She was very, very decorative of course, but she might have been that and yet all wrong for Justin. It was that look of being dead right and dead sure of being right which ran the splinter of ice into Dorinda’s heart. She laid the brooch back on its ivory bed and began to draw strokes on the tablecloth with the tip of her finger.
“Tall, and of course very, very slim, only not thin-you don’t like thin girls, do you? And perhaps very fair hair-only I don’t know that that matters very much as long as it’s beautifully done. And very, very smart, with all the right clothes, and knowing just where to get them. And what you do and what you don’t do, and just the right kind of make-up, and when a thing’s dead and you just can’t be seen with it any more. Because, you know, all that sort of thing is very difficult unless you’ve been brought up to it, only even then some people are much better at it than others-and you’d have to have someone who was really good at it.”
“Would I?”
“Oh, yes, Justin. Because you notice everything, and you can’t bear it if there’s the least thing wrong. You like everything to be perfect, so you would have to marry a girl who would never, never make a mistake.”
She pushed the little brown leather case across the table, not looking at it, because her eyes never left his face. He picked it up and put it down in front of her.
“She would probably think my mother’s brooch old-fashioned. I think I’d rather you had it. Suppose you put it on.”
“Oh, Justin!”
“My darling child, don’t be ridiculous. I shouldn’t give it to you if I didn’t want you to have it… No, that’s not right-a little higher up… That will do.” He looked at his wrist watch and got up briskly. “I shall have to fly. Be a good child. And continue to report progress.”
Chapter IX
Mrs. Oakley had been wishing all the morning that she hadn’t sent Dorinda up to town. Any of the three houses to which she had directed her would have been only too pleased to send down a selection of suitable frocks in response to a request from Mrs. Martin Oakley. And the De Luxe Stores could have been rung up. There was nothing else that couldn’t have waited. As it was, she was going to be alone all day. Martin wouldn’t be down till four o’clock at the very earliest, because Dorinda was only to meet him at half past two, and that meant he wouldn’t get started till three, and it might be much later than that. Things always seemed to turn up at the last moment in offices.
Her ideas about Martin’s office were rather mingled. She hated it because it took him away from her, but if he didn’t go to it there wouldn’t be any money, and she would hate it if there weren’t any money. There had been a time in her life when there had been, first very little money, and then no money at all. There had been only one room, and there hadn’t always been enough to eat. She had had to try and clean the room herself, with the result that her hands became exceedingly dirty, and the room didn’t seem to get any cleaner. She had had to try to cook, but the results wouldn’t bear thinking about. For years she had never let herself think about that time, but today she couldn’t help it. The dreadful sordid memories came crowding into her mind. It was like having a lot of dirty tramps in her nice clean house. They went everywhere, and did just what they liked. They had kept her awake in the night, and when she slept they had walked in and out of her dreams.
She oughtn’t to have let Dorinda go. There were quite a lot of things they could have done together. There were all those patterns for the new curtains and covers for the drawing-room -they could have had them out and looked at them. It would have taken the best part of the morning. After lunch Dorinda could have read to her or talked to her, and by tea-time she could have been looking forward to Martin’s arrival. Whereas now there was the whole empty, dragging day with no one to talk to. Nurse didn’t really care about her coming into the nursery. She was very polite, but she and Marty always gave her the feeling that she was interrupting something. She could feel them going back to it with relief almost before she was out of the room. If her new maid had been different, the morning could have been got through quite easily. She had a lot of clothes and it would have been quite interesting to talk to Hooper about them. The trouble was that Hooper wouldn’t talk. She knew her duties, and she knew how to carry them out, but that was as far as it went. She said, “Yes, madam,” and she said, “No, madam,” and if she had to say more than that she cut it as short as possible.
In Dorinda’s absence Hooper had to answer the telephone when the bell rang just before lunch.
“Mr. Porlock, madam.”
“Ask what he wants, Hooper. He knows I don’t come to the telephone.”
After a pause Hooper’s wooden face was turned towards her again.
“He asks to see you, madam-an important message for Mr. Oakley. He says he will call at two o’clock.”
Mrs. Oakley sounded a little fluttered.
“But I ought to be resting-I did not sleep at all well last night. Tell him-tell him-that Mr. Oakley ought to be here by half past four-”
Hooper was replacing the receiver.
“Mr. Porlock have hung up, madam.”
At two o’clock precisely Gregory Porlock rang the front door bell at the Mill House. Both as a bell and as an expensive, if mistaken piece of workmanship, it could fairly be described as loud. He could actually hear it ringing, just as he could presently hear the footsteps of the butler coming to let him in.
Mrs. Oakley, it appeared, would see him upstairs in her own sitting-room. He was conducted by way of a massive staircase and a landing, where a buhl cabinet contained some remarkably ugly china, to a corridor at the end of which a door was thrown open and he was announced.
“Mr. Gregory Porlock-”
Mrs. Oakley looked up from the book which she hadn’t been reading, to see a big man in brown country tweeds. He had a handkerchief up to his face-a brown silk handkerchief with a green and yellow pattern on it. And then the door shut behind him. His hand with the handkerchief in it dropped to his side, and she saw that it was Glen. She was so frightened that though she opened her mouth to scream, nothing happened, because she hadn’t any breath to scream with. She just sat there staring at him with the whites of her eyes showing and her mouth like a pale stretched O.
Gregory Porlock put his handkerchief away and mentally commended his luck. She might have screamed before the butler was out of earshot. He had just had to chance it. She wouldn’t come to the telephone, and the one maxim of behaviour which he regarded as sacrosanct was, “Never put anything on paper.”
He came and sat in the opposite corner of the sofa, after which he put out his hand and said in a pleasant conversational voice,
“Well, Linnet, I thought it would be you, but I had to make sure. It wouldn’t have done to have you arriving with Martin to dinner on Saturday and staging a great recognition scene right in front of everyone.”
As she continued to gaze at him in frozen horror he took her by the hand.
“My dear girl, pull yourself together! I’m not going to eat you.”
Perhaps it was the warm, virile clasp and the dancing light in the dark eyes, perhaps it was the memories which these evoked. Her gaze wavered. She gave a sort of gasp and said,
“I thought you were dead-oh, Glen!”
Gregory Porlock nodded.
“I don’t look dead-do I? Or feel dead either.”
He had both of her hands by now, and he could feel them quivering and jerking like two little frightened wild things. He kept his hold of them and said,
“Come along, wake up! There’s nothing for you to get into a state about. I don’t want to hurt you, or to dig up the past. Everything suits me well enough the way it is. You wouldn’t have seen hair, hide, or hoof of me if it hadn’t been that Martin and I are in on a business deal together, so I knew we’d be bound to meet, and I thought we’d better get it over in private.”