The Burden, стр. 20

"Poor Susan."

"Don't worry about Susan. She's got no morals and she's a perfect bitch."

"Sometimes, Henry, I think you're quite heartless."

"I'm not heartless," said Henry indignantly. "I just don't see why people have to cling so. Things are fun if you don't take them seriously."

"Selfish devil!"

"Am I? I suppose I am. You don't really mind, do you, Shirley?"

"I shan't leave you. But I'm rather fed up, all the same. You're not to be trusted over money, and you'll probably go on having these silly affairs with women."

"Oh no, I won't. I swear I won't."

"Oh, Henry, be honest."

"Well, I'll try not to, but do try and understand, Shirley, that none of these affairs mean anything. There's only you."

"I've a good mind to have an affair myself!" said Shirley.

Henry said that he wouldn't be able to blame her if she did.

He then suggested that they should go out somewhere amusing, and have dinner together.

He was a delightful companion all the evening.

Chapter Seven

Mona Adams was giving a cocktail-party. Mona Adams loved all cocktail-parties, and particularly her own. Her voice was hoarse, since she had had to scream a good deal to be heard above her guests. It was being a very successful cocktail-party.

She screamed now as she greeted a late-comer.

"Richard! How wonderful! Back from the Sahara-or is it the Gobi?"

"Neither. Actually it's the Fezzan."

"Never heard of it. But how good to see you! What a lovely tan. Now who do you want to talk to? Pam, Pam, let me introduce Sir Richard Wilding. You know, the traveller-camels and big game and deserts-those thrilling books. He's just come back from somewhere in-in-Tibet."

She turned and screamed once more at another arrival.

"Lydia! I'd no idea you were back from Paris. How wonderful!"

Richard Wilding was listening to Pam, who was saying feverishly:

"I saw you on television-only last night! How thrilling to meet you. Do tell me now-"

But Richard Wilding had no time to tell her anything.

Another acquaintance had borne down upon him.

He fetched up at last, with his fourth drink in his hand, on a sofa beside the loveliest girl he had ever seen.

Somebody had said:

"Shirley, you must meet Richard Wilding."

Richard had at once sat down beside her. He said:

"How exhausting these affairs are! I'd forgotten. Won't you slip away with me, and have a quiet drink somewhere?"

"I'd love to," said Shirley. "This place gets more like a menagerie every minute."

With a pleasing sense of escape, they came out into the cool evening air.

Wilding hailed a taxi.

"It's a little late for a drink," he said, glancing at his watch, "and we've had a good many drinks, anyway. I think dinner is indicated."

He gave the address of a small, but expensive restaurant off Jermyn Street.

The meal ordered, he smiled across the table at his guest.

"This is the nicest thing that's happened to me since I came back from the wilds. I'd forgotten how frightful London cocktail-parties were. Why do people go to them? Why did I? Why do you?"

"Herd instinct, I suppose," said Shirley lightly.

She had a sense of adventure that made her eyes bright. She looked across the table at the bronzed attractive man opposite her.

She was faintly pleased with herself at having snatched away the lion of the party.

"I know all about you," she said. "And I've read your books!"

"I don't know anything about you-except that your Christian name is Shirley. What's the rest of it?"

"Glyn-Edwards."

"And you're married." His eyes rested on her ringed finger.

"Yes. And I live in London and work in a flower-shop."

"Do you like living in London, and working in a Sower-shop and going to cocktail-parties?"

"Not very much."

"What would you like to do-or be?"

"Let me see." Shirley's eyes half closed. She spoke dreamily. "I'd like to live on an island-an island rather far away from anywhere. I'd like to live in a white house with green shutters and do absolutely nothing all day long. There would bc fruit on the island and great curtains of flowers, all in a tangle… colour and scent… and moonlight every night… and the sea would look dark purple in the evenings…"

She sighed and opened her eyes.

"Why does one always choose islands? I don't suppose a real island would be nice at all."

Richard Wilding said softly: How odd that you should say what you did."

"Why?"

"I could give you your island."

"Do you mean you own an island?"

"A good part of one. And very much the kind of island you described. The sea is wine-dark there at night, and my villa is white with green shutters, and the flowers grow as you describe, in wild tangles of colour and scent, and nobody is ever in a hurry."

"How lovely. It sounds like a dream island."

"It's quite real."

"How can you ever bear to come away?"

"I'm restless. Some day I shall go back there and settle down and never leave it again."

"I think you'd be quite right."

The waiter came with the first course and broke the spell. They began talking lightly of everyday things.

Afterwards Wilding drove Shirley home. She did not ask him to come in. He said: "I hope-we'll soon meet again?"

He held her hand a fraction longer than necessary, and she flushed as she drew it away.

That night she dreamed of an island.

"Shirley?"

"Yes?"

"You know, don't you, that I'm in love with you?"

Slowly she nodded.

She would have found it hard to describe the last three weeks. They had had a queer, unreal quality about them. She had walked through them in a kind of permanent abstraction.

She knew that she had been very tired-and that she was still tired, but that out of her tiredness had come a delicious hazy feeling of not being really anywhere in particular.

And in that state of haziness, her values had shifted and changed.

It was as though Henry and everything that pertained to Henry had become dim and rather far away. Whereas Richard Wilding stood boldly in the foreground-a romantic figure rather larger than life.

She looked at him now with grave considering eyes.

He said:

"Do you care for me at all?"

"I don't know."

What did she feel? She knew that every day this man came to occupy more and more of her thoughts. She knew that his proximity excited her. She recognised that what she was doing was dangerous, that she might be swept away on a sudden tide of passion. And she knew that, definitely, she didn't want to give up seeing him…

Richard said:

"You're very loyal, Shirley. You've never said anything to me about your husband."

"Why should I?"

"But I've heard a good deal."

Shirley said:

"People will say anything."

"He's unfaithful to you and not, I think, very kind."

"No, Henry's not a kind man."

"He doesn't give you what you ought to have-love, care, tenderness."

"Henry loves me-in his fashion."

"Perhaps. But you want something more than that."

"I used not to."

"But you do now. You want-your island, Shirley."

"Oh! the island. That was just a day-dream."

"It's a dream that could come true."

"Perhaps. I don't think so."

"It could come true."

A small chilly breeze came across the river to the terrace on which they were sitting.

Shirley got up, pulling her coat tightly around her.

"We mustn't talk like this any more," she said. "What we're doing is foolish, Richard, foolish and dangerous."

"Perhaps. But you don't care for your husband, Shirley, you care for me."