Such is love (25 page)

She had never liked the idea of living a lie—or, rather, of having dehberately suppressed the truth. But somehow, the real baseness of it had never quite come home to her in those early days, when his cool, rather hard and autocratic manner had been a perpetual reminder of his strength.

Now, for a few unhappy minutes, she had the dreadful feeling of having exploited someone whose very love for her put him at a disadvantage. It was not a nice sensation.

"As well as everything else," thought Gwyneth, "it's been mean-—^mean—mean. How I hate myself—^and I wish I were dead."

But Van didn't wish her dead. He wished her alive— very much so. He was anxious about her—^wanted to do a dozen things for her comfort and to make her rest better.

"I'm all right. Van dear. I'm quite all right." She couldn't tell him, of course, that it only hurt all the more to have him so sweet and attentive.

He left her at last, in the belief that she was on the verge of falling asleep. And she was free to lie there, staring into the darkness, wondering how much more she could bear of this sickening uncertainty and subterfuge.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The next few days were so terrible that Gwyneth could never afterwards remember them individually. They just seemed one long nightmare stretch of dreariness and tension and cracking nerves.

Every time the telephone bell rang she felt a chill crawl down her spine, and each time the post arrived she would try—^hating and despising herself the while—^to see if there were a letter in Terry's handwriting, so that she could perhaps remove it before Van saw it

On the afternoon of the third day Paula came to see her. She had not telephoned first, and Gwyneth rather thought that the visit was made on impulse.

She was quiet and subdued and not at all given to any of her usual flippancies. With a good deal of pity, Gwyneth saw that she was still suffering badly from the shock of Terry's exposure. She did not, however appear to have any illogical animus against Gwyneth for having so painfully opened her eyes.

Her greeting to Gwyneth had all its usual affection— rather more, perhaps, since it was altogether quieter and more sincere.

"I've been wanting so much to see you, Gwyn dear," she said, and she obviously meant it. *T felt I had to come in and talk to you."

"I'm glad," Gwyneth clasped her hand very tightly. "I was afraid you would feel you could never dissociate me from—^from what happened, and that you might never want to see me agam." And she smiled rather ruefully.

"Whatl blame you because / had made an utter fool of myself? Even I am not so illogical as that."

Paula seemed rather bent on abasing herself, and Gwyneth hastily came to her rescue.

"No, no, I didn't mean anything like that. You didn't make a fool of yourself, anyway. You couldn't possibly have guessed the real state of affairs."

"You tried to tell me, right in the beginning," Paula spoke a little bitterly. "I've been remembering that in the last few days. And I just wouldn't listen to you."

Gwyneth shrugged and smiled faintly again.

"I don't know that anyone else woiid have listened in

the circumstances, Paula. I suppose it was a little unreasonable to tell you only a quarter of the story, and then expect you to feel as I did. But I—^I couldn't "

"No I know. Gwyneth"—Paula looked embarrassed, a most unusual thing with her—"I want to say that I'm most frightfully sorry that, in the end, you were forced out into the open like that. These things are absolutely no one's business except one's own and—and I'm so sorry you had to tell us the whole story before I would understand."

"It doesn't matter," Gwyneth said, and she realized in that moment that it didn't. "Somehow, I can't mind any more about anything like wondering what people think of me. I can only think of the terrible, grim essentials, such as when Van will find out and what he will do when he does know."

"He may never know, Gwyn.'*

"Terry will tell him, if it's the last thing he ever does."

"See him, you mean?"

"N-no. I think he knows Van would kill him if he said such a thing to his face. He'll phone or write, I suppose. But when — when — when?" Gwyneth stopped herself abruptly, realizing that she was not very far from hysteria.

"But if he writes, Gwyn, can't you stop the letter?" Paula asked anxiously.

"Oh, I try to see the post first, of course. But how I hate these mean sordid tricks! To think that the happiness of my marriage depends on my tampering with my husband's lettersl It's so degrading. I know myself for a weak, small-minded woman, when I find myself reduced to that sort of thing. I ought to have had the courage to tell him long ago. I can see it now. A big character would have. I've just let myself be pushed from one shameful emergency to another, and now I'm so ashamed of the whole story that I don't know which is the worst part of it."

