Dorinda remembered Aunt Mary dying grimly and saying with a bitter tang in her voice, “What’s the good of asking why? I was a fool-but there was something about him.” There couldn’t be two more different women anywhere in the world, but they had this one thing in common-neither of them had known how to say no to the man who was Glen Porteous and Gregory Porlock. She said in a calm, soothing voice,
“I wouldn’t go on thinking about it-and you’re making your eyes red. You haven’t really told me whether you want me to come back to you. I don’t think you do, but it’s better to get it quite clear, isn’t it?”
Mrs. Oakley dabbed with the powder-puff and said,
“Oh, yes.”
“You see, I must know, because of getting another job.”
Linnet stared.
“But Glen left you all his money.”
“There isn’t very much, and anyhow I can’t keep it. All I want to know is whether you want me-and I think you don’t.”
It seemed that she was right.
“Not because we don’t like you and all that, because we do. But you see, you know, and we should always know that you knew, and I don’t think we could bear it. So if you don’t mind-”
Dorinda came back to the Grange and informed Mr. Justin Leigh that she was out of a job.
“I shall go back to the Heather Club and look about me. I’ve got a month’s salary in hand, and as I shan’t have done a stroke of work for it, it’s not too bad. In a way it’s a relief that the Oakleys don’t want me back, because I think it would be nice to go where no one had ever heard of Uncle Glen. It’s stupid of me, but I’ve rather got that feeling.”
Mr. Leigh, extended full length in the easiest of the study chairs, neither raised his head nor fully opened his eyes. He might have been asleep, only Dorinda felt perfectly sure that he was not. After a short lapse of time he murmured enquiringly,
“Declaration of Independence?”
She said with dignity,
“Miss Silver and I can go up to town after breakfast tomorrow.”
“Yes, I should have breakfast first. Never travel on an empty stomach.”
“I wasn’t going to. Now I’m going upstairs to pack.”
He opened his eyes enough to let her see that they were smiling.
“You don’t need six or seven hours to pack. Come and talk to me.”
“I don’t think I want to.”
“Think again. Think of all the things you’ll think about afterwards and wish you’d said them to me. If you can’t think of them for yourself, I’ll be noble and oblige.” The smile had spread to his lips. “Come along, darling, and relax.” He reached out and pulled up another chair until it touched his own. “I’ll say this for the late Gregory, he knew how to pick a house with good chairs. And what have we been doing for days, and days, and days? Sitting on the edge of them as taut as bowstrings talking to policemen! No way to treat decent furniture. Come along and tell me all about the new job.”
Dorinda weakened. She had a horrid conviction that she would always weaken if Justin looked at her like that. But of course there wouldn’t be a great many more opportunities, because they would both be going back to work, and they wouldn’t be seeing nearly so much of each other.
She came and sat down in the chair, and the very first moment after she had done it she knew just what a mistake it was. It is a great, great deal easier to be proud and independent when you are standing up. Soft well-sprung chairs are hideously undermining. Instead of being buoyed-up with feeling how right it was to be self-supporting and independent, she could only feel how dreadfully dull and flat it was going to be. And as if that wasn’t enough, her mind filled with pictures and images which she had been firmly resolved to banish. There was the moment in the hall on Saturday night when Justin had put his arm round her and of course it meant nothing at all because they were cousins and someone had just been murdered. And there was the moment which really filled her with shame when she had pressed her face into his coat and clung to him with all her might. That was when the police were arresting Geoffrey Masterman and he had broken away and taken a running jump at the end window. The horrid sound of the struggle-men’s feet stamping and sliding on the polished floor, the clamour of voices, the clatter of breaking glass, came back like the sound-track of a film. Justin had pulled away from her and gone to help. It made her feel hot all over to think that he had had to push her away. That was why she mustn’t let go of herself now.
His hand came over the arm of the chair and touched her cheek.
“You’re not relaxing a bit-you’re all stiff and keyed-up. What’s the matter?”
Dorinda said soberly, “I think I’m tired.”
She heard him laugh softly.
“I think you are. And of course that’s a magnificent reason for sitting up as stiff as a board.”
“I get like that when I’m tired. Justin, please let me go!”
“In a minute. Move a bit so that I can get my arm round you… That’s better. Now listen! I’m thinking of getting married.”
She couldn’t help starting, but after that one uncontrollable movement something poured into her-some flood of feeling which carried her right away from all the things which had been troubling her. They didn’t seem to matter any more-they were drowned and swept away. She didn’t know what the feeling was. If it was pain it wasn’t hurting yet. What it was doing was to make her feel that nothing else mattered.
She turned so that she could look at him.
“Is it Moira Lane?”
“Would you like it to be?”
“If it made you happy-”
“It wouldn’t. Anyhow she wouldn’t have me as a gift.”
“How do you know?”
“I don’t think she’d care about taking someone else’s property.”
He spoke, unconscious of incongruity, and, incongruous or not, it was the truth. Moira had stolen a bracelet, but she wouldn’t take another girl’s lover. Queer patchy sort of thing human nature.
Dorinda said, “Someone else?” And then, “Who is it, Justin?”
She was looking straight at him. His arm had slipped from her shoulders. He took her hands and said,
“Don’t you think it would be a good thing? I’ve seen a flat that would do. I’ve got furniture. Will it amuse you to help me choose carpets and curtains? All my mother’s things are in store, but I expect they will have perished. I’ll get a day off and we’ll go down and see if there are any survivors.”
“Who are you going to marry?”
“I haven’t asked her yet, darling.”
“Why?”
“Just the feeling that I didn’t want to get it mixed up with policemen and inquests and funerals.”
Dorinda said, “The funerals are over.”
“That’s what I was thinking. Are you going to marry me?”
“Do you want me to?”
“Oh, Dorinda!”
She saw that his eyes were wet. It did something to her. He was still holding her hands. All of a sudden he jumped up pulling her with him, and put his arms round her. It wasn’t until he let go of her hands that she knew how tight he had been holding them. They felt quite stiff and numb. She set them against the rough stuff of his coat and held him off. But she didn’t feel that the stuff was rough. She knew it was, but she couldn’t feel anything because her hands were numb. She held him off, and said what she had to say.
“I’m not the right person for you-I’ve always known that. I don’t know enough about how things ought to be done. You ought to marry someone like Moira. I thought you were going to marry her-I’ve thought so for a long time.”
“Think again, my sweet. Think about saying yes. Did I tell you I loved you? I do, you know. It’s been coming on for months. I thought you’d understand when I gave you my mother’s brooch.”