‘Yes, yes.’ He spoke with weary impatience. ‘I understand that I can’t bear it, but I can understand it. Only this-this unspeakable humiliation. To tell me-almost in front of those people. To wear another man’s ring before I knew she’d taken off mine. How could she?’
‘I don’t know,’ Alison whispered, feeling terribly inadequate.
‘She-we were to be married in less than four weeks.’ He spoke half to himself. ‘She must have known how she felt before this. She must.’
Alison thought so too, but could find nothing to say.
Julian turned away in a sudden passion of misery.
‘She did it on purpose. She staged it.’ He gave a furious little laugh that made Alison wince. ‘Well, she’s done me one good turn. She’s cured me of my madness for her at last. I could never care for her again. Never!’
‘Don’t, Julian!’
Alison felt she couldn’t bear to see him snatch at that little rag of pretence, to hide the naked misery of his humiliation.
He sat down heavily, and just for a moment he put his head in his hands.
‘It’s true.’ He spoke sullenly. ‘I don’t care about her as a person any more-not after such baseness. All I care about is the unspeakable way she’s broken everything up. I can’t take on the South American job now. I can’t get away.’ He said that last sentence with a sort of angry forlornness that brought the tears to Alison’s eyes.
‘Julian,’ she said gently, longing to put her hand on his hair, but not daring to touch him… ‘Julian, the first awfulness will pass, you know. It couldn’t feel like this for very long.’
‘I’m not thinking of that part of it,’ he insisted with dreary, childish obstinacy. ‘I’m thinking of my lost chance in Buenos Aires -that job I can’t take unless I’m married. I don’t care a damn about losing Rosalie as a person. I’m concerned about losing her as a wife.’
There was a long, heavy silence, which neither of them seemed able to break.
And then it was Alison who spoke.
‘I suppose I wouldn’t do?’
CHAPTER IV
THERE was another long silence, which seemed to Alison to last for hours.
Then slowly he raised his head.
‘What did you say?’ he got out at last.
She didn’t repeat it. She couldn’t. Besides, she could see from his face that he had heard.
Her hands were shaking so that she had to clasp them together. And after a moment she sank down on the rug in front of him, partly because her legs refused to support her any longer.
He took hold of her wrist suddenly and jerked her round to face him.
‘Did you mean that-what you said?’
‘Yes.’
She didn’t look up. She stared at the firelight on the amber satin of her frock, while he stared at the firelight on the pale gold satin of her hair.
Then he gave an impatient little exclamation and almost pushed her away.
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he told her roughly. ‘You’re only a schoolgirl.’
‘I’m not I’m twenty. And-and I’d do anything to get away from here.’ Better to put it on that footing at once, and, in any case, her passionate sincerity gave point to it.
She saw his expression change a little, but he only said curtly, ‘Well, chasing over the world with a man you scarcely know isn’t a good solution.’
‘I only thought-’
Alison stopped, and bit her lip, wondering rather wildly how she had got herself involved in this awful discussion.
‘What did you think?’ He looked a little disagreeable, but singularly unperturbed for a man who had just received a proposal.
‘I thought,’ Alison said in a very low voice, ‘I thought-it might be a business arrangement that suited us both.’
‘So your idea is that you would escape from your aunt’s petty tyranny and I should be able to take my South American job-and by mutual consent we should look on it as nothing more than a business deal?’
‘Yes.’ Alison’s voice sounded very small, even to her own ears.
‘Well, you’re a silly little fool,’ he told her uncompromisingly. ‘It’s the sort of idea that sounds excellent in theory and just doesn’t work in practice.’
‘Oh, but why?’ Alison spoke with the boldness of desperation.
‘Because it’s a false and ridiculous position for any ordinary man and girl. And now that every link with Rosalie has been broken’-his mouth tightened-’you and I have no other connection. That’s all we are to each other. Any ordinary man and girl.’
He meant it as a dash of cold water, she knew, but it had quite the opposite effect. Something in that phrase made her senses tingle oddly, made her realise how completely he had put himself outside Rosalie’s life at last. She stared into the fire so that he shouldn’t see the sudden light in her eyes, or the agitated colour in her cheeks.
‘Well then,’ she said quietly, ‘as an ordinary girl to an ordinary man, I suggest that we both stand to gain and not lose by the arrangement. I don’t want to sound calculating’ -he smiled slightly, perhaps because he saw how childishly her hands were trembling-’but I can’t help seeing that life as your-I mean, life out there-would be infinitely preferable to my life here. And, on your side, you either have to marry someone or else give up the job and stay here to watch Rosalie and her new fiancé.’
She saw from the angry way he winced that the last sentence had found its mark, and impulsively she put her hand on his.
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you, only it’s the truth.’
‘I know, I know,’ he said with an impatient sigh. Then he took her by the shoulders, not ungently, and turned her towards him again.
‘I wish I knew how much of this is angry impulse which you’ll bitterly regret.’
She wouldn’t look at him, but she said very earnestly, It’s not just impulse-really. And I shouldn’t regret it. It seems to me it’s just-just common sense.’
‘Oh, no,’ he said with a short laugh. ‘Whatever else it is, it isn’t that.’
‘But, Julian,’-she spoke his name timidly-’it isn’t as though we aren’t both a good deal afraid of the future as it is now.’
‘You mean we don’t either of us stand to lose much?’ He smiled grimly again. ‘No, I suppose we don’t.’
‘It’s simply a-a question of whether you think getting that job in Buenos Aires is worth the risk of marrying me.’
‘Not only that, Alison,’ he said. ‘There’s another side to it too.’
‘What?’
‘Look at me.’ His voice was quiet but peremptory, and reluctantly she raised her scared brown eyes to his face. There’s the question of whether you think escaping from your life here is worth the risk of marrying me.’
‘But I’ve told you-’ Alison whispered.
He stared unsmilingly at her, and then all at once he drew her against him.
‘Poor little Alison. You’re terribly scared really, aren’t you?’
But for a moment she felt him put his cheek down against the top of her head as though it were he, and not she, who needed comforting.
‘I’m not scared-exactly,’ she said, with a shaky little laugh. ‘Only it’s rather a shock to find you’ve proposed to someone.’
He laughed a little, too, at that. ‘Good lord, I suppose that is what you did. And I haven’t really even accepted you yet, have I?’
She moved slightly in a circle of his arm.
‘Do you realise what you’re taking on, I wonder?’ He spoke much more gently now. ‘I’m not a very easy man to live with, you know. I think Rosalie would tell you I’m violent and unreasonable and difficult.’
‘I’m not interested in Rosalie’s opinion of you,’ Alison said quietly. ‘We’re not likely to see eye to eye on anything-least of all on you.’
For some reason, that seemed to please him. He tightened his arm impulsively and said, ‘You’re a darling, Alison-and extraordinarily comforting.’