This Merry Bond (7 page)

“That’s all!” echoed Mouse but she said no more.

Borrowing money, even when the gentry did it, still seemed to her one of the deadly sins. How did they keep their self-respect, wondered Mouse, when they were always up to their eyes in debt?

When Simon arrived, he looked slightly surprised to find that Charles wasn’t there, but as Nicky proceeded to entertain him with a charm that he had seldom seen her use before, he suppressed a smile and listened gravely to her chatter.

But when back in the library after dinner, the coffee and glasses had been taken away, a silence fell upon her. She lit one cigarette after another and threw them away half-smoked, and finally she rushed into speech.

“Of course you guessed why I asked you here this evening,” she said.

For answer he took a folded piece of foolscap from his breast-pocket, and held it out to her.

“I’m ready to tear this up when you say the word,” he replied.

She jumped up and stood facing him, her back to the fire and he was reminded of the first evening he had dined at Nye.

“The trouble is,” she said very quickly, “that we can’t pay up on the date you stipulated.”

He said nothing, but waited for her to go on.

“After all you didn’t give us much time, did you?” she said gracefully.

“It was a date you agreed to at the time,” Simon said in an expressionless voice.

“Yes, but—have a heart! Charles just hasn’t been able to raise it. He’ll get a break on the market one of these days. You don’t have to worry.”

She was trying to dismiss the affair airily, as she had done so many times before, but under Simon’s disconcerting gaze it wasn’t as easy as she expected.

“I see. And if he’s unsuccessful in his speculations?” he said, and the mildness of his voice quite misled her.

She shrugged—Charles’s own expressive gesture.

“I’m afraid, in that case, you’ll have to have patience like everyone else,” she said.

He regarded her speculatively, then he said very quietly:

“You aren’t forgetting, are you, that I have my security?”

CHAPTER
SIX

“What do you mean?” Nicky asked uneasily

O
ne of the dogs stirred in its sleep, and a log fell into the fire, sending up a small shower of sparks.

He leaned forward in his chair.

“When you signed that agreement a couple of months ago, Nicky, you offered me certain security, which, if you remember, I accepted,” he said still in that quiet, expressionless voice. “I fulfilled my side of the bargain. Is it unreasonable to expect that you will fulfill yours?”

Nicky stood staring at him and went a little white.

“But—but you’d never hold me to that,” she said at last.

“Why not?”

“Because—because I was driven to it in the first place. I had nothing else to offer. No decent man would take such an offer seriously.”

He got to his feet slowly and stood looking down at her, and his eyes were suddenly hard and angry.

“Now I’m going to say to you what I’ve been itching to say before on many occasions,” he said, and his voice had entirely altered. “You and your father seem to think that your accident of birth gives you the right to your codes of honor and standards of living. You borrow and owe money as if it was yours by right so that you can go on keeping up appearances. Do you think that’s honest? Do you really believe that a Bredon is entitled to every privilege simply because he
is
a Bredon? Your conceit is colossal! Why, compared to your standards, my father is a thoroughly honorable man, and yet you look down on us and snub us because we have worked for our independence while you just live on other people. You’ve got away with this sort of thing too long, my dear. This time you’re going to know what it’s like to pay up for a change.”

Nicky began to tremble. She felt suddenly sick and instinctively moved away from the fire and from Simon. His attack had been so unexpected that she could think of nothing to say to him. On the last few occasions they had met, he had seemed so friendly and kindly that she had not been prepared to come up against that hard unyielding streak he had inherited from his father. Her poor little attempts at carrying off such a situation seemed to her almost laughable now and, indeed, a little insulting. Babbling to Mouse about suitable wine as though he were a susceptible creditor likely to be placated by a good dinner and a few soft speeches.

She met his look squarely. “All right, if that’s how you feel. Though how you imagine you’ll enjoy yourself if that’s what you think of us, I don’t quite know. When shall we go?” she said with an effort at flippancy, and added bitterly: “I suppose you knew Charles would never pay up when you lent us the money.”

