This Merry Bond (16 page)

“Stella—don’t,” he said. “You don’t know what you’re saying. You’ll meet someone else who’ll marry you and make you very happy
...
You’re so charming, my dear
...
I’m afraid I must have been very clumsy and stupid. Forgive me ... I can’t discuss Nicky—even with you, good friend though you have been. You must forget all about this evening, and so will I.”

She raised her face and said in a small, humble voice: “Tell me one thing. If it hadn’t been for Nicky, could you have ever—?” she faltered, and trailed off into silence.

Simon hesitated. He didn’t want to hurt her.

“Who can say what might have been, under different circumstances?” he said gently, and she gave a long sigh and drew away from him.

Dick Lucy’s voice called to them from the house and they walked slowly back across the shadowy garden.

“Time you were in bed, young woman,” the doctor said, giving his daughter a shrewd glance. “These young people are all alike, Shand—living too much on their nerves.” He glanced thoughtfully at Simon. “Stella has a chance of a trip to Malta with some cousins. I think it’ll do her good, don’t you?”

“An excellent idea,” Simon agreed, and thought that after all old Lucy perhaps saw more than they gave him credit for.

As soon as Nicky was about again, Simon took her up to London to have her X-ray. He had been very gentle with her these last few days, but he hadn’t attempted to discuss deeper matters with her, and she, after that one futile little effort, said no more. His final words were with her always, tormenting her for an explanation. “I realize only too well that I made a mistake in marrying you.” There was only one explanation possible to Nicky’s muddled, over-tired mind, and a bitter sense of failure and frustration seized her, so that she welcomed with relief Simon’s announcement that he was obliged to go north again on his father’s business. Perhaps without his constant watchful presence she could think out some solution to the tangle. The day he was expected back, she decided she would call in at the Lucys and find out if the results of her X-ray had come through. She drove herself down to the village early after breakfast to catch Dick Lucy before he went out on his rounds.

He took her into his surgery, and she thought his manner seemed rather evasive as he admitted the results had come in last night.

“I was coming up to see Shand this evening, as a matter of fact,” he said.

Something in his voice struck her as peculiar, and she said quickly:

“There’s nothing really wrong, is there? I’d much rather know at once if there is.”

. “No, no, of course not, my dear,” Lucy said quickly. “There’ll be a little question of treatment, but nothing drastic—that is—”

“What is the matter with me?” Nicky asked, feeling suddenly frightened.

The doctor glanced at his clock.

“I ought to be getting off,” he said. “Why not leave it, Nicky, till I’ve seen your husband?”

She looked at him with eyes that were suddenly dark with apprehension.

“Please, Dick, tell me now. I’d much rather know,” she said. “Am I going to die or something?”

He burst out laughing.

“Good gracious me, no!” he exclaimed. “Whatever gave you that idea?” He picked up some X-ray photographs lying on his desk, and fingered them restlessly. “I suppose I’m a blundering old fool, but there are some things a woman doesn’t like to be told.”

“What?” said Nicky.

“Well, as I thought, there is a displacement caused by that fall you had in the winter—quite a bad displacement. Oh, nothing that can’t be put right with treatment, or a little operation, but—well, frankly, my dear, in your present state it would be impossible for you to have a child.”

Nicky stared at him speechlessly, then she began to laugh with sheer relief.

“Is that all?” she said. “I thought I had a fatal disease by the way you looked!”

He regarded her gravely.

“I know, Nicky, that a great many modern young wives these days don’t want children, but I’m still old-fashioned enough to think that a childless marriage is psychologically bad. You may not mind for yourself, but what about your husband?”

There was a silence. The smile went from Nicky’s face, leaving it still and stricken. If she could have given Simon a child, that might have been the solution. He wanted children, she knew.

“If I had this operation?” she said.

He shrugged his broad shoulders.

“One can never say for certain,” he replied. “One always hopes, of course
.
Now, my child, I really must be off. I’m sorry to give you bad news, but perhaps it’s not really such bad news for you. Have a look around for Stella—she’s somewhere about.”

He had a heavy day before him and was in a hurry. He wished irritably that Nicky hadn’t forced this information out of him before he had seen her husband, but she was evidently not the type to take such news badly. Perhaps, after all, the rumors about the Shand-Bredon marriage were true.

“Dick!” He turned and was a little disturbed by the expression in Nicky’s eyes. “Please don’t come and see Simon this evening. I’d like to tell him myself.”

He glanced at her a little curiously, nodded, and patting her on the shoulder hurried out to his waiting car.

