CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XII

For a scared and bewildered moment, Marigold clung to her in silence. Then she looked beyond Stephanie to Paul, who stood smiling at this somewhat emotional scene.

She wanted to say that she didn't know what on earth Stephanie was talking about. But, even in her present state of bewilderment, she guessed that would be the wrong thing to say. She hugged Stephanie nervously and tried to swallow the enormous lump which seemed to be lodged in her throat.

'It's all right,' she whispered huskily. And then she saw there were tears in Stephanie's eyes, and, because the inexplicable relief from anxiety and the impossibility of understanding what had happened were altogether too much for her, Marigold gave one childish sob herself.

'Now look here, if you two girls are both going to cry, there's nothing for me to do but to follow suit,' exclaimed Paul. 'Get up, Stephanie dear, from that touching attitude beside Marigold's chair. She's had quite enough emotion for one day.' And Paul affectionately pushed his sister out of the way, and, sitting down on the arm of Marigold's chair, he gathered her up against him. 'Now stop crying, sweetheart.'

'I'm—not crying,' Marigold said, wishing frantically that someone would explain, without her having to ask questions. For that she dared not do. She must skate on this beautiful thin ice, pretending to understand, and all the time not knowing in the least why she was being praised instead of reviled, as she had expected.

'She's not quite herself yet, of course,' Stephanie said, wiping her eyes and pretending that Marigold had been the only one to be affected. 'I'm not at all sure that they ought to have let you come home from the hospital today. It's disgraceful how careless some of these places are about their patients.'

Marigold hastened to clear the hospital from this most unjust charge by explaining her own insistence on coming home.

'I did everything but push the doctors and nurse out of the way,' she said. 'And they were quite willing for me to stay until tomorrow, or as long as I liked. Only I wanted to get home and —and hear about the school and everything.'

'Oh, the school's going to be all right,' Stephanie assured her airily. 'There's nothing much to be done with the present house, of course, bin we've already fixed on another place. Much more modern and up-to-date. None of your old fashioned makeshift's with basement furnaces that set the place ablaze. I made complaints from tin- beginning about that beastly thing, only every one said I was fussy. Now I've been proved right '

'Almost worth a fire for that,' interjected Paul.

'Well, at least it's made them much more docile about giving me the things I want in tin- new place. You must come along and see it, as soon as you're strong again, Marigold, and

'I'm perfectly strong now,' Marigold insisted.

But the others both immediately pointed out that anyone who started crying because some one else was nice to them could hardly be reckoned to be in a condition of perfect strength.

Marigold subsided into silence then, because, of course, it was quite impossible to explain that it was an absolute agony of relief which had produced the tendency to tears.

In any case, there was little need for her to talk, because Stephanie, once started on the plans for her new nursery, was ready to run on happily without the assistance of more than an occasional comment.

Then Stephanie said that she must go, and Marigold found to her surprise that perhaps there was something after all in what the others said about her not being quite herself yet. Because once more she felt extraordinarily tired. Not the crushing, irresistible exhaustion of the previous night, but a very distinct weariness.

She was glad that Paul suggested her going to bed, as soon as Stephanie had gone. And then he brought their dinner into the bedroom and set it out very inexpertly on a small table and most of the bed. He himself sat on the only remaining free bit of bed and teased her and petted her, and talked only about things that didn't matter in the least. So that Marigold could almost have imagined it was her honeymoon all over again, and that the dreadful happenings of the last two weeks had never taken place.

Afterwards she agreed that she would probably sleep quite soon, and he brought her a book, in case she wanted to read first, and, having made her comfortable, went into the next room to do some work he had brought home from the office.

She didn't open the book, but lay there comfortably, watching the light from the open doorway, very happy in the consciousness that Paul was only a few yards away.

Then she thought about Stephanie's extraordinary—and still unexplained—behaviour. It was absurd that one could be so utterly ignorant of what other people were thinking, and yet have to pretend to understand exactly what was going on.

And how was she going to find out? That was the awkward part.

It was quite impossible to question either Paul or Stephanie. She could only go on accepting the halo they had thrust upon her, and wearing it with what grace she could.

