Complete Short Stories (VMC) Read Online Free Page A

people – very worrying for one’s mother. But by the time I met Robert I was old enough to be sure that
that
would last. As it has,’ she added quietly; and she chose a strand of white silk and began to work on the high-lights of a rose petal.
    ‘I once fell in love with a young man who drank like a fish,’ she continued, for Hester seemed stunned into silence. ‘He was really an evil influence. Very flashy. You remember how I warned you about Rex Wigmore your first day here?’ She began to shake with mirth. ‘Trying to be my own anxious mamma all over again. And all the time it was Robert! How lucky! For Robert is so gentle, so kind. He would never harm you. Nothing but good could come of a girl loving
him
. Yes, I can see Robertdoing very well indeed, until the real one comes along. How furious he would be to hear us discussing him like this – men take themselves so seriously.’
    ‘I am not discussing him,’ Hester said, an ugly stubbornness in her manner. She snatched a handkerchief from her pocket and began to fidget with it, crushing it and smoothing it and staring at it in a bewildered defiance.
    Muriel’s white hand smoothed a woollen rose. ‘I always leave the background till last.’ She sighed. ‘So dull, going on and on with the same colour.’
    ‘It isn’t true. He’s my cousin, much older … your husband … I … does he know?’
    ‘Well, I haven’t asked him. Men are too vain. I dare say he knows all right, though. It’s very good for them, at his age … makes them feel young.’
    So Hester saw herself thrust into the service of nature, a coarse instrument, as good as anonymous. Muriel, spared such humiliation, could well smile, and congratulate herself. ‘Don’t fuss,’ she said again in her most laughing voice. ‘If I had known you
would
, I wouldn’t have said it.’
    ‘I wish I could go away.’ Hester wrung her hands and looked towards the windows as if she might escape through them. ‘You hate me being here. And now …’
    ‘Now?’
    ‘Now you believe this about me, how can you bear me to be here? No wife could.’
    At this, a stern, fastidious look came upon Muriel’s face. She was silent for a moment, then said in a quiet and serious voice: ‘I … as a wife; Robert … as a husband; our private life together I must leave out of this. It is between us only, and I never discuss my marriage.’
    ‘There is no need to be rude to me,’ Hester shouted, so great her frustration, so helplessly she felt herself up against Muriel’s smooth contempt. She was forced into childishness.
    At her outburst – for all of today was working for Muriel, she thought – the door opened.
    ‘But surely there is nothing sinister in that?’ Beatrice Carpenter asked. She was Muriel’s closest friend and they were walking in the park before dinner. ‘Young girls often cry. You rather surprise me, Muriel. You sound hysterical yourself.’
    ‘It was the atmosphere of the room. It trembled with apprehension, and when I opened the door Robert looked at me with a dumbfounded expression, his eyes opened wide over those awful half-moon glasses he
will
wear, they – his eyes – looked so
blue –
a little boy’s look, little boy in mischief.“Don’t spank me, Nanny.” I hated him for a moment. Oh, I felt murderous. No, but I truly itched to hurt him physically, by some violent and abusive act, to hit him across the mouth, to …’ She broke off in astonishment and looked about her, as if fearful of being overheard.
    ‘You
are
in a bad way,’ Beatrice said. ‘The girl will have to go.’
    ‘I know. But how? I have to be clever, not insistent. I can’t be put into the position of getting my own way, for it would never be forgotten. It would last all our lives, such a capitulation, you know.’
    Other married women
always
know; so Beatrice only murmured cosily.
    Muriel said: ‘The self-consciousness is so deadly. When I go back, he will look at me to see how I am likely to behave.