Ngaio Marsh - Color Scheme

“No!” she cried out at last. “Oh, no! I couldn’t. Please don’t!”

“Wait a bit, now. Don’t act as if I’m not making a straight offer. Don’t get me all wrong. I’m asking you to marry me, Babs.”

“Yes, I know, but I can’t possibly. Please!”

“Don’t run away with the idea it’s just a business deal. It’s not.” Mr, Questing’s voice actually faltered and if Barbara had been less frantically distracted she might have noticed that he had changed colour. “To tell you the truth I’ve fallen for you, kid,” he continued appallingly. “I don’t know why, I’m sure. I like ’em snappy and kind of wise as a general rule and if you’ll pardon my candour you’re sloppy in your dress and, boy, are you simple! Maybe that’s exactly why I’ve fallen. Now don’t interrupt me. I’m not dizzy yet and I know you’re not that way about me. I don’t say I’d have asked you if I hadn’t got a big idea you’d run this joint damn well when I showed you how. I don’t say I haven’t put you on the spot where it’s going to be hard to say no. I have. I knew where I could get in the fine work, seeing how your old folks are placed, and I got it in. I’ll use it all right. But listen, little girl” — Mr. Questing on a sudden note of fervour breathed out his final cliché — “I want you,” he said hoarsely.

To Barbara the whole speech had sounded nightmarish. She quite failed to realize that Mr. Questing thought on these standardized lines and spoke his commonplaces from a full heart. It was the first experience of its kind that she had endured, and he seemed to her a terrible figure, half-threatening, half-amorous. When she forced herself to look up and saw him in his smooth pale suit, himself pale, slightly obese and glistening, and found his eyes fixed rather greedily upon hers, her panic mounted to its climax, and she thought: “I shan’t like to refuse. I must get away.” She noticed that his expensive watch-chain was heaving up and down in an agitated rhythm about two feet away from her nose. She sprang to her feet and, as if she had released a spring in Mr. Questing, he flung his arms about her. During the following moments the thing she was most conscious of was his stertorous breathing. She brought her elbows together and shoved with her forearms against his waistcoat. At the same time she dodged the face which thrust forward repeatedly at hers. She thought: “This is frightful. This is the worst thing that has ever happened to me. I’m hating this.” Mr. Questing muttered excitedly: “Now, now, now,” and they tramped to and fro. Barbara tripped over the camp-stool and rapped her shin. She gave a little yelp of pain. And upon this scene came Simon and Dikon.

Gaunt had announced that he would do no work after all and Dikon, released from duty, decided to go for a walk in the direction of the Peak. He had an idea that he would like to see for himself the level crossing and the bridge where Smith had his escape from the train. He found Simon and asked him to point out the short cut to the Peak road. Simon, most unexpectedly, offered to go with him. They set out together along the path that ran past the springs and lake. They had not gone far before they heard a confused trampling and a sharp cry. Without a word but on a single impulse, they ran forward together and Barbara was discovered in Mr. Questing’s arms.

Dikon was an over-civilized young man. He belonged to a generation whose attitude of mind was industriously ironic. He could accept scenes that arose out of crises of the nerves, they were a commonplace of the circle into which his association with Gaunt had introduced him. It was inconceivable that any young woman of those circles would be unable to cope with the advances of a Mr. Questing or, for a matter of that, fail to lunch and dine off such an attempt when she had dealt with it. Dikon’s normal reaction to Barbara’s terror would perhaps have been a feeling of incredulous embarrassment. After all they were within a few hundred yards of the house in broad daylight. It was up to her to cope. He could never have predicted the impulse of pure anger that flooded through him, and he had time actually to feel astonished at himself. It was not until afterwards that he recognized the complementary emotion which arose when Barbara ran to her brother. Dikon realized then that he himself was a lay figure and felt a twinge of regret that it was so.

Simon behaved with more dignity than might have been expected of him. He put his arm across his sister’s shoulders and in his appalling voice said: “What’s up, Barbie?” When she did not answer he went on: “I’ll look after this. You cut along out of it.”

“Hey!” said Mr. Questing. “What’s the big idea?”

“It’s nothing, Sim. Sim, it’s all right, really.”

Simon looked over her shoulder at Dikon. “Fix her up, will you?” he said, and Dikon answered: “Yes, of course,” and wondered what was expected of him. Simon shoved her, not ungently, towards him.

“Great hopping fleas,” Mr. Questing expostulated, “what’s biting you now! There’s not a damn thing a man can do in this place without you all come milling round like magpies. You’re crazy. I try to get a little private yarn with Babs and you start howling as if it was the Rape of the What-have-you Women.”

“Go and boil your head,” said Simon. “And Barbie, you buzz off.”

“I really think you’d better,” Dikon said, realizing that his function was to remove her. She murmured something hurriedly to Simon and turned away. “All right, all right,” said Simon, “don’t you worry.” They left Simon and Questing glaring at each other in ominous silence.

Dikon followed her along the path. She started off at a great rate, with her head high, clutching her raincoat about her. They had gone some little way before he saw that her shoulders were quivering. He felt certain that all she wanted of him was to leave her to herself, but he could not make up his mind to do this. As they drew nearer to the house they saw Colonel and Mrs. Claire come out on the verandah and begin to set up their deck-chairs.

Barbara stopped short and turned. Her face was stained with tears.

“I can’t let them see,” she said.

“Come round by the other path.”

It was a track that skirted the Springs and came out near the cabins. A brushwood fence screened it from the verandah. Halfway along, Barbara faltered, sat on the bank, buried her face in her arms and cried most bitterly.

“Oh God, I’m so sorry,” said Dikon confusedly. “Have my handkerchief. I’ll turn my back, shall I? Or shall I?”

She took the handkerchief with a woebegone attempt at a smile. He sat beside her and put his arm round her.

“Never mind,” he said. “He’s quite preposterous. A ridiculous episode.”

“It was beastly .”

“Well, confound the fellow, anyway, for upsetting you.”

“It’s not only that. He — he — ” Barbara hesitated and then with a most dejected attempt at her trick of over-emphasis sobbed out: “He’s got a hold on us.”

“So Colly was right,” Dikon thought. “It is the old dope.”

“If only Daddy had never met him! And what Sim’s doing now, I can’t imagine. If Sim loses his temper he’s frightful. Oh dear,” said Barbara blowing her nose very loudly on Dikon’s handkerchief, “what have we all done that everything should go so hideously wrong with us? Really, it’s exactly as if we dotted scenes about the place like booby-traps for Mr. Gaunt and you. And he was so heavenly about the other time, pretending he didn’t mind.”

“It wasn’t pretence. He told the truth when he said he adored scenes. He does. He even uses them in his work. Do you remember in the Jane Eyre , when Rochester, without realizing what he did, slowly wrung the necks of Jane’s bridal flowers?”