But that was absurd! she decided the next minute. She simply must find out the explanation.

Well, there was one other person—and one other person only—who must surely know the answer to all this. And that was Lindley.

She thought of him as she had last seen him, lying silent and very still in the hospital bed. He didn't seem so frightening like that. It was not so difficult to think of talking to him, when she thought of him like that.

And, all of a sudden, Marigold made her decision. She would go and see Lindley just once more—probably for the last time.

She must have fallen asleep after that, because she knew nothing about her book being taken away and the shaded bed-lamp being put out. When Paul came to bed, much later, she half roused herself, but fell asleep again when he kissed her and told her to go to sleep.

The next morning, she found that none of her resolution had abated. She was absolutely determined to go and see Lindley, even though, by daylight, she was by no means sure that it would be for the last time. Lindley had sprung too many unpleasant surprises upon her for her to dare to think some extraordinary and happy solution to her difficulties was to be allowed. It seemed to her now much more likely that Stephanie's affectionate gratitude was founded on some complete misapprehension. It was for her, she admitted grimly to herself, to find out the disagreeable truth.

After Paul had gone to his office, she busied herself with several small tasks about the flat. She hardly admitted to herself that she was simply filling in time until she could reasonably go and see Lindley. It was possible of course that, even when she got home, he would not be in a condition to talk much. But at least she must try to find out something.

She decided that probably the afternoon would be the best time, though she could well imagine that stern Sister saying 'No visitors' at any time.

By the time she finally set out for the hospital, her calm determination had given way to a certain degree of nervousness. She was not even very sure how she was going to handle the interview, once she had succeeded in getting it. But she would just have to be guided by his attitude

That was the worst of it. One always had in leave the real initiative to him—because he held all the cards.

To her surprise, she was greeted with cheerful friendliness by the porter, who remembered her from the previous afternoon and appeared to regard her more or less as part of the hospital. She explained who it was she wanted to sec. Whereupon he said:

'Huh! Not visiting day, you know. Still, you'd better go on up and see what you can do with Sister.'

With very grave doubts about what she would be able to do with Sister, Marigold went up the wide stone staircase and along the clean, bleak corridor. She wondered idly why one always felt faintly nervous in hospitals. Possibly because so many hopes and fears had been concentrated there and impressed upon the atmosphere.

At the entrance to the ward where Lindley's room was situated, she encountered the forbidding Sister, who, however, unbent considerably on this occasion, as soon as she recalled that Marigold had some connection, with Lindley. It was all too evident, thought Marigold, that Lindley had recovered sufficiently to exercise at any rate part of his famous charm.

'Well, he's a good deal better today,' she was told. 'You want to go in and see him?—Hm. He's in no condition for a lot of talking, you understand. But he certainly seems tired of his own company. You can go in for ten minutes.'

Marigold thanked her and knocked rather timidly on the door.

'Come in,' Lindley's voice said languidly, and with her heart beating much faster than usual, Marigold went into the room.

'Oh, Mari, hello!' He smiled at her with a shade of something like defiance, she couldn't help thinking.

They had shaved him, and he looked less dark in consequence, but that rather shadowed, drawn look was still there, and made him look all of his age.

'Nice of you to come.' He looked at her with an amusement which she found hard to bear. 'Do I owe this to kindness or curiosity?'

'I thought I'd—like to come and find out how you were,' Marigold said nervously.

'Well, as you see, I'm getting on very well. Arc you going to say you're glad?'

'I don't think I am specially glad,' Marigold admitted slowly. 'At least '

'At least?' he prompted mockingly.

'I haven't much reason to wish you active again, have I?' She looked straight at him.

'No, Mari. Singularly little reason, I should have said. That's why I can't quite understand your behaviour.'

'My—behaviour? What do you mean?'

He smiled dryly, and watched her closely with those bright, cynical dark eyes of his.

'Tell me—did you come here to ask me questions?'

'Not—exactly,' she said quickly and defensively.

'Not? Well then, I shall ask you a few instead.'

She moved uneasily in her chair. The interview was not going much as she had intended. But then interviews with Lindley never did.

