Patricia Wentworth - Beggar’s Choice

“I’ll tell you what he’s done if you like. He has insulted me in the worst way that a man can insult a woman. He wanted to marry me once, and when I wouldn’t have him-” She choked and threw up a hand before her eyes.

“Oh!” she said in a deep, gasping note. “Men can be brutes-brutes-brutes!”

The startled Mr. Markham turned plum-colored with embarrassment.

“Anna-hold on-what do you mean?”

The hand that had covered her eyes was thrown out towards him in a really fine dramatic gesture.

“Don’t ask me-you’re my friend-don’t ask me any more.” She turned away a little and stood drooping, with the shawl falling in a long straight line from her shoulder. “That is why my uncle quarreled with him. I didn’t tell him everything. But I couldn’t-couldn’t go on seeing Car as if nothing had happened. Now Uncle John is beginning to hanker after him again-it’s an old man’s fancy, and I can’t, can’t bear it.” She leaned across the table to him suddenly with outstretched hands. “Bobby, I can’t bear it-I can’t! You must help me! Bobby-don’t you see that I can’t bear it! And if he does go to prison for this, it’s just, because he’s never been punished for what he did to me.”

Mr. Markham felt himself a good deal carried away.

“Look here, Anna-I say, don’t upset yourself like that.” He caught at her hand and held it. “Look here, if I do it-”

“You will? Oh, Bobby!”

“I didn’t say I would-I said if-” He paused and imprinted a fervent kiss upon the hand which lay uppermost in his. It was cold and smooth-it was very cold. He let go of it almost involuntarily. As she drew back, he said, “What do you want to bring the girl into it for? You’ve not got your knife into her, have you?”

“Isobel?” said Anna.

“Yes.”

There was a little pause. Anna’s emotion had passed; she looked beautiful and cool and smiling again.

“Oh, no,” she said.

“Then why bring her into it?”

“It won’t hurt her. You’ve very chivalrous, Bobby. You needn’t be afraid-Isobel won’t come to any harm, because Car-Car will be chivalrous too. He won’t give her away.”

Mr. Markham salved his conscience with this. He had a conscience, but he had trained it to a certain degree of docility. It would demand satisfaction, to be sure, but it had learned to be very easily satisfied. He told himself that it was satisfied now. Anna’s appeal had gone to his head and raised hopes which he had previously scarcely dared to entertain. Now, when he saw her withdrawing, cool and remote as a statue, he ventured beyond his prudence.

“Anna-” he said in an agitated voice, “if I do it-”

Instantly the statue came to life; the color rushed into the pale cheeks. She glowed and put her hands in his.

“You will!”

“If I do, will you-will you-let me take you out of it all?”

“Do you want to?” said Anna, looking at him.

“You know I do. I’ve made my pile. I got a lucky tip the other day and made enough to clear right out of all this other business. I’ll buy a place and settle down. You can have everything you want. I’m easy to live with-ask Cis. You wouldn’t mind Cis living with us, would you-Anna?”

She drew away her hand very slowly, looking down, her eyes hidden, her long black lashes making startling contrast with the white of the eyelids and the rich blush of the cheeks.

“Anna-will you?”

“Will you?” said Anna.

“If,” said Mr. Bobby Markham with as much firmness as remained in him.

Car Fairfax ’s Diary:

September 23rd-I haven’t written anything down for days, because nothing special seems to have been happening- that is to say, nothing that has any bearing on this Z.10 business. I seem to have done nothing but run up against people I used to know, and they’ve all been very nice, and glad to see me and all that sort of thing. You don’t meet people when you’re crawling round looking for work in seedy clothes. It’s been topping meeting people again. I’d forgotten what jolly good sorts most of them were.

Yesterday I took Corinna out. She’s going down to Linwood some time this week. She talks a lot about Peter. I hate butting into other people’s affairs, but I thought she ought to know that he was married. We were having tea at a quite sort of place she picked, so I thought I’d make a plunge and get it over. I’m afraid I did it very badly, but I don’t see how you can break that sort of thing-besides I didn’t want her to think that I thought there was anything to break. She’d just been saying that Poppa thought the world of Peter, only once he’d said a thing he didn’t like to go back on it-“and of course I had said about a million times that I was just dying to go to Europe, so when he turned round and said I was to go, I couldn’t very well say much about not wanting to-could I? He said that Peter and I weren’t to write to each other, and I said ‘Poppa darling, you just pinch yourself and come awake! You’re about two hundred years out-this isn’t the eighteenth century.’ So he said we could write to each other as friends.”

I got as hot as I’ve ever been in my life, and I said,

“You’re a great friend of Peter’s.”

And she crinkled up the corners of her eyes and laughed like a child and said,

“I’m a great friend.”

“And so am I.” And there I stuck.

She stopped laughing-she’s as sharp as a needle-and asked quickly,

“What are you trying to say, Car?”

I shoved myself along by main force. The only thing I could do for her was to get it out quickly.

“We’re both his friends. Don’t you think he ought to give out his marriage? Secrets are stupid things-don’t you think so?” I went on because I was afraid to stop and I was afraid to look at her. Then when I had said “Don’t you think so?” I couldn’t think of anything else to say, so I stopped. Then I had to look.

She was sitting up quite straight, and rather puzzled.

“But we can’t because of Poppa,” she said. “Poppa won’t let us be engaged till I get back. He doesn’t say he will then, but I guess I’ll make him.” She laughed a little, but she kept looking at me.

It was perfectly horrible. I wanted her to tumble to it before she said anything like that. It was my fault-I ought to have been able to stop her. I was mad with Peter, and I could have kicked myself. I said,

“That’s a joke-because Peter must have told you that he was married.”

She sat there with her hands in her lap and her eyes wide open.

“It isn’t a joke,” she said in a little breathless voice.

I just forged ahead-I had to.

“Peter is married. He got married just before the smash. He was married before he met you.”

She never took her eyes off my face. I wished she would move, but she didn’t. Her voice didn’t shake at all, but there was so little of it that I don’t know how I heard what she was saying. I did her her say,

“Go on.”

“Peter married Fay Everitt just before the smash.”

I don’t think she had been breathing. She began now to take a long breath. When she had filled her lungs, she gave a shiver and drew the back of her hand across her eyes. It was just like seeing some one wake up.

“Oh, how you frightened me!” she said.

“My dear-” I began, but she leaned over the table and took hold of my wrist.

“Don’t be silly, Car-it’s not true.”

“Corinna-”

“Don’t be silly! Of course it’s not true.”

“My dear-”

“Peter would have told me,” she said, nodding earnestly and pinching my wrist.

I thought she was the pluckiest kid-but I won’t write down what I thought about Peter.