Reflected Glory. John Russell Fearn

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СКАЧАТЬ put down his brush and gave Elsa a glance as she rose from her chair. Barbara looked from one to the other of them.

      “It sounds to me,” Clive told her curtly, “as though you’re deliberately trying to create trouble, Babs. What about Terry Draycott? He’s the one you’ve really fallen for, and you know it.”

      “Him!” The girl threw up her hands. “Good heavens, is that what you think? Because he pays me a great deal of attention and takes me out sometimes? I never even give him a second thought when he isn’t present. It’s you, Clive, and always has been.... Oh, I know it isn’t customary to bare one’s emotions in this fashion,” she went on petulantly, “but I’m the type who speaks her mind. The thing that I’ve seen growing before my eyes these last few days has finally got too much for me. I can’t stand any more of it.”

      “What thing?” Clive asked ominously.

      “Don’t act the innocent! You know perfectly well you’re in love with Miss Farraday—even if you do still call her by her surname! And she with you, or I don’t know my own sex.”

      There was silence for a moment, Elsa gently biting at her lower lip and looking at the angry girl pensively; then suddenly Clive banged his fist on the bench.

      “All right I am in love with Elsa!” he declared loudly. “And I’ll go on being so, whether you like it or not! I still don’t believe you ever had the slightest regard for me, beyond ordinary friendship, that is. I know I haven’t for you.”

      Barbara took a deep breath. “But for this—this woman, how much I might have done,” she whispered. “I could have made you see that we are indispensable to one another. As it is it’s ruined—for good. I’m clearing out, Clive,” she finished curtly. “And I’m never coming back.”

      “But, Babs, you can’t! You’ve an unfinished contract and there are some pictures which—”

      The door slammed behind the girl and there was the sound of her footfalls receding down the stairs. Clive rubbed his chin slowly and then turned as he realized Elsa was beside him.

      “Let her go,” she said quietly. “If she has a nature as jealous as that you’re well rid of her, don’t you think?”

      “Well, I suppose so, but it’s a bit of a shock. I’ve known her for such a long time, and she’s right about being indispensable, you know—”

      “Nobody is indispensable, Clive. If it’s a model you’re after, then what about me?”

      Elsa turned gently on her heel and, delectable though her youth­ful figure was, Clive hardly seemed to notice it. He frowned hard to himself.

      “Funny thing,” he mused. “I never even guessed that she felt that way about me.”

      “I did,” Elsa said, coming to a halt in her gyrations. “I saw it in her eyes: that was why I asked you about her. It just so happens that we are a better match, that’s all. Can’t alter Nature, can you?”

      Clive looked at her steadily. “A moment or two ago, when Babs was here, I referred to you as Elsa—and I’m going to go on doing it. Just the same as you’ve taken to calling me Clive. The form­alities are finished with, aren’t they?”

      “Of course.” Elsa took his hand and gripped it gently. “Clive, since you’ve openly admitted that you love me, I’ve nothing to gain by hiding my love for you, have I? I mean that,” she insisted. “These last few days I’ve been falling more heavily every minute, but I held off until I saw how Barbara reacted. Now we know where we stand.”

      “Yes, of course we do,” he breathed, kissing her impulsively. “And if it comes to needing a model—”

      “I’m ready and willing,” she smiled. “You have only to teach me whatever tricks there are.... Oh, the whole thing’s so simple,” she went on. “You a great artist, I a writer. That sort of combination can focus attention on me as nothing else could.”

      “There you go again, talking in riddles,” he muttered.

      “No.” She shook her head. “You’ll see what I mean as you un­derstand me better.”

      He studied her for a moment as though trying to analyze her, then he turned aside to pick up a duster for his paint-smeared hands.

      “For this morning,” he said, “work’s finished. We’re going out this very moment for an engagement ring.”

      She nodded eagerly. “And this afternoon I’ll go back home and clear up my affairs there. Then I can come back to London permanently.”

      “I’ll come back to Midhampton with you....” Clive put an arm about her shoulders.

      “But—but, dearest, that would be a waste of time! There’s really no need. I can clear everything up very quickly. Besides, it might look rather bad, you and I—”

      “Oh, be hanged to that! We’ll be engaged officially by then. Anyway, what kind of a man do you think I am?” Clive asked in wonder, lowering his arm. “Since we’re on our way to being married it’s my job to help you fix up whatever you want. No reason why I shouldn’t, is there? There isn’t anything peculiar about this Tudor cottage you live in, surely?”

      Elsa gave a worried smile. “No, of course not, only I really do think—”

      “I’m coming,” he said, with quiet decision. “We’ll catch the train for Midhampton immediately after lunch.”

      CHAPTER THREE

      At four o’clock the rattling local train, which formed a connection from Guildford, had brought Elsa and Clive to the rural station of Midhampton with its profusions of summer flowers. Here Clive chartered the solitary horse-drawn cab and, since he clearly knew Elsa well, the driver had only to be told to take her home.

      “Quaint place you live in, anyway,” Clive commented, looking out on to the sun-drenched and completely inactive village street.

      “If you only knew how much I hate it!” Elsa clenched her fists in her lap. “I’ve seen it for as long as I can remember. It is one of the earliest of my recollections. It holds nothing for me except unpleasant memories—of scolding, of being told not to do this and not to do that.”

      Clive gave her a serious, half puzzled glance.

      “You mean your parents were strict? That it?”

      “That’s it. They believed in the policy of a child being seen and not heard, but they carried it to excess, and being an only child I received the brunt of everything. I think,” Elsa fin­ished moodily, “I only started to live when they died. And twenty-five is a pretty late age to start living isn’t it?”

      “Not if you do it properly,” Clive murmured, and patted her left hand on which was the clawed bulging diamond he had purchased for her in London prior to lunch.

      Since she said nothing further he spent his time gazing out of the window again. The cab left the village presently and fol­lowed a solitary tree-lined road. On one side of it were meadows, golden with the summer light, stretching away to the distant blue line of the Hog’s Back. On the other side there was a peculiar darkness in the СКАЧАТЬ