I Shall Not Want (35 page)

“But it's too late now,” she said. “We mustn't think about it.”

They sat on again in silence. Then John Marco rose slowly and stood with his back to the fireplace. It was easier to be sure of himself when he was away from her to know that nothing he said would betray him.

“I wanted to see you alone to-day,” he said. “I've been planning how I could see you.”

“I knew you had,” she answered. “I knew as soon as you came in.”

He paused as though uncertain whether to continue.

“I still love you,” he went on at last. “It doesn't grow any less. I've never stopped loving you.”

At the words she raised her hands to her face instinctively as though to protect herself.

“You mustn't say that,” she told him. “It's wicked.”

John Marco shook his head.

“No,” he said. “It's not wicked. Not now. I came here to-day because I wanted to make love to you. But I've hurt you enough already. I'm not going to risk hurting you again.”

The back of her hand was still raised to her face; he saw her fingers clench themselves involuntarily.

“You don't understand,” she said. “I love Thomas now.”

He shook his head.

“That's not true,” he answered, still in the same quiet voice, “it's me you really love. But you can go on loving your husband just the same. I shan't come between you.”

He stopped himself before he said anything further. Even now he had confessed more than he had intended. Already his share of her life, the thin, pitiful share that he had won for himself by cultivating the company of Mr. Petter, had been thrown away. He looked across at her to see if she was angry, if she was going to punish him. But he found instead that she was crying.

Down her cheeks large tears were running. They reminded him of the raindrops that he had seen on her face that first afternoon when he had walked home with her. She covered her eyes with her handkerchief and turned her head away from him.

“Why couldn't you leave me alone?” was all she said. “Why did you have to say all these things?”

He took a step towards her. He wanted to comfort her. And all the time inside his brain a voice was saying, “She hasn't denied that she loves me. She can't deny it. She knows that it's the truth.”

But as his arm touched her shoulder she got up and faced him.

“You must go away,” she said.

He stepped back and stood regarding her.

“Very well,” he answered. “I'll go now. I told you I didn't want to hurt you.”

“And you mustn't ever come here again,” she said. “We mustn't see each other.”

“But I can't live without seeing you,” he told her. “I've got to come here. Now that I've told you it'll be easier. You'll understand.”

She shook her head.

“No,” she said, “it's wrong.”

He went slowly over to the door. So this was what it had all come to. Simply because she had crooked her little
finger when pouring out a cup of tea, his whole spirit had left him. And in consequence he had ruined everything. She would tell her husband, and it would all be over. In future he would stand on guard over her day and night as if she were in a harem.

But because his shoulders were now drooping, because he no longer held his head as high as when he had entered, she went after him and put her hand over his.

“I can't bear to see you unhappy,” she said.

“Then let me come here,” he answered. “Still let me see you.”

He was very close to her now. He could smell again the scent she was using.

“Later on,” she said faintly. “I can't see you at once after this.”

“Then I may come again?” he asked. “I needn't stop seeing you?”

She did not move, and he put his arms round her, pulling her to him closer still. She made no resistance. He kissed her while they stood there, her head thrown back and her eyes closed.

There was the sound of the private door from the shop opening, and she pushed him away from her.

“You must go now,” she said.

But it was not only Mr. Petter who was coming. There was the sound of two lots of feet and another voice—a rich, resonant voice.

A moment later Mr. Petter confronted them.

“We've got another unexpected visitor who wants some tea,” he said. “I didn't tell him who was here. It's Mr. Tuke.”

ii

“But I tell you I saw them,” Mr. Tuke was saying loudly. “In his own drawing-room, too, while he was downstairs working. They were conniving.”

“But how do you know they were conniving?” Mrs. Tuke enquired.

“They had a guilty air,” Mr. Tuke snapped back at her. “I distinctly saw John Marco flinch as I entered.”

“It might not have been anything,” Mrs. Tuke assured him in a mild, pacifying kind of voice. “Perhaps he just didn't expect you.”