Paula stared at her in silent dismay.

"You're not weak and small-minded," she said at last, having seized on that phrase of Gwyneth's bitter outburst. "No one who was weak and small-minded would have done what you did the other night."

"Oh yes, they would, Paula dear. They would have done it long before I did, too. I caused a great deal of unnecessary suffering for you because I was too much of a coward

to say anything until the very, very last minute. I kept on hoping that some impossible miracle would put things right without my having to do anything."

"Well, hang it, Gwyn! I don't wonder. It was a pretty tough thing to have to do. I'm not at aU sure that I could have done it if things had been the other way round. Anyone would have gone on hoping against hope that something would happen."

"But it's so futile to do that."

"It's very human," Paula said feelingly.

"You're a good child, Paula—^not to blame me in the least."

"Blame youl Why on earth should I blame you? I think it was darned sporting of you to save me from my own idiocy, at such a price."

"I meant—about my delaying so long. It—it does hurt so awfully. I know, when you've made so many plans and —quite suddenly—the whole thing comes to pieces in your hand."

"Y-yes. But that's better than a long-drawn-out disillusionment, I suppose," Paula said with unusual wisdom.

"Besides " She broke off, looking slightly embarrassed

again. Then she went on more slowly. "I don't know whether I'm an awfully shallow person, or whether it's just that the shock was so terrific that it removed everj^hing, but—I can't feel heartbroken. That's all there is about it. I know girls don't often own to these things, but what's the good of pretending? Terry, as I thought of him, just didn't exist. He's simply a cadging swindler, whom I didn't know. I'm sore about it all, of course, and there's a lot of disappointment about it somewhere, but " Again she left

the sentence unfinished, but this time an expressive shrug filled the gap.

Gwyneth looked at her with kindly eyes. She had never liked Paula more than at this moment. There was something so downright about her, so determined not to sentimentalize over her feelings or pretend to an interesting broken heart. Facts were facts to Paula. It was stupid to make them into something different for the sake of effect.

"I don't think you're shallow, Paula dear," Gwyneth said. "It's what Van said—^you have an elastic temperament, and you make good recoveries. I know it's sickening

when people smile superiorly and say thereTl be someone else later on, but—I expect there will be. You're a very pretty girl and much too common sense and lovable not to make lots more friends."

Paula made a little face.

"Nice of you to say so, and it does something to restore my bruised amour propre. But I expect I shall have to do any more romancing among Daddy's chess-playing contemporaries. They're about the only males I see in the ordinary way—and poor Mother will be more careful than ever now."

"Oh, nonsense. We'U see to it that you do quite a lot

" Gwyneth stopped, a queer contraction of her throat

holding back the rest of her sentence. What chance would she have to 'see to it' that Paula 'did quite a lot of things'? —^how could she speak of 'we'? Next week, tomorrow, tonight even. Van might perhaps know everything. And that would be the end.

Gwyneth didn't know quite what she thought 'the end' would mean. She wavered between some idea of being turned out of the flat with Toby, and having to stay on and on instead, doing all the things she had always done, but with every dear, familiar detail meaning nothing any longer. All dead sea fruit because Van would no longer love her.

Paula didn't say anything. It was obvious that she understood the sudden silence which had fallen, and it was equally obvious that she could think of no comfort to offer.'Only when Gwyneth shivered convulsively did she manage to s^y rather feebly:

"Maybe it won't ever happen, after all, Gwyn." But she didn't sound very well convinced of that herself.

Soon after tea Paula left, and as Van had not come in from the office yet, Gvi^neth had a quiet half-hour with Toby. She had not realized how closely the child watched her, until he came now and put his hand on her knee, and said:

"Mummy, do you feel sick?"

The deep, anxious httle voice touched her, even while she smiled:

"No, darling."

"Have you got a headache?"

"Oh no. Tm quite all right, thank you,** she assured him.