In a dim sort of way, Nicky became aware that the door leading into the dispensary had opened and Stella stood on the threshold. “Hullo!” Nicky said vaguely.
“
I’m just going home.”

“Nicky!” Stella came into the surgery, shutting the door behind her. “I want to talk to you.”

“Yes?” Nicky was too absorbed in her own affairs to be struck immediately by the other girl’s manner.

“I heard what father told you,” Stella said. “I was making up a prescription—I often do. The door was ajar.”

“Well,” said Nicky with an attempt at her old careless nonchalance. “If you heard, there’s nothing particularly to talk about, is there?”

“Yes, there is,” said Stella, and came and stood facing Nicky across the doctor’s desk. “I love Simon, which you probably know already—that is if you’re interested enough in him to think of him at all. If it hadn’t been for you, he might have married me and been happy. As it is, he’s wretched. You’ve never cared for him, and I don’t believe he ever cared for you. Simon wants children— perhaps you didn’t know that.”

“How do you know it?” asked Nicky in an odd, tight little voice.

“Because he’s often told me,” said Stella passionately. “He’s talked often to me because he was lonely and had to talk to someone. He loves children and they love him.”

Nicky shut her eyes for a moment, remembering Simon with the tenants’ children. Yes, they had all loved him.

“Go on,” she said.

Stella gave her a hard, contemptuous glance.

“Well, I should have thought it was obvious,” she said, and Nicky was struck, just as Simon had been the other evening by the girl’s clear-cut hardness.

“I heard my father say you couldn’t have children. I heard you laugh. Nicky!” Stella put her hands on the desk and leaned forward across it. “Don’t you think it’s up to you to do something?”

Nicky felt herself beginning to tremble.

“What do you expect me to do?” she said coldly.

“Give him his freedom.”

“So that he can marry you?”

“He would marry me,” said Stella defiantly. “He’d marry me and be happy. He could leave Nye, which has never been his home. There would be children. He could be very happy.”

Nicky gazed at her steadily.

“Is Simon in love with you?” she asked in a flat voice.

“He told me—” Stella’s hands went to her heart in unconscious anguish. “He told me that if it hadn’t been for you, he and I—”

“He told you that?” said Nicky slowly. “When?”

“The night you came home—out here in the garden.”

Nicky closed her eyes with swift pain. So Simon had been here while she slept—out there in the cool garden with his love. So much seemed clear to her now. If Simon loved Stella it explained so much that had puzzled her in him lately. Stella was speaking again, the words pouring from her in an endless urgency.

“If you don’t do something, I—I’ll kill myself. It’s easy enough with all father’s poisons in there ... I’d rather die than see him so unhappy
...
He’ll never leave you, Nicky, never. He’s too
chivalrous. You don’t want him—you never did. What use are you to him? You can’t even give him a child.”

“Oh, stop it!” shouted Nicky suddenly, her hands to her ears. Stella, shocked into silence, stood staring at her, noticing for the first time her startling pallor, the bright fever of her eyes. They stood looking at one another, and in that moment Nicky hated Stella with all the intensity of her violent nature.

The sun streamed in at the little east window, revealing the tiny particles of dust on the doctor’s desk. The X-ray photographs lay where he had hurriedly thrown them down, their edges curling in the heat.

“I’ll think about it,” Nicky said in a carefully controlled voice. “I’ll think what to do.”

She turned, and with an odd, mechanical gesture, walked stiffly out into the sunlight.

CHAPTER
FOURTEEN

N
icky drove up the wide village street and out on to the open road. As she passed the bright new gates of Hammertye Towers, she saw Mary Shand posting a letter in the box in the wall. Mary signalled violently, an
d
Nicky could do no less than pull up.

“How are you feeling now, my dear?” her mother-in-law asked, looking critically at the girl’s pale face.

Nicky smiled automatically.

“Oh, I’m all right, thanks. It’s still awfully hot, isn’t it?”

“Well now, you run me back to the house, and we’ll have iced drinks and a bit of a gossip in the garden,” Mary said comfortably.

“I think I ought to be getting along,” Nicky said, but Mary opened the door of the car and got in beside her.

“Nonsense, my dear,” she retorted. “It isn’t eleven yet, and what have you got to do, anyhow, with Simon away and all?”

Nicky smiled and reversed the car. Mary Shand still insisted on doing the small things for herself that one of her numerous servants could quite well have done for her.