“If I’d wanted you in. that way, Nicky, I wouldn’t have chosen such a roundabout method of getting you,” he said very coldly.

“Oh, well, it doesn’t much matter. You’re not the first, you know,” she said. At least she wasn’t going to give him that satisfaction. But to her surprise the anger went out of his face and he said gently:

“You’ve never had a lover, Nicky Bredon. I knew that when you slapped my face for me.”

Suddenly the fight went out of her. She covered her face with her hands and she could feel the hot shamed tears running through her fingers. She was aware of Simon standing over her and presently he began to speak.

“Nicky—would you marry me, my dear? That would suit me just as well,” he said, and there was a hint of laughter in his voice.

She looked up then, and stared at him with dazed eyes while the tears ran down her face unheeded.

“What did you say?” she asked stupidly.

“I w
a
s asking you to marry me.”

Suspicion leaped into her eyes.

“Why?” she asked.

“Why do you imagine?”

“The only possible reason I should think,” she said, all her hurt humiliation in her voice as she spoke. “Your money and my name.”

The kindliness went out of his face.

“You’re wrong,” he said quietly. “I happened to fall in love with you, you little fool. God knows why, for you’ve little enough kindness. Good night. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to play my part better.”

For a moment she almost called him back, for when he went he took with him truth and integrity and a promise of something better. But she heard the front door swing to with its familiar echoing thud, and she slipped to the floor and wept afresh.

For a week, Nicky went no place where she was likely to meet Simon. She developed an unreasoning dread of meeting him and for the first time began to think seriously of accompanying Charles abroad. She didn’t understand her reaction to that evening. She only knew that Simon had routed her again, and that she felt ashamed. She wanted to swear at Charles for having put her in such a position, to talk to him for the first time in her life as child to parent, to seek solace from him somehow. But Charles wasn’t there to curse, and if he had been he would never have fulfilled the role of parent.

So Nicky went off for long walks alone and in the evening played the piano for hours on end in the big, unfamiliar drawing room. She felt, childishly, that had she been able to laugh at this proposal she would get back some of her self respect. But Simon wasn’t the kind of man you dismissed that easily. There was something about him. Nicky suddenly realized with unconceited simplicity that although in her travels with her father, many men had tried to make love to her, Simon was the first to tell her that he loved her.

The knowledge did something unexpected to her. She was conscious of an odd kind of gratitude to him for loving her, and an added humiliation in that, although he loved her, he had little respect for her.

Mouse watched her a little anxiously. It was plain to her sharp and experienced eyes that the girl was unhappy, and she had little difficulty in tracing that unhappiness to young Mr. Shand. Mouse was puzzled. For although Nicky had made it very plain that she had no interest in Simon, it was evident that something had passed between them.

One evening, helping Nicky to dress for a party at Liza Coleman’s, Mouse asked her straight out what the matter was.

“Matter?” echoed Nicky with an effort. “Nothing’s the matter.”

“Rubbish!” Mouse retorted promptly. “You don’t deceive me, my girl. Are you ill?”

“No.” Nicky tried to laugh.

“In love, then?”

“Of course not.”

“Why are you mooning around the place like a lost puppy dog, then?”

Nicky, seated on the bed stretched out one long lovely leg and regarded her painted toenails reflectively.

“A lost puppy dog,” she repeated slowly. “Perhaps that’s what I am. I never thought of that.”

“Then the sooner you find a master the better it’ll be for us all,” said Mouse decisively. “I don’t hold with all this modern upbringing, Nicky, and never did. If your father had left you in the schoolroom where you belonged, instead of traipsing half way around the world with you, I’d have seen that you had a good sound raising and no nonsense.”

“Oh, Mouse!” said Nicky helplessly.

“
And
what good has it done you, I should like to know?” Mouse was in full spate now. “Giving you ideas and none of them sensible ones. Your father should have remained single, for a more unsuited gentleman to the married state I never did see.”

