The angry colour ran up into her face.
“You can laugh, but you don’t know what it feels like! I’m not dramatizing, I’m telling you about facts. Lois-well, she’s either got the wind up, or-I don’t know what. You know what it is when a person doesn’t show anything, but you can feel them being all worked up underneath-she’s like that. And Jimmy won’t let her take anything that’s made separately. He wanted her to knock off her beastly Turkish coffee, but she wouldn’t, so now he takes it too, poor darling, and you can see him hating every minute of it. Of course he knows perfectly well that no one will play tricks if he’s taking it.”
“So there have been no more attacks?”
“Not since you left. I say, that sounds rather incriminating, doesn’t it?” Her lips widened in the beginning of a smile, but it never got anywhere. She reached out for a small pile of books, dumped them on the stack, and said in a careful voice, “But it wouldn’t be you, naturally.”
He sat there swinging his foot and watching her.
“Is that intended for a compliment-a kindly tribute to my law-abiding character?”
“No, it isn’t. You’re out of it because-” She bit her lip and stopped suddenly. What an absolute damned fool jealousy made of you. Only when it was goading at you all the time something suddenly gave way and you came out with the very last thing you meant to say.
He looked at her quizzically.
“Gratifying, but inconclusive. I should like to know why you are not considering me as a possible poisoner.”
She spoke then, quite gravely and simply.
“Because you are fond of Lois. You used to be very fond of her.”
He shook his head.
“The answer is in the negative, darling.”
She blazed up suddenly.
“You were in love with her!”
“Quite a different thing, my child.
‘Yesterday’s fires are clean gone out, yesterday’s hearth is cold;
No one can either borrow or buy with last year’s gold.’ ”
Julia felt her heart leap up. He was telling her what she would have given almost anything in the world to be sure about. It leapt up, and it sank down again. Because what else could he say? He wouldn’t tell her or anyone else if he was still in love with Jimmy’s wife. She said in her deepest, gloomiest voice,
“I’ve got to go back there tomorrow, and it’s going to be absolute hell. Lois hasn’t got her new staff coming in for another fortnight, so we’ve all got to hang on till then. Ellie and Minnie are doing the work, so they can’t clear out. As a matter of fact neither of them has anywhere to go. Minnie won’t go to that awful old Miss Grey, I’m thankful to say, and Ellie hasn’t managed to find a room yet-they’re sending Ronnie to Brighton, and it’s packed. I shall have to stand by as long as they are there. I only hope I get through without having a final row with Lois.”
He gave a short dry laugh.
“Feeling optimistic about it?”
She said vehemently, “I mustn’t have one-because of Ellie. I keep telling myself that. You know, Antony, I’m not letting myself really hate her, but I could.”
“You’re putting over a pretty good imitation, darling.”
She looked at him, her eyes sombre, all the light gone out of them, her brows a black straight line.
“I’ve thought about it a lot. You can hate in such a lot of different ways. I think it’s all right to hate with your mind. Because what your mind hates isn’t people-it’s the things which are really hateful-the things everybody ought to hate. That’s all right, but when you begin to hate with your emotions it’s dangerous, because they swing you off your balance and the hating carries you away. You don’t know where it’s going to take you, or what it’s going to make you do. I’m trying very hard only to hate the things that Lois does, but sometimes-I’m afraid.”
Antony got up. She had moved him more deeply than he cared to show. He brought her half a dozen books, and when she had taken them he put both hands on her shoulders and shook her a little.
“You’re a stupid child, but you mean well. Stick to it! It won’t do Ellie any particular good if you pour oil on the troubled embers.”
She laughed, releasing the happiness she always felt when he touched her. Far below the words they used, the current ran between them smooth and strong. She said in a young voice,
“I don’t want to have a row.”
CHAPTER 13
Antony went down to Latter End next day. He didn’t want to go, his every instinct warned him against going. But he went. It wasn’t Julia’s asking that took him there. He had found it hard to say no to her, but he had said it. He hoped he would have stuck to his no, but he was to have no means of telling, for that evening Jimmy rang him up. No to Julia was possible, if difficult. No to Jimmy became quite impossible during the three minutes of that country call.
“I’ve a very particular reason for wanting you to come. The fact is I want to talk to you-about the girls. They’ll have to have some money. Old Eliza Raven left me a little-you know I went down to settle her affairs. Well, I want the girls to have it. Thought perhaps you’d be trustee. And then there’s Minnie-I’m very unhappy about Minnie-I don’t mind saying so. I’ve got to talk to you.”
Not possible to go on saying no. Afterwards he was to wonder what difference it would have made if he had. It might have made a very dreadful difference, or it might have made no difference at all. The part which depended upon a guilty premeditation may have been already fixed. The part which depended upon the turn of a chance might still have turned the way it did. Or there might have been no chance at all, in which case the tragedy would have been so much the deeper. Just how much Antony ’s presence at Latter End contributed to the event, he never found it possible to decide. The only thing certain was that had he known what lay ahead he would, even at the last moment, even in the village of Rayle itself, have turned his car about and gone back to town.
He took Julia down with him. As far as she was concerned, the barometer had risen, the sky was clear, and the sun shone. The fact that it was one of those unseasonable weeping September days made no difference. She carried her weather with her, and when Antony and she were together there were no dull days. There might be a storm, there had been one or two earthquakes and an occasional conflagration, but there were also floods of sunshine and quite enchanting rainbows. Today it didn’t matter to her in the least that the rain fell, and that when they emerged into the country their view was bounded by dripping hedgerows and curtains of white mist. You could always talk. Julia talked.
“Lois had had one in the eye anyhow.”
“Darling-your English style!”
She laughed.
“I know! But you’ve got to take a holiday sometimes. If you don’t you get all clamped up and stiff. I’m frightfully particular on paper.”
“Dulce est desipere in loco! All right-who’s been giving Lois one in the eye?”
“Jimmy. He met old Hodson down the lane, and Hodson let him have it-really good stuff on the lines of ‘It wouldn’t have happened in your father’s day, nor yet in your grandfather’s-taking the roof from over a poor man’s head to let foreigners in!’ All that sort of thing. And all Jimmy could do was to stand there and gape. And when he said, ‘But I thought you wanted to go to your daughter-in-law,’ Hodson came back at him with ‘And who told you a dirty lie like that, Mr. Jimmy?’ ”
Antony whistled.
“What happened after that? By the way, how do you know all this?”
“I was there. I don’t know when I’ve enjoyed myself so much. Jimmy told Hodson there had been a misunderstanding, and that the cottage was his for as long as he wanted it. Then he went home and blew right up. I got out of the way, but not before I heard him tell Lois that she must leave the management of the place to him. I hope it will do her good.”