He wagged his head solemnly.

"/ don't think you're all ri^t. I think you're ill. You don't talk much and you don't laugh at all"

She smiled then.

"Am I so dull? I'm sorry, Toby.'*

"Not dull, Mmnmy. Sad. Shall I come and sit beside you?"

"Please.** She made room for him in the big chair, and he got up beside her.

"Isn't this nice?" he said, and she agreed that it was.

Dear little cause of half the trouble! And yet she would not have been without him for the world.

"I think you're sad because Daddy's late," Toby said at last, having worked things out to his own satisfaction.

"Perhaps that's it." Gwyneth dropped a kiss on the top of his bright head.

"He says the same about you. He's sad when you're not there."

"Is he? Did he say that?" She was smiling now. It was amusing and touching to think of Van and Toby discussing her.

"Yes. He says you're like the little man in the weather house. When you are there it's fine weather, and when you go away again it rains."

'T)h, Toby, did he really say that?" She hugged the little boy against her. "I do love you both so much," she exclaimed. "I don't know what I should do if I lost either of you."

"You couldn't lose us," Toby said. "We'd come back. If I got lost I should go to a policeman. Betty said I must, and I like policemen."

"Yes, yes, of course.'*

"I expect Daddy would go to a policeman, too. But he always knows the way home, doesn't he?"

Gwyneth couldn't quite answer that because there was a lump in her throat. She kissed Toby instead. And after that they were silent for a while. Toby was a restful child, and he lay there quite contentedly in the circle of her arm, gradually growing more and more sleepy.

She put Toby to bed herself that night, and when—^half-

way through the solemn rite—^Van telephoned to say he would be very late, Toby said:

"I*d better stay and keep you company.**

That really did make Gwyneth laugh.

**No, no, pet You go to bed and to sleep. I shall be quite sJl right," she assured him. But he came and ate his supper with her in the loimge, and in the end he had 'ten minutes extra*.

When he was finally in bed, and she had had a solitary dinner, Gwyneth sat by the fire, trying to read, but finding, every few minutes, that her own thoughts came between her and the book.

What a dear, good child Toby was I Not in the least like his wretched father. Nor, come to that, like his mother.

"We haven't shown many good qualities between us, to pass on to him," Gwyneth thought rather bitterly. "I wish I could have been an example to him. Someone decent and courageous and dependable. It was good of Paula to say I wasn't weak and small-minded—^but oh, I wish I could have been something worthwhile!"

It must be wonderful to be the sort of parent children were proud of as they grew up. The sort of parent who set a high standard and kept unflinchingly to it. That made things so much easier for children. They grow up then with the idea that one simply didn't do anything but the brave, decent thing.

Toby would never know, of course, what had really happened, but he would sense instinctively that Van despised her and had lost his trust in her. That was—^if Van decided to stay with them at all.

"I wish he would come in," Gwyneth thought

And then—"No, I don't While he's not here, at least I don't have to go on pretending and pretending. I can be myself—^let my fears and doubts show."

But it was silly to indulge those too far. They took hold of one more and more, destroyed the miserable bit of nerve one had left. Better not think about those things any more. She could do nothing, anyway. Nothing, nothing, nothing. It was out of her hands.

She read determinedly again, but a few minutes later, the sound of the postman roused her. She sat there rigid, staring at the page and seeing nothing, straining her ears

while Betty came out of her room and went to the front door. In a minute she would bring the letters in here. One would remain perfectly calm, of course—^show no sign that something more dangerous than a bomb might be among the letters

"The post, madam." Betty came in and put the letters on the small table at Gwyneth*s elbow.

She glanced up and smiled slightly.

"Oh, thank you, Betty." She spoke with admirable carelessness as she picked up the letters. "Not very many tonight, are there? I expect " She never finished saying

what she expected. She was staring down at the last letter of the pile.

She knew Terry's writing too well to make any mistake. And the letter was addressed to Van.

When Betty had gone, Gwyneth sat there, perfectly still for a long while, the unopened letter in her hand.