“Perhaps if mother had lived—”

“If your mother had lived he’d have broken her heart, and you know it.”

“Oh, Mouse—” Nicky suddenly burst into tears, and immediately Mouse darted over to the bed and took the girl in her arms.

“There, there, what an old fool I am!” she soothed. “Don’t you cry, my pretty, you’ll spoil your eyes for the party, though why you ever want to have parties with that Mrs. Coleman, I’m sure I don’t know. Painted hussy,
and
been through the divorce courts at that. There, there. Sponge your eyes in cold water. You’ll have to be hurrying.”

But Liza’s party wasn’t a success. Nicky found them all noisy and artificial. Her head ached and she wished she hadn’t come. Liza made arch references to Shand’s Shoes in her shrill, carrying voice, and from the laughter Nicky knew that Liza had circulated some story of the Boxing night party that had titillated her guests’ amusement.

Nicky made some excuse and left early, feeling impatient and out of tune with everyone.

The thaw had set in and Smith the groom started exercising the horses again. It was at least some relief to be able to ride, and
Nicky went to the stables on the first morning with a lighter heart than she had known for days.

“I’ll have Sunray this morning,” she told Smith.

“He’s very fresh, miss,” the man said doubtfully. “And the roads are shocking. Sir Charles didn’t want him ridden till he returns.”

“Oh, that doesn’t apply to me,” she said carelessly. “Saddle him up, will you?”

Presently the horse was brought out, sidling and snorting. He was the young thoroughbred Charles had recently bought. Nicky hadn’t ridden him very much, and she and Charles had never agreed upon his merits. Charles said he was a flyer and carefully schooled would make a good point-to-pointer. Nicky said he was all' show and no stamina. She didn’t like his eye. Unreliable, she told Smith, and the man rather agreed with her.

Nicky mounted and trotted down the long avenue between the chestnuts. The road was wet and sloshy after the thaw, and slippery in places, for there was still ice about. Like most thoroughbreds, Sunray was temperamental. He saw ghosts in the hedges, snatched at his bridle at the slightest pressure on the bit, and was not a comfortable ride on slippery tarmac.

It might be nice to get away with Charles for a couple of months, Nicky thought, as she jogged along keeping a sharp lookout for icy puddles. A fresh outlook, a respite from money affairs. But she knew that would only be a postponement of the final day of reckoning. She had implicit faith in Charles’s skill in eventually raising the money, but her own problems couldn’t be shifted so easily. What of Simon and that lost five thousand? What of that wretched agreement as yet unhonored?

She had a sudden vivid recollection of his face as he said to her: “I’ve fallen in love with you, you little fool. God knows why, for you have little enough kindness.” Was that what he’d always thought of her? Hard, arrogant, and not always very honest?

Lost in her own thoughts, she had slackened her hold o
n
the reins, and at that moment a noisy little sports car, spluttering and backfiring, shot past her and the horse squealed and reared. Perhaps Nicky tightened her grip too suddenly. Sunray began plunging, his feet slid on the treacherous tarmac and he was down, a mass of wildly kicking hoofs with the girl beneath him.

He struggled up almost at once, and unhurt, made off down the road. Nicky, the breath knocked out of her, and a sharp pain in her ribs, got dazedly to her feet and was violently sick in the hedge. When she felt she could walk she staggered down the road to the Nye Arms just ahead. People had run out at the sound of the galloping hoofs, and Nicky said to a chauffeur who seemed vaguely familiar, though she couldn’t for the moment place him:

“Do you think you could give me a lift home? I feel a bit queer.”

“Mr. Shand is just inside, miss,” the man said quickly. “I’ll tell him.”

“Oh, no,” said Nicky weakly and she sat down on the front seat of the car and ducked her head between her hands. But it was old John Shand who came hurrying out with a glass of brandy.

