White Jade. V. J. Banis

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      “Surely you had the address to begin with,” she said, further piqued at this answer. “Couldn’t you have looked it up on a map?”

      “I did.” I knew that I sounded flustered. Pretense was not my forte. “I just didn’t realize how far it was in actual distance until I got here. That long train ride....” I let the sentence trail off vaguely.

      “Well, I suppose we ought to thank you for coming.” She stepped aside for me to go. “Although I for one had no idea an appointment had even been made. My husband has been ill, as you know. He isn’t thinking as clearly these days as he ought to be.”

      The thought came to me again that perhaps Jeff really wasn’t in full control of his faculties. Perhaps it was wrong of me, even dangerous, to humor him as I was doing. It might be best, best even for him, if I told his wife everything now.

      “Is something wrong?” she asked me.

      “No,” I managed to say, putting a protective hand across the front of my purse, where I could feel the bulk of the tea-filled jar. “I only thought that if I reconsider, I’ll write you again and resend my qualifications.”

      “That will be fine.” She was obviously confident this would never take place. She smiled more warmly than she had since I’d arrived. Apparently now that I was leaving she felt she could afford to be gracious to me.

      “That’s a handsome pendant you’re wearing,” she said. “White jade, isn’t it?”

      “Yes, thank you.” I managed somehow to return her smile. I wondered if her smile would remain if she knew the jade had been a present from husband, an engagement present to me.

      “It’s rather like mine. That is, the jade is alike. Mine is in a ring.”

      She extended her hand for me to see the ring. It was a shock to see the stone, so like my own, mounted in gold. Jeff Linton had given away his soul rather freely, I thought. But I complimented her on it, making every effort to seem relaxed and natural.

      I did not breathe easily until I was outside and the great door of the house was closed after me. Then, for the first time, I let my shoulders droop and the corners of my mouth turned down as they had wanted to do since I had first recognized Jeff.

      It had started to snow. Delicate tufts of white danced and swirled, postponing their arrival on the ground as long as they dared.

      It was afternoon. It would be evening by the time I reached the city, quite late by the time I had made it home and eaten dinner. I’d had lunch in the town of Elsinore, the nearest village, before coming up to the house for the interview.

      The taxi that had brought me up from Elsinore, a twenty minute drive, was waiting as the driver had promised. He saw me come out the small gate and sat up sharply, twisting about on the seat to open the door for me without getting out of the car.

      The seat in the rear was worn and shabby. Unfamiliar to me only a short time before, it now had a welcome air about it.

      “Wasn’t such a long talk,” he said, starting off cautiously in the fresh snow, although very little remained more than a second or two on the ground. It was only October and still early for serious snow.

      “No,” I said thoughtfully. It seemed as if I had lived an entire lifetime since knocking at the door of that house and yet it had been only a matter of minutes, less than half an hour at most.

      “Everything go well?” he asked in a friendly, not-prying way.

      “It was...interesting.”

      “Going to be joining us?” he asked, as if the whole village were only an adjunct to the Linton household, as perhaps it was.

      “I don’t know,” I answered. I turned to look through the rear window of the car. The house was vast and gray, made of weathered stone. Because it stood on a hill, it could be seen even from the town. I had watched it loom closer and closer on my way up. Then, it had seemed picturesque, with its turrets and mullioned windows. Now it looked ominous and foreboding. Through the gently falling snow its outlines were blurred, fading into the grayness of the sky. It might have been a ghost house, a mere illusion, a fragment from some childhood dream.

      But it was real. And Jeff Linton was real. So was his fear. It had been like a living presence between us, that fear, making me agree to help him even against my better judgment, despite my conviction that his statements were ridiculous. People didn’t just run about killing one another because they were a bit possessive.

      But they did, of course. One did not read newspapers and watch television without knowing that people did murder one another, and sometimes for the slimmest of reasons.

      In my purse, the bulk of the glass jar was like a haunting spirit reminding me of Jeff’s anxiety.

      I was afraid.

      CHAPTER THREE

      “Jeff, Jeff,” I thought, “why couldn’t you have stayed in the past?”

      “I love you.”

      I had only to close my eyes, to lean back against the seat of the cab, and I could hear his voice speaking those words....

      “I love you,” he said. “Lord, how I’ve missed you. I couldn’t begin to tell you.”

      “Try.” It seemed to me as if he had been gone months instead of weeks.

      “You haven’t said you love me,” he said with a mock pout. He looked down and saw the jade pendant at my throat. “I’ll bet you haven’t worn that since I left.”

      “Silly, of course I have. I haven’t had it off once. And I do love you. I love you for always and always.”

      We kissed, a long, searching kiss. Jeff, my darling Jeff. I could still scarcely believe we were going to be married, that anyone so handsome and worldly as Jeff could be interested in spending his life with me.

      But he was, and I had the white jade to remind me. Not that I was likely to forget.

      “You didn’t say always,” I teased him.

      “Always is an awfully long time, darling. Can’t we settle for now?”

      “Oh, no, you don’t get off that easily.” I got up from the sofa and went to the battered upright piano, running my fingers over the keys. A melody came to mind and my fingers picked it out instinctively.

      He came to stand behind me, his hands at my waist. “Pretty,” he said.

      “Grieg.” I hit a sour note and stopped. All the girls at school learned to play and my father, thinking that synonymous with talent, had insisted on a piano here, but neither learning to read music nor learning to love it could have made a pianist out of me.

      “I may not have meant the music,” he said.

      I leaned back against him and sighed contentedly.

      “What if it weren’t?” he asked.

      “If what weren’t?”

      “If СКАЧАТЬ