She bent down to find his slippers for him as she said it, and even carried them right over beside the fire. At moments like this when her husband's anger was rising up inside him like a saucepan full of boiling milk she always felt a trifle afraid of him; he boomed so, when he was really angry. And just before his supper, too! He was a man who simply lived on his nerves—even quite tiny things interfered with his digestion—and if he went on like this she would be up all night bringing him glasses of hot water and lumps of sugar soaked in oil of Cajaput.

And she saw to her dismay that her last remark had done nothing whatever to mollify: it had merely irritated.

“Expect me,” he shouted. “Of course he didn't expect me. I didn't know myself until the spirit moved me. It simply happened to be tea-time and I dropped in. My footsteps were directed.”

“I still think there may be a perfectly innocent explanation,” Mrs. Tuke persisted.

“Then why was Mary Petter crying?” Mr. Tuke demanded. “Closeted alone with her lover
and in tears”

“You didn't tell me that before,” Mrs. Tuke replied.

“I wanted to shield her,” Mr. Tuke answered. “You dragged it out of me.”

“And you don't think Mr. Petter suspected anything.”

“Thomas Petter is one of God's pure ones,” Mr. Tuke replied. “His eyes must be opened.”

“But not by you, please,” Mrs. Tuke begged him. “Remember what happened last time.”

“When?” Mr. Tuke insisted, still in the same threatening voice.

His wife hesitated before answering him: to remind
him now of one of his failures seemed an act of the most dangerous folly. But there was no other way round.

“I meant about John Marco's own marriage,” she said apologetically. “That was all so dreadful.”

“Thomas Petter is a very different cut of man,” Mr. Tuke replied. “If he was told he had married one of the frail sisterhood he would remain by her to give her strength. He wouldn't break his vows.”

“You can't be too careful,” Mrs. Tuke observed.

“I am always careful,” Mr. Tuke said abruptly.

“Well it's no use doing anything for the moment,” Mrs. Tuke answered in a lighter tone of voice. “Supper's been ready for the last ten minutes. It'll spoil if you don't have it.”

“I don't want any supper,” Mr. Tuke replied. “I want to go upstairs and pray.”

Mrs. Tuke hardly heard the latter half of the sentence: the first half was calamitous enough for her. If Mr. Tuke had really turned against his food she feared that anything might happen.

It was nearly half-an-hour before Mr. Tuke re-appeared. When he came down he was wearing his long, black ecclesiastical overcoat and carried his tall hat in his hand. He was no longer angry, and a kind of terrible calmness seemed to have settled down on him.

“I'm going out,” he said shortly.

“Not ... not to Mr. Petter's,” Mrs. Tuke implored him.

“No,” Mr. Tuke replied. “Not to Mr. Petter's.”

“Then where are you going?” Mrs. Tuke asked hopelessly.

“I'm going about my business,” he answered over his shoulder. “God's business.”

And before Mrs. Tuke could question him further he had shut the door on her.

Mr. Kent was very pleased to see Mr. Tuke until he heard what he had come about. He had put his coat on
again—he spent most of his leisure time comfortably in his shirt sleeves—and was just settling down to an evening's edifying gossip when Mr. Tuke burst his little bombshell. Then Mr. Kent took his coat off again and went over to the door.

“We'd better get Mother in on this,” he said. “She'll have to know.”

“A mother's feelings . . . “ Mr. Tuke began.

But Mr. Kent stopped him.

“She'd never forgive me,” he said. “She'll want to handle this herself.”

And Mr. Kent was right. Mrs. Kent insisted on hearing everything.

“Him in the house,” she said. “Well, why not?”

“Then you knew of it?” asked Mr. Tuke.

“I knew he went there, if that's what you mean,” she said. “He never comes
here”

“But wasn't Mr. Petter warned?” Mr. Tuke asked. “Didn't you tell him?”

Mrs. Kent did not reply immediately. Of course she hadn't warned Mr. Petter. It was scarcely a mother's place to inform her daughter's intended that his fiancée had already been thrown over by another man. And once the marriage was over there had seemed no point in it.

“Well, not exactly,” she admitted.

At that Mr. Tuke threw up his hands.