“John’s out,” she said with satisfaction as they settled themselves with iced lime juice under the trees. “So we won’t be disturbed. Tell me honestly, Nicky, are you really feeling stronger? You don’t look very well.”

Indeed Mary was secretly dismayed by the girl’s appearance. She seemed thinner than ever and there was a queer listlessness about her that was quite at variance with her usual manner.

“I’m all right,” Nicky said again. “Dick says I’ve got to have treatment or something, but it’s nothing really. How lovely your roses are—much better than ours. Will you come and teach Brown the art of pruning one day?”

Mary talked immediately of gardening and gardeners while she watched Nicky sitting on the grass sipping her lime juice. It was evident she didn’t want to talk about her health, but Mary resolved to speak to Simon later. She was worried by the girl’s appearance.

“Do you think Simon likes living at Nye?” Nicky asked her suddenly, and the unexpectedness of the question made her hesitate before she replied:

“Why do you ask me that, Nicky?”

“Simon’s done so much for Nye,” Nicky said slowly. “But it isn’t really his home, is it?”

Mary’s calm eyes looked away to the tall chimneys of Nye rising through the trees in the little valley below them.

“Since you’ve asked me, my dear,” she said, “it isn’t. A man should take his bride away, Nicky. It’s not right that he should go to live in his wife’s house.” She paused, then added gently: “Did you know that he’s thinking of going back into the business again?”

“No, I didn’t know,” Nicky said dully.

“Maybe I shouldn’t have spoken of it. But if he does, my dear, that will mean living in the north.”

Nicky stared at Mary Shand with unseeing eyes. Give up Nye
...
leave the friendly south
...
But Simon would go without her, and perhaps later, Stella...

“Mrs. Shand,” she said and Mary was struck by the strange expression in her brilliant eyes. “If you’re fond of someone—” She stumbled a little. “If you love them—should you do what you think best for them even though it’s not best for you?”

Mary was puzzled, but she was silent for a long while, knowing instinctively that a wrong answer might mean disaster to Nicky at this mo
ment.

“That’s a little hard to answer, dear,” she said at last. “You
would have to be sure that you’re right in knowing what is best for a start, and then weight up how much the other person’s happiness means to you.”

“Supposing you were quite sure—that person could bear being hurt a little to start with, couldn’t they? I mean hurt in their pride? Supposing they’d once told you that you’d made a fool of them, would it matter making a fool of them again—for their ultimate good?”

Mary looked at Nicky sitting back on her heels, in her green linen frock the color of the grass, her heavy red hair falling in a shadow across her face. What on earth was the child trying to tell her?

“Couldn’t you explain a little more, my dear?” she asked with gentleness.

Looking at Mary Shand, Nicky knew regret that she hadn’t taken more trouble to get to know Simon’s mother. She would never like old Shand, and he would never like her, but in Mary there was honesty and tenderness and a great wisdom. She might have sobbed her heart out on Mary’s bosom and known peace and the way she should go. But to no one now could she speak of this. She must find the way herself.

“I think what I really want to know,” she said with difficulty, “is how much duty means.” Even as she spoke she smiled, knowing the word sounded strange on any Bredon’s lips. The only duty they knew was to themselves. “Is duty to someone you love more important than duty to yourself?”

“That depends,” said Mary, “on how much you love. Duty to someone you love can be much the same thing in the end as duty to yourself, I’m thinking.”

Nicky took a deep breath.

“Yes, that’s what I think,” she said and scrambled to her feet.

She stood looking down at Simon’s mother and said suddenly: “Children are important to Simon, aren’t they?”

“I know he wants children very much,” Mary replied simply.

“Yes. Mary,”—Nicky didn't know she had used
the
older woman’s
Christian
name—“I can’t have
a
child.”

Mary looked swiftly at the girl’s still face, and held out her arms. “Come here to me, Nicky,” she said, and Nicky dropped on her knees beside Mary’s chair and buried her face in her lap.

After a long time, Mary said: “Are you sure? They make mistakes quite often, you know.”

“I’ve just come from Dick Lucy’s. He talked about an operation, but he didn’t sound very hopeful.”

Was this, then, why there had been all this talk of duty? Mary thought.

“Listen, Nicky,” she said over the girl’s bent head. “If it’s the idea of an operation that worries you, I’m sure Simon would be the last person to urge it. Does he know yet?”

“No. I forestalled old Dick. He was coming up to see Simon tonight when he gets back from Halifax.” She raised her face to Mary’s, and her eyes were quite dry. “I’m not afraid of that part of it,” she said. “Dick said it mightn’t be any use, anyway. I just was puzzled about a way out.”