'What—did you—want to ask me?'

'Why didn't you leave me, the night before last?'

'Leave you?'

He made an impatient little movement with his hand, but he laughed.

'Come, Mari, we've no witnesses. Didn't it enter your head the night before last that, while that excellent fire was blazing, you had every opportunity of solving all your problems at one stroke? Oh, I know you probably acted on momentary instinct when you stopped me from —falling.' He gave the very slightest shudder and made a face at the recollection of what he had escaped. 'But after that—your fate was rather in your own hands, you know.'

'Yes,' Marigold said, 'I know.'

'Oh, you did recognise that, then?' His eyebrows rose.

'Yes.'

'I thought you did, somehow,' he said softly, almost to himself.

'It was—in the corridor,' she found herself explaining reluctantly. 'The smoke was so thick and I was dreadfully frightened, and you seemed so heavy to drag along that it was just like a nightmare. And then I stumbled and almost fell down. It seemed as though there couldn't possibly be any chance of escape in time unless I could hurry.'

'Yes?' he prompted, still in that soft tone, as she hesitated.

'Well——' She met his eyes defiantly. 'I looked at you, Lindley, and I thought—you wouldn't be much loss to the world.'

'Humiliating, but possibly true,' he agreed amusedly.

'I thought how—how quickly the smoke would overcome you—that you wouldn't really suffer.' She was astonished to find she was telling him all this with such frankness, but somehow she had to go on. 'I knew you were able and willing to spoil Paul's happiness and Stephanie's —and mine.'

'It was a good case for the prosecution, Mari,' he said, smiling, as she paused again.

'I know. Logically, the only sensible thing was to—leave you there.'

'Particularly as you were endangering your own life by trying to rescue me,' he reminded her.

'I don't think I thought much about that,' Marigold said slowly. 'Not through any heroism or self-sacrifice, but just because the other was more important.'

'The other?'

'Oh, the happiness of all three of us, balanced against—against—'

'My worthless life?' he suggested, and she nodded.

There was a short pause. Then he said:

'Well, there we have the piquant situation. I, unconscious on the ground, and you the only person to decide whether I should live or die. Go on, Mari. What next?'

'Only that—I decided not to let you die,' she said rather flatly.

'But why, my dear?' He was smiling, but his dark eyes, which never left her face, were, oddly enough, quite serious.

She didn't answer at once, and after a moment he spoke again.

'You looked at me, you say—and I suppose, in spite of everything, you remembered that, however little I deserved it, you had loved me once. Was that it?'

'Oh, no,' Marigold said, not indignantly, but with the simple finality of absolute truth. 'No.

I never thought about loving or hating you. I couldn't leave you to die, Lindley, that was all. I suppose, in the last extremity, one can't let another person die. Particularly someone who —who has been struggling for life along with oneself less than five minutes ago.'

'I see,' he said slowly. 'I think I really do see at last.' And then, as she said nothing: 'You're a good little thing, Mari. Really good. Funny that it doesn't make you dull.'

She flushed.

'I don't think I'm good at all,' she murmured embarrassedly. ' You should know—'

But he brushed that aside with an impatient:

'Nonsense. Goodness—the sort of goodness that matters—hasn't anything to do with being taken in by my sort.'

She smiled faintly.

'What is your definition of goodness, then?' she asked with a touch of real curiosity.

He smiled too then, and slightly shook his head.

'Too big an order to give in one sentence,' he said. 'But I can tell you why I said you were good. It's because you want a fair chance for the people you dislike, just as much as people you like.'

'Well—of course.'

He shook his head again.

'Not "of course" at all. Most people think they do very well if they go to some pains to secure justice—a chance, whatever you like to call it, for the people they like. Most people would feel pretty good if they could reflect that they'd risked their life for someone they loved. It's —unusual, Mari, to say the least, to risk one's life for one's enemy.'

There was a long silence, while she digested that. Then she raised her head and looked full at him with those candid grey eyes of hers.

'Are you my enemy, Lindley?' she said quietly.

Unexpectedly, his bold glance failed to meet hers. He laughed and looked away from her towards the window.

