“He has married twice then?”
“Yes.” The driver lowered his voice confidentially. “His first wife was a bad woman. She was beautiful, yes, but she deceived him much with other men-yes, even here in the island. He should not have married her. But where women are concerned, he is not clever-he believes too much.”
He added, almost apologetically:
“A man should know whom to trust, but Sir Wilding does not. He does not know about women. I do not think he will ever learn.”
CHAPTER four
His host received Llewellyn in a long, low room, lined to the ceiling with books. The windows were thrown open, and from some distance below there came the gentle murmur of the sea. Drinks were set on a low table near the window.
Wilding greeted him with obvious pleasure, and apologised for his wife’s absence.
“She suffers badly from migraine,” he said. “I hoped that with the peace and quiet of her life out here it might improve, but it hasn’t done so noticeably. And doctors don’t really seem to have the answer for it.”
Llewellyn expressed his sorrow politely.
“She’s been through a lot of trouble,” said Wilding. “More than any girl should be asked to bear. And she was so young-still is.”
Reading his face, Llewellyn said gently:
“You love her very much.”
Wilding sighed:
“Too much, perhaps, for my own happiness.”
“And for hers?”
“No love in the world could be too much to make up to her for all she has suffered.”
He spoke vehemently.
Between the two men there was already a curious sense of intimacy which had, indeed, existed from the first moment of their meeting. It was as though the fact that neither of them had anything in common with the other-nationality, upbringing, way of life, beliefs-made them therefore ready to accept each other without the usual barriers of reticence or conventionality. They were like men marooned together on a desert island, or afloat on a raft for an indefinite period. They could speak to each other frankly, almost with the simplicity of children.
Presently they went into dinner. It was an excellent meal, beautifully served, of a very simple character. There was wine which Llewellyn refused.
“If you’d prefer whisky…”
The other shook his head.
“Thank you-just water.”
“Is that-excuse me-a principle with you?”
“No. Actually it is a way of life that I need no longer follow. There is no reason-now-why I should not drink wine. Simply I am not used to it.”
As he uttered the word ‘now’, Wilding raised his bead sharply. He looked intensely interested. He almost opened his mouth to speak, then rather obviously checked himself, and began to talk of extraneous matters. He was a good talker, with a wide range of subjects. Not only had he travelled extensively, and in many unknown parts of the globe, but he had the gift of making all he himself had seen and experienced equally real to the person who was listening to him.
If you wanted to go to the Gobi Desert, or to the Fezzan, or to Samarkand, when you had talked of those places with Richard Wilding, you had been there.
It was not that he lectured, or in any way held forth. His conversation was natural and spontaneous.
Quite apart from his enjoyment of Wilding’s talk, Llewellyn found himself increasingly interested by the personality of the man himself. His charm and magnetism were undeniable, and they were also, so Llewellyn judged, entirely unself-conscious. Wilding was.not exerting himself to radiate charm; it was natural to him. He was a man of parts, too, shrewd, intellectual without arrogance, a man with a vivid interest in ideas and people as well as in places. If he had chosen to specialise in some particular subject-but that, perhaps, was his secret: he never had so chosen, and never would. That left him human, warm, and essentially approachable.
And yet, it seemed to Llewellyn, he had not quite answered his own question-a question as simple as that put by a child. “Why do I like this man so much?”
The answer was not in Wilding’s gifts. It was something in the man himself.
And suddenly, it seemed to Llewellyn, he got it. It was because, with all his gifts, the man himself was fallible. He was a man who could, who would, again and again prove himself mistaken. He had one of those warm, kindly emotional natures that invariably meet rebuffs because of their untrustworthiness in making judgments.