Sylvia drew a long sighing breath, dabbed her eyes with a mauve handkerchief, and opened a grey suede bag with a diamond initial on it.
Gay cocked her eye at it.
“Wedding present?” she enquired.
“No-Francis-for Christmas. Rather nice, isn’t it?” From an inner pocket she produced a scrap of newspaper. “There-you’d better read it.”
The piece of paper was about five inches long and two inches wide. It looked as if it had been torn off the edge of the Times. On the blank margin there was scrawled in penciclass="underline"
“Same place. Same time. Same money.”
The words stood one below the other like the rungs of a ladder, the letters coarsely printed with a blunt blue pencil. Gay frowned at them.
“What does it mean?”
“I didn’t go,” said Sylvia in a tired voice. “Then I got this one.”
She fished out another piece of newspaper. A tear splashed down on it and smudged the blue pencil, but it was legible enough. In the same coarse scrawl Gay read:
“Tomorrow without fail, or your husband will know.”
Her lips tightened. What an absolute first-class prize idiot Sylvia was.
“Look here, Sylly, it’s no good beating about the bush. What have you been doing that Francis mustn’t know? Is it another man?”
“Oh, no!” said Sylvia. “Oh, no-really not, darling. I-I wouldn’t!”
Gay was a good deal relieved, because if there wasn’t another man, the obvious thing to do was to tell Francis Colesborough and get him to wring this blackmailing creature’s neck. She said so with a good deal of vigour. A vivid little creature in spite of the dark grey coat and black beret. Eyes, colour and lips were all alive as she pointed out the folly of practising concealments from your husband.
“You go straight home and tell him and you won’t have any more trouble.”
Sylvia paled visibly, clasped and unclasped her hands, and appeared completely panic-stricken.
“Oh, Gay-I couldn’t!”
“Why couldn’t you?”
“Oh, Gay, I couldn’t-I really couldn’t!”
Gay leaned back against the bed. What was it all about? She said,
“Sylvia, what’s Francis like?”
Because, after all, that was what really mattered. You could tell things to some people, and you couldn’t tell them to others. Everything really depended on what Francis was like.
Sylvia responded with a slightly puzzled air.
“Well, he’s tall-and fair-and-”
“Yes-I saw him at the wedding, and that time at Cole Lester. But I don’t want to know what size collar he takes, or what his handicap is at golf-I want to know what he’s like in himself.”
“Well, he’s much older than I am. Let me see-you and Marcia are the same age-and Marcia is twenty-and I’m two years older-so I’m twenty-two-and Francis was twenty years older than me when we married-and that was a year ago-”
Gay looked at her almost with awe.
“In fact, he’s forty-two. Sylly, can’t you really remember how old you are without counting up from Marcia and me?”
“You’re so good at figures,” said Sylvia in a helpless tone.
The conversation seemed to have slid right away from Francis. That was what happened when you tried to talk to Sylvia-you slipped, and slid, and didn’t get anywhere at all. Gay made a determined attempt to get back to Francis.
“We weren’t really talking about how old anyone was. I don’t care whether Francis is fourteen, or forty, or four hundred. I want to know what he’s like to live with. Is he fond of you-is he nice to you-are you fond of him?”
Sylvia smiled a little consciously.
“Oh, well, he’s in love with me.”
“People aren’t always nice to you when they’re in love with you.” Gay was remembering Julian Carr who had made such a frightful scene when she said she wouldn’t marry him. “And they’re not always fond of you either.” And she didn’t know how she knew that, but she did know it.
“It’s the same thing,” said Sylvia in a puzzled voice.
“You’re very lucky if it is,” said Gay with a wisdom beyond her years. “But if it really is the same thing with Francis, then you haven’t got to bother at all, because you can just go straight home and tell him, and he can deal with the blue pencil-stamp on it, or push its face in. Anyhow you won’t have to bother any more.”
Sylvia looked lovely and mournful. She shook her head.
“It wouldn’t do at all, darling.”
“Why wouldn’t it?”
“Oh, it wouldn’t. You don’t know Francis.”
Gay blew up.
“Is that my fault? I keep asking you what he’s like, and you’re about as much use as a jelly that hasn’t jelled! Why wouldn’t it do to tell Francis?”
Sylvia appeared to reflect. The unusual effort brought a tiny line to her white brow.
“He’d be angry,” she said at last.
“That won’t hurt you,” said Gay. “You’d much better tell him.”
Sylvia shook her head again.
“I can’t.”
“I’ll do it for you if you like,” said Gay handsomely. “I could do it most awfully well, because I could begin by telling him that you were the world’s prize fool and couldn’t help getting into some mess or other. And then I could tell him about this particular mess-and of course he’d see that it was up to him to get you out of it.”
Sylvia stood up, and stood trembling. It was as if she had begun to run away and then lost heart, or strength, or nerve-perhaps all three. She said with twitching lips,
“Don’t tell him! Don’t-don’t-don’t!”
Gay came over to her and put her back in her chair.
“Sit down,” she said, “and don’t be an ass. To begin with, I don’t know anything to tell, and to go on with-”
Sylvia clutched at her wrist.
“You mustn’t tell Francis! If I could tell him, I wouldn’t have come to you. Promise me you won’t ever tell.”
“I won’t promise,” said Gay soberly, “but I won’t tell.” She removed her wrist and stood back again. “The question is, are you going to tell me? Because if you’re not, I’ll be getting along.”
The faint, lovely colour returned to Sylvia’s cheek. She drew a long breath and sat back.
“Oh, darling, don’t go! I want to tell you.”
“Then get on with it,” said Gay.
Sylvia looked up, and down again.
“It’s so difficult. You see, one of the reasons I can’t tell Francis is that he said I was never, never, never to play cards for money. They play a lot, you know, in his set, and the points are dreadfully high, and he said I wasn’t to ever, because-well, it was after he’d been my partner one night at contract and we lost eight hundred pounds, and he said he wasn’t a millionaire, and even if he was he couldn’t bear the strain, and a lot of things like that.”
Gay felt some sympathy for Francis Colesborough. She had played cards with Sylvia at school.
“Did you revoke?” she enquired with interest.
Sylvia gazed at her mournfully.
“I expect so-I generally do. I never can remember what it is exactly, but that is one of the things he said I’d done. So he said I wasn’t to play again.”
“And you did?”
“Not bridge-baccarat.”
“And how much did you lose?” It went without saying that Sylvia had lost.
“About five hundred pounds,” said Sylvia in a small, terrified voice. If she was now the wife of the rich Sir Francis Colesborough and mistress of Cole Lester, she had spent twenty-one years as penniless Sylvia Thrale with a widowed mother whose tiny pension had only just sufficed to feed and clothe herself and her two daughters. Relations had most unwillingly paid the school bills. Sylvia had therefore always heard a great deal about money-bills and the lack of money to pay them with; bills and the sordid necessity of paying them; bills and the horrid things that might happen to you if you didn’t pay them. All this had been impressed upon her in the nursery.