Mary bent and kissed her.

“If you love, Nicky,” she said gently, “you find your own way out.”

“Yes, I think I see now,” Nicky said, and stood up. She looked down at her mother-in law with fond eyes. “I love you, Mary Shand,” she said softly and walked across the sunbaked lawn to her car.

She crossed the threshold of Nye with
an
odd impression that it was for the last time. A telegram from Michael lay on the big chest by the door. It said:

Shall be at the
“
Smuggler’s Rest” until five in case you change your mind. Sailing six. Michael.

Nicky stood quite still in the cool shadows of the great hall, the flimsy paper between her fingers. Here then was the way. Somewhere a clock was striking twelve. Only midday. She went slowly up the wide staircase to her room to pack.

Simon was worried about Nicky. He was anxious to see the results of the X-ray, which must be through by now, and since his business was finished sooner than he expected, he caught the night train down, and reached Nye, missing Nicky by half an hour.

There was a small pile of letters on the chest and on top of them, an envelope, addressed to himself in Nicky’s writing. As he picked it up and slit the envelope, he noticed an empty telegraph envelope that he knew must have come from Michael, for no one else addressed Nicky in that high-handed fashion—just plain
Nicola Shand, Hammertye.

For a long time after he had read Nicky’s letter, he stood, just as she had stood, an hour earlier, with Michael’s telegram in her hand.

“
I’m leaving you
,”
the letter began without preamble.
“
In a little while you can get your freedom, then perhaps you will marry Stella. You once said I made a fool of you, and you didn’t forgive that. Well, I’m doing it again for the last time. Thank you, Simon for all you have done for me and for Nye. I’m afraid you will never be repaid.
—NICKY.”

He was still standing there motionless when Mary Shand walked in through the open door.

“You’re back, are you, Simon!” she exclaimed when she saw him. “Then I’ll go home again. I was worried about Nicky and I didn’t think she should be alone.”

“We were both worried about Nicky,” Simon said in a hard, lifeless voice. “But we needn’t have been. She’s gone.”

“Gone?” Mary spoke sharply for her. “Gone where?”

“I don’t know. She’s left me. I never thought she’d really do it.” He didn’t understand the quick sigh of relief which escaped his mother as she took Nicky’s note from him and read it through, but she said:

“Now I think I understand. Just at first you frightened me. Nicky talked so strangely. I thought—”

“Have you seen her then?” Simon asked.

“Only an hour or so ago. She had just come from Doctor Lucy’s. Would she have spoken to Stella there, do you suppose?”

“She probably went to see her.” Simon remembered Stella as he had last seen her, white and hysterical, in the garden. Could she have said something foolish to Nicky?

“No,” said Mary quietly. “She went to see the doctor.” Something in his mother’s manner caused him to look at her sharply.

“Did she tell you what he said?” he asked quickly.

“He told her she could never have a child,” she replied with simple directness. “I think she thought it would matter very much to you.”

He looked at her with eyes that slowly filled with pity.

“Oh, poor Nicky
...
poor Nicky
...”
he said very softly.

“I think I understand now,” Mary Shand said. “I don’t know what this foolish talk of Stella might mean—she said nothing of that. She said nothing of anything except that she asked me if duty to someone you love was more important than duty to yourself. I think her thoughts were for you all the time—not for herself.”

He looked at her steadily, and there was a painful twist to his lips.

“Mother, don’t you know that Nicky has never loved me?” he said wearily.

She smiled.

“Maybe she didn’t learn till late,” she said. “But she loves you now, son, and the Lord knows where it will lead her. I think she doesn’t know you very well. The Shands are hard, lad, and they take much for granted. That’s a foolish way with a woman, and no way at all with your Nicky.”

He gave her a long look in which sadness was mingled with hope, then, with a quick exclamation, he began searching through the letters that had come that morning for the missing telegram.

“She’s gone with Michael,” he said curtly. “I might have guessed she’d choose that way. The little fool! Oh, the damned little fool!”

But the hastily turned-out waste-paper basket disclosed nothing, and Simon turned toward the staircase.

“Let’s try her bedroom,” he said, and raced up the stairs, three at a time.

In Nicky’s room chaos reigned. Cupboards stood open, drawers were turned out upside down on the floor, and in the middle of the littered dressing table Simon found Michael’s crumpled telegram.

The Smuggler’s Rest. Where on earth was that? He tried to remember where he had heard the name before, and couldn’t, although he was sure Nicky and Michael had mentioned it at dinner one night. He rang the bell for Mouse.