'Isn't the evidence rather overwhelming?'

'It has been—until very lately.'

He frowned, as though to say that he didn't know what she was talking about, and, leaning forward, she spoke a little breathlessly.

'Lindley, what did you say to Stephanie the night before last?'

He did look at her then. Bold, amused, but not entirely at his ease.

'What has she been telling you?' he countered.

'She didn't tell me anything. That's just it. She simply behaves as though I've done her a great service, and—and—'

He began to laugh.

'And you don't know why and dare not ask? Poor little Mari. That's too bad!'

He was laughing at her, she knew, and yet for the first time, she found it inoffensive. If she hadn't known it was impossible with Lindley, she would have said he was laughing kindly.

'Won't you tell me what happened, Lindley? That's really why I came this afternoon. To find out what wonderful service I'm supposed to have rendered Stephanie.'

'It's not supposition, my dear. You have rendered her a service. She is going to get her divorce without opposition,' he said coolly.

'Get her— Oh, but how? You—you didn't tell her about me?' She was white with anxiety.

'No, of course not. You're no good as a correspondent. Much though I regret it, exactly nothing passed between us, if you remember.' He looked at her with dry amusement. 'I have told Stephanie that she has ample grounds for divorce in view of an—incident which happened about six months ago. I'm willing to let her have all the evidence, and I have decided not to contest the case.'

'You mean——' Hope and fear and astonishment so choked her that for a moment she could not go on. Then she said again, 'You—you mean that you're keeping my connection with you a secret, and—and letting Stephanie have her divorce on some other grounds —unopposed?'

'Correct in every particular,' he told her mockingly.

'But why, Lindley? Why? I don't understand. What changed your mind? You were so set on —the other. On letting Stephanie get so far with her divorce suit and then breaking up the whole thing by—by betraying me. Why isn't that any longer attractive? Or is it'—she caught her breath frightenedly—'or is it that you expect to wring some sort of terms from me in exchange for your silence, even now?'

'No, Mari.' He was smiling again in that dryly amused way. 'There are no terms attached to it. One might put it—that the account between us is closed.'

'But why?'

'Well, my dear, one doesn't have one's life saved every day,' Lindley said almost carelessly.

'One must mark the occasion in some suitable- way, don't you think?'

There was a long silence. She just sat then- looking at him. Then slowly she put her hand over his which lay slackly on the counterpane.

'You mean that you're doing this—because I didn't leave you to die the other night?'

He stared hard at her hand, as though some thing about it interested him more than the conversation.

'I wouldn't jump to too hasty conclusions if I were you, Mari,' he said.

'It's not a hasty conclusion. It's taken me a ridiculous time to arrive at just what you did mean,' Marigold retorted with a smile. Not quite a steady smile. But then it was difficult to be calm and self-possessed in face of the unbelievable relief and happiness which was forcing itself upon her consciousness.

'Well, there it is,' he said lightly, still not making any attempt to withdraw his hand from hers. 'Your one indiscreet flutter may now sink into obscurity. And Stephanie can apply for her divorce without any fear of dramatic developments. Is that what you wanted to know?'

'It's everything I wanted to know,' Marigold said quietly. And, somewhat to her surprise and greatly to his, she leant forward and kissed him.

For once in her life she had the satisfaction of taking Lindley entirely off his guard and of seeing his habitual mocking sangfroid shattered. It was he who caught his breath that time. Then, before she could draw back again, he took her peremptorily by her chin and said roughly, 'You silly little thing,' and kissed her hard in return.

She felt that somehow she ought to give some explanation of why she had done that, but as she really didn't know herself why she had, it was difficult to think of anything to say. Instead, he spoke first:

'Now don't start endowing me, in imagination, with virtues I haven't got. I should hate to be thought to have a heart of gold hidden all the time under a cynical exterior.'

'I shouldn't think of you like that, Lindley,' she said, and this time she too had a certain quality of dryness in her smile.

'You wouldn't? Good.' Then he laughed. 'You know me too well, eh?'

'I'm afraid so. But that doesn't take away from the fact that I—I appreciate your generosity now.'