“So the viper was left to flourish,” he observed. “The gate was left open for him.”

“Not by us, it wasn't,” Mrs. Kent said warmly. “She never saw him again while she was still here.”

“Then she has deceived you since,” Mr. Tuke said sternly.

Mr. Kent dropped his hand across his faded, straggling moustache.

“It certainly looks like it,” he admitted.

But Mrs. Kent would have none of this: she gave Mr. Kent a little frown to show that in her opinion he had said too much already.

“After she got married it was Thomas Petter's business to look after her,” she replied.

“But how could he look after her if he didn't
know?”
Mr. Tuke insisted.

“Know what?” Mrs. Kent enquired.

“That she had loved another.”

“I see your point,” Mr. Kent said despondently. “I suppose we ought to have told him.”

“Well, I say let sleeping dogs lie,” Mrs. Kent retorted.

“And have this thing continue? Allow John Marco to go to the house as though nothing had happened?”

Mrs. Kent tweaked the lace fichu on her bosom, pulling the crumpled, cottony mass into more outstanding and aggressive folds.

“It's for my son-in-law to say who he has to his house, not me,” she replied. “He'd stop it soon enough if he saw John Marco getting beyond himself. You may be sure of that.”

Mr. Tuke eyed her gravely.

“But suppose that your daughter encouraged it,” he said.' “Suppose that she led Mr. Marco on?”

“I won't suppose anything of the kind,” Mrs. Kent replied promptly. “It isn't like her.”

She was sitting bolt upright by now, screwing the heels of her shoe down into the carpet. Mr. Kent began to feel apprehensive and uncomfortable: his wife sat like that only when she was really annoyed about something. He did hope she wasn't going to be rude to Mr. Tuke.

And what was worse was that Mr. Tuke was clearly annoyed, too; he was glowering. He opened his mouth once or twice very wide and then closed it again abruptly as though thinking better of it each time. Finally, he rose and stood over Mrs. Kent's chair.

“I have evidence,” he said. “Terrible evidence. I have proof that they're still lovers.”

Mrs. Kent ground her heel still deeper into the carpet and went on pulling at the creases of her fichu.

“Explain yourself,” she said.

“I will,” he replied.

He paused for a moment and sucked in a great rush of air like a swimmer getting ready to dive. Then his lungs full, he plunged.

“I have seen John Marco,” he said, “after he was married”—here his voice rose threateningly—“embracing Mary in the street. They were holding each other.”

“It couldn't have been Mary,” Mrs. Kent interrupted him. “You must have imagined it.”

“And did I imagine that she gave him her photograph dressed in her bridal clothes? His own wife found it shut away in his drawer.”

“That's only what she said,” Mrs. Kent maintained.

Mr. Tuke gave a little gesture of impatience.

“And are you aware that actually at her marriage John Marco was there in the gallery? He blew a kiss as she passed by on her own husband's arm.”

“Who says so?”

“Poor Hesther was present. She observed it all.”

“We've only got her word for that, too,” Mrs. Kent replied.

“And this afternoon,” Mr. Tuke resumed, speaking very slowly and distinctly, “I found them closeted alone together. I believe I almost caught them in the act.”

Mrs. Kent gave a little gasp and then recovered herself.

“I'm quite sure you didn't,” she replied. “And I think it's very unpleasant of you to say so.”

“If that's how you take it,” Mr. Tuke replied, “I'll bid you good-evening.”

“Good evening,” Mrs. Kent replied, and turned her back on him.

Mr. Tuke did not wait to shake hands. He simply walked straight out of the room and down the stairs. He let himself out. As he pulled the front door behind him he suddenly felt faint and sick. His stomach seemed to be turning round and round inside him, and he clutched at the railings for support. It was nearly nine o'clock and he had had no tea and no supper.

For the moment it seemed that his Master, on whose business he had been, had utterly deserted him.

Upstairs in the flat Mrs. Kent's self-control had deserted her. She was crying. Her face was half smothered in a cushion and her shoulders were heaving. Mr. Kent was standing over her trying to offer his pocket handkerchief.