When she saw the state of the room she flung her hands above her head.

“Sakes alive!” she exclaimed. “What sort of a game have you and Nicky been having, I should like to know?”

“Nicky has been packing,” said Simon gravely. “Mouse, have you ever heard of a place called the Smuggler’s Rest? Think well now.”

“Think!” exclaimed Mouse indignantly. “I don’t need to think! That was the place where the pipes burst and Michael brought a goat into the bedroom.”

In spite of his anxiety, Simon’s lips twitched.

“Then you’ve been there?” he said. “Perhaps you’ll tell me where it is.”

“Little inn on the Romney Marshes, not far from Dymchurch,” Mouse replied promptly. “And why Sir Charles always would stay there when he went abroad instead of some decent hotel in Folkestone, I never did fathom. But none of the Bredons ever did behave like other people.”

“Bless you, Mouse! What a comfort you are!” Simon told her unexpectedly and glanced at his watch. Half past one. There was just time to make it comfortably.

“If that’s where Nicky’s taken herself, you tell her for me when you see her that I’ll have something to say about this fine mess when she comes back. It’s high time that child settled down and behaved herself,” Mouse grumbled as he went out of the room.

In the hall, Mary Shand was waiting for him.

“Well?” she said eagerly.

“I’ve found out where she is,” he said, kissing her. “Go home now, mother, and rest. We’ll be back tonight—that is, if she’ll come.”

But Mary only smiled as she watched him run down the front steps to his car.

Nicky went very white when she saw Simon standing in the doorway of the coffee shop. She sprang to her feet, and Michael, getting up more slowly, remarked with a grin:

“This has all the earmarks of a first-class melodrama. Do I say: ‘Too late!’ or do you say: ‘You cur!’ ”

Simon ignored him, but said to Nicky:

“Will you please come outside with me, Nicky? I want to speak to you.”

She stood looking at him beseechingly, and said nothing.

“Will you come?”

“There’s nothing to say,” she said then in a husky little voice.

“I think there’s a great deal to say,” he replied gravely.

“Didn’t you leave the usual note on the pincushion, my pigeon?” Michael asked.

“Shut up!” said Simon. “Nicky, will you please at least give me half an hour?”

She glanced at Michael, who shrugged expressive shoulders and looked at Nicky with an odd expression.

“Can it possibly be, Nick,” he drawled, “that you are doing a martyr act, after all?”

She gave him one panic-stricken look, then followed Simon out into the lobby.

“Can you let me have a private room for half an hour, where I won’t be disturbed?” she heard him ask the manageress brusquely.

They were shown into a small parlor that looked out over the marshes. The coarse, sun-bleached grasses stretched endlessly away to the sparkling sea beyond.

Nicky faced Simon across a small, round, polished table. He looked grave and a little forbidding.

“Nicky,” he said quietly, “before we proceed any further, I want you to tell me one thing. Are you in love with Michael?”

She looked him in the face, and said “Yes” defiantly, but her eyes fell before that disconcerting look of his.

Unexpectedly he smiled.

“You never were a good liar,” he told her, and an unfamiliar tenderness had crept into his voice. Looking at him, she saw there was a hint of silver in his dark hair that she hadn’t noticed before, and she put her hands behind her back and gripped them so tightly together that the nails hurt her flesh.

“I don’t understand why you’ve come after me,” she said in a high, hard voice. “You never did have any opinion of me, Simon, did you? After all it’s only to be expected
that I should run out on you in the end. Just cheating.”

He looked at her steadily.

“What’s hurt you so badly, Nicolette?” he asked gently.

The quaint variation of her name which only Simon had ever used struck her with pain. It was so long since he had called her that. He saw her face quiver suddenly, and said:

“Do you honestly want to leave me?”

She looked him straight in the eyes:

“Yes,” she said, “I do.”

For a moment he hesitated. Had Mary been wrong after all? This was the Nicky he knew and understood, the Nicky who had always defied him for marrying her.

“Why?” he asked her then.

“Well,” she said on a deep breath, “the best reason is that you were crazy to marry me. You never loved me, so you hadn’t any right to marry me just out of cussedness.”

“On the contrary,” he replied. “I had such a good opinion of you that I never really believed you were fundamentally dishonest. I thought that I could teach you that life lived by the Bredon rule would become impossible for everyone. Like a fool, I imagined that because I loved you I could break down the traditions of generations. You proved me wrong, Nicky, for I was unable to make you love me.”