'Hardly generosity, my dear,' he reminded her. 'To refrain from a piece of entertaining villainy is scarcely to be ranked as generosity.'

'Oh, Lindley-------- ' she began, and then stopped with a helpless little shrug.

'What?'

'Oh—nothing, really. Only it's so odd that you can describe your intentions so accurately, and yet still remain undismayed that those were your intentions. I don't understand you a bit.'

He laughed with real amusement.

'Of course not. And you never would. Our standards of values are entirely different. We'll just have to leave it at that, Mari. By the way, when you are accepting Stephanie's admiring gratitude for your part in her affairs, don't forget that the story is that you persuaded me to do this singular act of grace, which will give her, her divorce quite painlessly.'

'When did I persuade you?' Marigold asked, smiling faintly.

'Eh? Oh, when I discussed things with you before the fire broke out. The power of your eloquence, weight of your logic, charm of your manner—anything you like to suggest. Something had the desired effect, my dear. Stephanie may put it down to what she likes. But, anyway, she owes her happiness to you. In a way, that's true, you know. Accept the halo without a qualm, and wear it with the grace that only "a good little thing" can display,' he advised her with a mockery which struck her again as not unkindly.

'I shall feel quite unworthy of a halo,' Marigold said with a slight shake of her head. 'But I'm glad if—if anything I did helped to make things easier for Stephanie.'

'Shall we leave it at that, then?' he suggested.

'I think so.' And then, after a pause: 'I must go now, Lindley.'

'Yes, I think perhaps you'd better.' And she saw suddenly that he had had quite enough talking and was looking impatiently weary.

'He's quite middle-aged, really,' thought Marigold a little wonderingly. 'I don't know why he seemed so romantic.'

She got to her feet, and then stood there slightly undecided and embarrassed.

'Well—good-bye, Lindley.' After a second's hesitation she held out her hand.

'Good-bye.' He took her hand, but he held it for only a moment, and both his touch and his glance were so casual that she felt she was already a closed incident in his life.

She supposed there was more that could be said—something graceful that would round off what must be their final parting—but she could think of nothing. Evidently it was the same with him. Or else he hardly thought the occasion worth the effort. At any rate, he turned his head away without saying anything else, and Man gold went quietly out of the room.

Ten minutes later, when the severe Sister came in to see if his visitor had been too much for him, he was still lying with his head turned away, but she saw he was not asleep.

'Tch, tch!' she exclaimed in that tone which was the terror of all probationers. 'I'm afraid your talk was too tiring, after all.'

Lindley did turn his head then, and rather unfairly bestowed upon the Sister his most devastating smile.

'Not tiring, Sister. Rather ageing, that's all.'

And she went out again thinking:

'Now, I wonder why he said that. Of course, he does look older than I would have put him at at first. Funny what a difference a bit of sunlight makes.'

Perhaps if she could have seen Marigold just then she would have thought that 'a bit of sunlight' had made some difference to her too. Not that the pale, cold winter sunlight added any age to Marigold's serious face. But there was a radiance about her expression, a timid happiness, which had certainly not been there when she had gone into the hospital.

She rather absently returned the 'Good afternoon' of her friendly porter and went slowly down the steps, across the gravelled courtyard, and into the street once more.

She felt strangely and deliciously aimless. Like someone who had been kept on a chain for months and now was free to wander. It was difficult to know where to go or what to do, only the occasion must not go unmarked. One must take advantage of the wonderful liberty which had come so suddenly and unexpectedly.

After a little while she found she was walking along by the side of the Park and, just as once before she had gone there when she wanted to be alone and clarify her thoughts, so now she turned in at the next gateway and walked steadily away from the distracting noise and movement of the street.

She remembered that other day when she had come here. Remembered it very distinctly. It was before she knew Paul loved her. Almost, she supposed, before she knew she loved him. Or at any rate, it was before she confessed to herself that she did. She had thought him in love with Stephanie then. She smiled now to recall such an absurdity. And she herself had already been under the dreadful shadow of possible discovery.

It was before she had known quite how much there was to lose, of course. Later that day she had been transported to perilous heights of happiness by Paul's declaration of his love. And with the realisation of that happiness had also come the consciousness of how correspondingly great her misery would be if she lost it all.