“Here, lass, drink this,” he said with rough kindliness. “Then I’ll take you home and we’ll get the doctor.”

She swallowed the brandy and was dimly conscious of somebody saying Sunray had been caught in the village and was being taken back to Nye. Old Shand got in beside his chauffeur, after having left orders for Dick Lucy to be telephone
d
at once.

The doctor was at Nye almost as soon as they were, and Nicky had a hazy impression of being helped up the stairs and put to bed by Mouse, who scolded and fussed alternately. Dick Lucy came and examined her and pronounced that, apart from a bad bruising, he didn’t think much damage had been done.

Gradually she felt more clear-headed. The sick, dazed feeling began to pass and she held out a grateful hand for the cup of hot soup that Mouse brought her.

“The doctor’s left a draught, and you’re to sleep all the afternoon,” she said severely. “The idea! Getting yourself squashed by a great brute of a horse.”

“I didn’t do it on purpose, Mouse dear,” said Nicky with a laugh that hurt her in the region of her ribs.

“Well, you ought to know better than to go careering down the roads in this sort of weather. I’ll give that Smith a piece of my mind and no mistake.”

“It wasn’t his fault. Don’t go, Mouse. Stay with me a bit.”

“
I
must go,” said Mouse moving to the door. “Mr. Shand is still downstairs.”

“Hasn’t he gone yet?” said Nicky with faint surprise. “He was very kind.”

“Oh, not
him,”
Mouse made a gesture which dismissed John Shand to oblivion. “Mr. Simon Shand. He came soon after the doctor did. Quite put out he looked.”

“Simon?” A faint tinge of color crept into her face. “I’d like to see him, please.”

“You’ll do nothing of the kind, my girl!” Mouse looked outraged. “The doctor said sleep, and sleep you will as soon as you’ve got that soup inside you. Make haste now and drink it up.”

“I’m not going to sleep until I’ve seen Mr. Shand,” said Nicky. “There’s something I want to say to him.”

Mouse tried coaxing.

“Now, childie, you don’t want to be having visitors just now. Won’t it keep? I’ll tell him to come back tomorrow.”

“Please, Mouse—”

“Oh, very well, but if he stays talking longer than ten minutes I’ll come myself and turn him out,” said Mouse crossly and left the room.

Nicky had very little idea of what she wanted to say to Simon Shand. Some sort of apology, some sort of bid for his good faith. She didn’t know.

He came in quietly and stood by the bed looking down at her propped against the pillows, her face pale and transparent-looking, her long brilliant eyes heavy with weariness.

“It was nice of you to come,” she said, smiling at him.

“I was with Stella when the call came through. I came along at once,” he said.

She thought he looked strained and anxious and once again she felt that little rush of gratitude toward him.

“I’m all right. Only shaken up and bruised,” she said with a gentleness that was rare in her. “Simon—I wanted to say something to you.”

“Yes?”

He sat down on the side of the bed and all at once she was very conscious of his nearness.

“I don’t quite know what I wanted to say,” she said, hesitating a little. “To apologize perhaps—to say that I’m not really so rotten as you think me—”

For no reason she had a fleeting impression of Mary Shand saying with simplicity: “I only had but one party dress until I married John.” She looked at Simon and her eyes filled with tears. She had nothing more to say.

Again that strange attraction assailed her, and with it, something more. Something strong and tender and protective. Something she had never known with Charles. She turned to Simon with a little sigh.

“I hadn’t meant to say this, but I’d like to marry you if you’ll have me, Simon,” she said simply, and it seemed to her the right answer to all those unhappy thoughts that had been harrying her.

For a moment he hesitated. He knew that she was turning to him as a child instinctively turns to a stronger nature—because she was hurt, because she was tired of fighting an unequal struggle. Yet he knew also that he attracted her, that somewhere in her strange little heart he had touched something new and tender. Perhaps in time
...

He bent over her.

“You won’t slap my face again if I kiss you, will you—Nicolette?” he said very gently.