He stared, hesitated, and plunged.
“I didn’t mean that. Marian-”
She went through into the slip of a room which served as a kitchenette, and he followed her.
“You’ll do something for us-it’s a lot of money. Ina’s your sister.”
She had soup on a low gas. She began to pour it off into the plates she had set to warm. She was smiling.
“I’ll look after Ina. I always have, haven’t I?”
“But Marian-”
She shook her head.
“I’m tired, and the soup will get cold. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
“Then you’ll do something-you will, won’t you? You’ve always been an angel. Don’t think I don’t know what we owe you, because I do.”
She went on smiling.
“There-if you’ll just take your plate and Ina’s. It’s out of a tin, but it’s good.”
He stood with a smoking soup-plate in either hand.
“You don’t know how hard it is to get a footing on the stage-the jealousies-everyone trying to down you. Now if I had a backer I could run my own company and really show what I could do.”
Marian wanted to say, “Nonsense!” but she restrained herself. She said with half a laugh,
“Oh, my dear Cyril!” And then, “Come along! Ina and I had a sketchy lunch and no tea, and I hate cold soup.”
It was no use. You can’t push women. He would have to let her have her head, play up to her a bit. Perhaps it was a mistake to have said anything about running a company of his own. He wasn’t even sure that he wanted to do it. Too much responsibility, and quite an easy way of losing money. He wasn’t sure that he would not do better to stick to his present game-plenty of pickings and very few risks.
He went into the other room and made an excellent supper, maintaining a quite convincing appearance of being interested in Ina’s purchases, and in the plans which she produced in rainbow-coloured succession. What he could see was that she had fairly taken the bit between her teeth and was all out on the spending line. And that had got to be stopped. It was for the man to say how the money was to be laid out. He went on smiling carelessly and feeling angrier and more determined every minute.
There were expensive flowers in the room-tulips, narcissus, lilac. When he thought of what they must have cost- money just chucked down the drain! Ina saw him looking at them. She went on talking in that new excited way.
“Aren’t they heavenly! And do you know where they came from? Mr. Cunningham sent them-Richard Cunningham- the Richard Cunningham! He was in the accident with Marian. They were buried under the piled-up stuff in a ditch for hours together. I got so frightened I nearly died, because of course I knew something must have happened, and I thought of all the dreadful things in the world.” She shuddered and turned pale under the new make-up. “You can’t think how grim it was. And Mr. Cunningham had two ribs broken and had to go to hospital. And he’s going to America as soon as they’ll let him, but he sent those lovely flowers yesterday, and a copy of The Whispering Tree.”
Cyril maintained his role of careless good humour with increasing difficulty.
It was not until he and Ina were alone at last in their own room with the door shut that the smile came off. Ina, at the dressing-table, saw his face come up out of the shadowed glass like a drowned face coming up out of water. Only the bedside light was on, with its frayed green shade. Cyril had bought it once when he won some money on a horse. He said the glare of the overhead light hurt his eyes, so Ina had the bedside lamp for a birthday present. It gave the room an underwater look. Cyril’s face floated up in the glass.
“What a lot of nonsense women talk.”
She turned round with a nervous start. His voice was cutting, the smile quite gone.
“Cyril!”
He made an angry sound.
“Don’t Cyril me! I’ve had enough of your chatter! And don’t start crying and making a noise for everyone to hear. You’ve got to make Marian see reason.”
“But, Cyril-”
“You’ve got to make her see reason. I never heard anything so insulting in my life-she comes in for all that money, and she has the nerve to say she’s going to keep it for herself!”
“Oh, Cyril!”
“Will you be quiet! Do you want her to hear you? She’s going to give you an allowance-one hundred a year out of two thousand! What does that mean? Will it give us a home? Will it give me a job? Will it give me my proper position as your husband? All it does is to keep you under her thumb the way you’ve always been, and give her the say-so in everything. A nice position, I must say! But I’m not putting up with it. Do you hear-I’m not putting up with it!”
Ina sat leaning against the dressing-table with the tilted oval glass at her back. It reflected her cloudy dark hair, the turn of her shoulder. Her hand with the comb in it had dropped to her lap. She had bought a new one that afternoon, but this was the old broken thing she had used for years. Whether her face was quite drained of colour, or whether it was only the effect of the light, it had an exasperating effect upon Cyril Felton. A man expected to be able to put a few plain facts before his wife without her staring at him like a ghost. He took an angry step to the bedside and tilted the old green shade to clear the light. It struck full on Ina’s face and showed it colourless.
“But, Cyril-”
He came over and took her by the wrist.
“Don’t keep yapping at me! You’ve got to talk to Marian- make her see reason. You can do it if you like. You’ve only got to let her see how you feel about it. After all, it’s what’s fair. A thousand a year each-what does she want with more than that? She wouldn’t know how to spend it.”
His tone had moderated. The clasp on her wrist was almost a caress. She relaxed into a sigh and made the most profound remark of her life.
“You can always spend money.”
He laughed.
“That’s right-all we want is to have it to spend! She can’t just keep you hanging on like a sort of pensioner-it isn’t decent. She’ll have to give you your share. Come-you’ll have a try-put up a good show for us-try a spot of crying and say you can’t live without me. Come, Ina-it’s up to you. If it comes off, I’ll give you the time of your life.”
Ina felt an immense fatigue. She hadn’t been tired all day, but the pleasure and the excitement which had kept her up were gone. It sounded all right the way Cyril said it, but deep inside her she knew that Marian wouldn’t be moved about the money. Cyril wouldn’t get a penny of it, and nothing she could do or say would alter that. She felt so tired that she would have liked to lie down and die-much too tired to be made love to. But by the time that Cyril had talked himself into believing that Marian could be persuaded into handing over a thousand a year he was in the mood for making love.
She was sinking into an exhausted sleep, when his voice broke in upon the beginning of a dream. She heard words, but they didn’t seem to mean anything. He repeated them with insistence.
“What’s the matter with you? Can’t you hear what I’m saying? That money that Marian has come in for-”
Ina blinked and turned. His hand was on her shoulder, shaking her. The words were there. She groped for a meaning.
“Money-”
Cyril swore under his breath.
“Your Uncle Martin’s money-if Marian had been killed in that accident, who’d have got it?”
She blinked again, and woke up.
“I should-half of it. The rest would go back-to the relations-if Marian-had been-killed.”
He let go of her shoulder with the effect of a jerk. She began to slip back into her dream. Not a very nice dream- rather frightening. Money-if Marian had been-killed. Someone said, “Pity she wasn’t.” It couldn’t be Cyril-Cyril wouldn’t say a thing-like that-
She went right down into sleep and lost herself.
Chapter 6
I can’t think what Felix will say.”