It had been a short period really, measured by ordinary time, she supposed—that breathless, day-to-day catching at happiness which hail made up her engagement and short married life with Paul. And yet, now that relief from anxiety had come, she seemed to have been living always with the fear of betrayal by Lindley hovering in the background.

Although it was anything but warm, Marigold sat down on one of the deserted benches and watched two or three sparrows quarrelling bitterly for a few crumbs thrown there by some previous occupant of the bench.

They held her wandering interest for a moment, and then her thoughts came back to her own affairs.

She was free. Had she really taken in that stupendous fact, she wondered? If so, she ought to be wild with joy, hardly able to sit quietly on a Park bench, calmly contemplating leafless trees and half-frozen grass.

But it was difficult to say how one would take these great moments in life until they actually came. At any time during the last few weeks she would have been ready to weep for joy if someone had said there was no fear of Lindley betraying her, that Paul would never know why he had found her at the hotel that night.

Now the moment had come. And here she was, taking it calmly, gravely and—she realised the fact with faint dismay—without elation.

In the first few minutes after she had come from the hospital, she had been cloudlessly happy in the unthinking consciousness of safety at last. Now some other element had entered into it. Something which disturbed her, even while she tried to thrust it from her mind.

What more did she want? Hadn't Lindley himself said, 'Your one indiscreet flutter may now sink into obscurity'? And he had meant it too. She knew, with complete confidence—a confidence which she could neither explain nor doubt—that he had spoken the truth for once There was no further question of his tell me Paul the truth about his wife.

And if Lindley did not tell him, there was no one else who would do so. No one else who con hi do so. Except, of course herself.

She could consider the incident closed, dead, buried. She could dismiss it with a quiet con science—or at least, quiet nerves. Conscience was a different matter.

Marigold sighed impatiently. Her thoughts took another inconsequential leap, and she- thought—for no reason whatever—of Lindley calling her 'a good little thing.'

To be sure he had defined that rather peculiarly afterwards, but—the phrase had a pleasing and yet a disturbing ring.

She was not a good little thing at all, of course. She had even told lies to her husband —lots of them, under the pressure of fear and desperation.

It was a dreadful thing, really—to have told lies to the one person who loved you and trusted you above all others. But then it was rather dreadful to reflect at all on how completely Paul trusted her. He was smilingly, carelessly ignorant of that chapter in her life with Lindley.

Lindley had him at a disadvantage there. He could smile—but not with ignorance. With knowledge. Knowledge about Paul's wife, which Paul himself was denied.

'It's absurd to argue that way! I couldn't possibly tell him!' Marigold exclaimed, speaking aloud.

And then, because there was no one to answer her, the words seemed to hang in the air, as though they refused to fade away without due consideration being given to them.

I couldn't possibly tell him.

She didn't actually voice the words again. But she knew suddenly why they had been formed. To ward off the misgiving which was growing. To answer the faint and foolish suggestion which had drifted into her mind—that perhaps the full realisation of happiness would never be hers until she had told him.

'It isn't necessary,' she kept on telling herself. 'It isn't necessary.'

And suddenly, as though a light had broken upon her, she knew that there was the reason for doing it.

Because it was no longer necessary, because there was no compulsion upon her—if she loved him, she must tell him.

Her relations with him had been shorn of' all complications. There was no other problem to consider, no awkward circumstance to be weighed against another. The simple question was: Did she want the truth between them, 01 did she not? Did a lie between lovers mean any thing or was it to be ignored?

Slowly Marigold got to her feet, moving so quietly that the sparrows made no attempt to break up their angry meeting, only a couple of yards away.

She turned back towards the gate, with no outward sign of having made a momentous decision since she came into the Park a quarter of an hour ago. She told herself that, even now, there was time to review the situation again, time to change her mind a dozen times before she arrived home, or before Paul could join her.

But she knew she was really only playing with words. Her real decision had been made and could not be unmade.

She was going home to tell Paul. And her happiness must stand or fall, not by her power to deceive him, but by his power to understand and forgive her.

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