor, and now—

Suddenly, in the midst of her pleasant, drifting thoughts, one harsh, inescapable fact obtruded itself.

Richard had said nothing whatever about their marriage. She had made some references to their need for economy in future, and he had brushed it aside smilingly, without even taking up the discussion.

It was ridiculous to worry about it, of course, and they had had so much more to discuss. All in good time—long before Errol Tamberly’s week was out—everything would be settled. But she wished—oh, how she wished!—that she had brought the conversation more definitely round to the question of their marriage.

Looking back, she couldn’t see any point at which she could have done so. Any time she had got near it, he—that was to say, the conversation—somehow drifted away from it again.

To her surprise and chagrin, Hope found that her heart was beating uncomfortably fast, just as it had when she felt so frightened about going in to see Errol Tamberly.

“I will
not
be so absurd,” she told herself angrily. “It’s disgusting and unworthy to allow doubts to spoil everything now. This is the way marriages are spoilt. I
know
it’s all right. No one who saw how sweet and dear he was this evening could think he loved me any less than before.”

But he had never said anything about their marriage. Never once.