“You mean,” he said slowly, demanding more, at least a repetition, “to take the trip out with you?”
“No, no . . . to stay.” She spoke almost feverishly. “As a doctor, there’s the greatest need for you. Uncle Willie is planning a little hospital adjoining the orphanage. You would find there the very work you are fitted for, which in your heart you are seeking. And we would be together, working together, happy.”
“To be with you, Kathy,” he conceded feelingly, “I’d give my right arm. But think of the changes it would mean, in my—my way of living for one thing. Then again, it’s some time, since I took my medical degree.”
“You could brush up quickly—you’re so clever. And you’d get used to the life.”
“Yes, dear Kathy, but there are other difficulties.” The inordinate desire to be pressed further made him go on. “Financial affairs that require constant attention, responsibilities; then as regards the mission, you know I’m not a religious man. While agreeing with what you’ve just said, I doubt if I could surrender my mind to your spiritual convictions.”
“The work you’d do is the best kind of religion. In time, David, you would know the meaning of grace. Oh, I can’t speak of such things, I never could, in words they become stiff and wooden, I can only feel them in my heart. And you would too . . . if you’d only come.”
Their hands glided together. Hers, from inner strain, was cold, a marble hand; he held it tightly until the blood began to throb. Never had he felt closer to her. All her soul seemed to flow into him.
The arrival of the peasant woman cut into this splendid moment. While he looked up at her, unseeingly, she pointed to the northern sky and said, practically:
“Es wird Schnee kommen. Schau’n sie, diese Wolken. Es ist besser Sie gehen zurück nach Schwansee.”
“She’s advising us to get back home.” Returning to earth, he answered Kathy’s inquiring glance. “Snow is forecast and it’s already clouding over.”
He paid the score, leaving generous trinkgeld, and they set off back along the ridge, now in total silence, for he was deep in thought. The air had turned grey, cold and very still and the sun was dropping fast behind the mountains like a great blood-orange. Within the hour they had descended to the flatlands and, worried for her in the chill twilight, he looked forward to reaching the villa quickly. But as they were about to cross the short stretch of main road that intersected the path to Schwansee, a red sports M.G. flew past, hesitated, screeched to a stop, and noisily reversed towards them.
“Hello, hello, hello,” came the effusive greeting in high-pitched tones. “I felt sure it was you, dear boy.”
Jarred out of his meditation, Moray recognised with misgiving the brass-buttoned blazer of Archie Stench. Leaning airily out of the window from the driver’s seat, smiling with all his teeth. Stench extended a gloved hand which Moray accepted with the forced affability of extreme annoyance. The solemn pattern of the afternoon was shattered.
“This is Miss Urquhart, daughter of an old friend,” he said quickly, bent on extinguishing the suggestive gleam already glittering slyly in Stench’s eye. “Her uncle, a missionary in Central Africa, is joining her in two days time.”
“But how inter-esting.” Archie split and stressed the word. “Coming here?”
“For a brief visit,” Moray nodded coldly.
“I should like to meet him. Africa is in the news, and how. The wind of change. Ha, ha. Dear old Mac. It’s quite a breeze now in the Congo. Are you enjoying your stay, Miss Urquhart? You are staying with Moray, I presume?”
“Yes,” Kathy replied to both questions. “But I shall be leaving soon.”
“Not for wildest Africa?” Ogling, Stench threw out the question facetiously.
“Yes.”
“Good Lord!” Stench thrilled. “You’re really serious? Sounds like quite a story. You mean you’re in the missionary racket—sorry, I mean business—yourself?”
Kathy half smiled, to Moray’s annoyance, as though taking no exception to Stench’s persistence.
“I am a nurse,” she explained, “and I’m going out to help my uncle—he’s opening a hospital at Kwibu, on the Angola border.”
“Good work!” Stench glowed. “While everyone’s running away from that windy area you’re rushing in. The nation ought to hear about it. We British have to keep the flag flying. I’ll drop over when your uncle arrives. You’ll give me a drink, dear boy, just for old lang syne? Well, got to be off. I’m all in. Been down at the Pestalozzi Village doing a conjuring show for the kids. Sixty kilometres each way. Damn bore. But decent little brats. Cheerio, Miss Urquhart; chin-chin, dear boy. Wonderful to have you back!”
As he drove off Archie called out, ensuring his prospective visit:
“Don’t forget, I’ll be giving you a ring.”
“He seems nice,” Kathy remarked conversationally, when they had crossed the road. “Good of him to entertain those children.”
“Yes, he’s always up to something like that. But—well, a bit of a bounder I’m afraid,” Moray answered in the tone of one unwillingly forced to condemn, adding, as though this accounted for everything, “Correspondent for the Daily Echo.”
The unfortunate meeting at this particular moment, when vital soul-subduing issues surged in his mind, had thoroughly put him out. Stench was a menace. Confound it, he thought, brought back to the mundane, in half an hour news of his return with Kathy would be all over the canton.
Indeed, no sooner had they got back and taken tea than the phone rang.
“Put it through to the study,” he told Arturo briefly. “Excuse me for a few minutes, dear Kathy. Friend Stench has been at work.”
Upstairs, he unhooked the receiver, pressed the red button with an irritable premonition immediately confirmed by Madame von Altishofer’s contralto overtones.
“Welcome home, dear friend! I heard only this moment that you were returned. Why did you not let me know? It has been so long. You have been missed greatly; everyone is talking about your mysterious absence. Now, how soon may I come to see you, and your exciting young visitor who has designs on darkest Africa?”
It was amazing how disagreeable he found this intrusion—not only what she said, but her manner, her inverted English, even her modulated well-bred voice. He cleared his throat, launched into a perfunctory explanation, the essence of which was simply that the demands of old family friends had detained him much longer than he had anticipated.
“Relatives?” she queried politely.
“In a way,” he said evasively. “When my other guest arrives I hope you’ll come over and meet them both.”
“But before, you must come to me for a drink.”
“I wish I could. But I have so many things to attend to, after being away.” Looking out of the window he saw that the first frail snowflakes were beginning to drift down. He seized upon the topic. “Good gracious! It’s actually snowing. I’m afraid we’re in for an early winter.”
“No doubt,” she said, with a little laugh. “But are we reduced to speaking of the weather?”
“Of course not. We’ll get together soon.”
Frowning, he hung up, terminating the conversation, annoyed at her interference—no, that was totally unjust; despite her Germanic strong-mindedness she was a thoroughly nice woman and he had perhaps over-encouraged her. He was very much on edge. Again he had a strange feeling that time was closing in upon him. Downstairs he was disappointed to find that Kathy had gone to her room. She did not appear again until dinner, and then he saw, that, to please him, she had put on the green dress. Touched to the heart, he knew that there was only one woman in the world for him. He wanted her with a need so extreme he had to turn away without his usual compliment, without a word. All evening, despite his efforts to entertain, he was not himself—preoccupied, obsessed rather, with the need of achieving some decision, in the ever-dwindling hours at his disposal. After he had played a few records she must have seen that he wished to be alone, for on the plea of fatigue she went early to bed, leaving him in the library.