Where Love Is. William John Locke

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СКАЧАТЬ turned the corner of the street, approached with crescendo rattle, and stopped at the house. She saw Morland alight and reach up to pay the cabman. For a silly moment she had a wild impulse to cry to him over the balcony to go away and leave her in peace. She waited until she heard the footman open the front door and admit him, then bracing herself, she entered the drawing-room, looked instinctively in a mirror, and sat down.

      She met him cordially enough, returned his glance somewhat defiantly. The sight of him, florid, sleek, faultlessly attired, brought her back within the every-day sphere of dulled sensation. He held her hand long enough for him to say, after the first greeting:

      “You can guess what I've come for, can't you?”

      “I suppose I do,” she admitted in an off-hand way. “You will find frankness one of my vices. Won't you sit down?”

      She motioned him to a chair, and seating herself on a sofa, prepared to listen.

      “I've come to ask you to marry me,” said King.

      “Well?” she asked, looking at him steadily.

      “I want to know how it strikes you,” he continued after a brief pause. “I think you know practically all that I can tell you about myself. I can give you what you want up to about fifteen thousand a year—it will be more when my mother dies. We're decent folk—old county family—I can offer you whatever society you like. You and I have tastes in common, care for the same things, same sort of people. I'm sound in wind and limb—never had a day's illness in my life, so you would n't have to look after a cripple. And I'd give the eyes out of my head to have you; you know that. How does it strike you?”

      Norma had averted her glance from him towards the end of his speech, and leaning back was looking intently at her hands in her lap. For the moment she felt it impossible to reply. The words that had formulated themselves in her mind, “I think, Mr. King, the arrangement will be eminently advantageous to both parties,” were too ludicrous in their adequacy to the situation. So she merely sat silent and motionless, regarding her manicured finger-nails, and awaiting another opening. King changed his seat to the sofa, by her side, and leaned forward.

      “If you had been a simpler, more unsophisticated girl, Norma, I should have begun differently. I thought it would please you if I put sentiment aside.”

      Her head motioned acquiescence.

      “But I'm not going to put it aside,” he went on. “It has got its place in the world, even when a man makes a proposal of marriage. And when I say I'm in love with you, that I have been in love with you since the first time I saw you, it's honest truth.”

      “Say you have a regard, a high regard, even,” said Norma, still not looking at him, “and I'll believe you.”

      “I'm hanged if I will,” said Morland. “I say I'm in love with you.”

      Norma suddenly softened. The phrase tickled her ears again—this time pleasantly. The previous half-hour's groping in the dark of herself seemed to have resulted in discovery. She gave him a fleeting smile of mockery.

      “Listen,” she said. “If you will be contented with regard, a high regard, on my side, I will marry you. I really like you very much. Will that do?”

      “It is all I ask now. The rest will come by and by.”

      “I'm not so sure. We had better be perfectly frank with each other from the start, for we shall respect each other far more. Anyhow, if you treat me decently, as I am sure you will, you may be satisfied that I shall carry out my part of the bargain. My bosom friends tell one another that I am worldly and heartless and all that—but I've never lied seriously or broken a promise in my life.”

      “Very well. Let us leave it at that,” said Morland. “I suppose your people will have no objection?”

      “None whatever,” replied Norma, drily.

      “When can I announce our engagement?”

      “Whenever you like.”

      He took two or three reflective steps about the room and reseated himself on the sofa.

      “Norma,” he said softly, bending towards her, “I believe on such occasions there is a sort of privilege accorded to a fellow—may I?”

      She glanced at him, hesitated, then proffered her cheek. He touched it with his lips.

      The ceremony over, there ensued a few minutes of anticlimax. Norma breathed more freely. There had been no difficulties, no hypocrisies. The mild approach to rapture on Morland's part was perhaps, after all, only a matter of common decency, to be accepted by her as a convention of the scène à faire. So was the kiss. She broke the spell of awkwardness by rising, crossing the room, and turning off an electric pendant that illuminated the full-length portrait on the wall.

      “We can't stand Mrs. Wolff-Salamon's congratulations so soon,” she said with a laugh.

      Conversation again became possible. They discussed arrangements. King suggested a marriage in the autumn. Norma, with a view to the prolongation of what appealed to her as a novel and desirable phase of existence—maidenhood relieved of the hateful duty of husband-hunting and unclouded by parental disapprobation—pleaded for delay till Christmas. She argued that in all human probability the Parliamentary vacancy at Cosford, the safe seat on which Morland reckoned, would occur in the autumn, and he could not fix the date of an election at his own good pleasure. He must, besides, devote his entire energy to the business; time enough when it was over to think of such secondary matters as weddings, bridal tours, and the setting up of establishments.

      “But you have to be considered, Norma,” he said, half convinced.

      “My dear Morland,” she replied with a derisive lip, “I should never dream of coming between you and your public career.”

      He reflected a moment. “Why should we not get married at once?”

      Norma laughed. “You are positively pastoral! No, my dear Morland, that's what the passionate young lover always says to the coy maiden in the play, but if you will remember, it does n't seem to work even there. Besides, you must let me gratify my ambitions. When I was very young, I vowed I would marry an emperor. Then I toned him down into a prince. Later, becoming more practical, I dreamed of a peer. Finally I descended to a Member of Parliament. I can't marry you before you are a Member.”

      “You could have had dozens of 'em for the asking, I'm sure,” returned the prospective legislator with a grin. “Take them all round, they're a shoddy lot.”

      He yielded eventually to Norma's proposal, alluding, however, with an air of ruefulness, to the infinite months of waiting he would have to endure. Tactfully she switched him off the line of sentiment to that of soberer politics. She put forward the platitude that a Parliamentary life was one of great interest. Morland did not rise even to this level of enthusiasm.

      “'Pon my soul, I really don't know why I'm going in for it. I promised old Potter years ago that I would come in when he gave up, and the people down there more or less took it for granted, the duchess included, and so without having thought much of it one way or the other, I find myself caught in a net. It will be a horrible bore. The whole of the session will be one dismal yawn. Never to be certain of sitting down to one's dinner in peace and comfort. Never to know when one will have to rush off at СКАЧАТЬ