“What was that? I thought I heard someone? Perhaps it’s Lawrence.”
I went over to the window which I had not closed as I had thought. I stepped out and looked down the garden, but there was no one in sight. Yet I was almost convinced that I, too, had heard someone. Or perhaps it was her certainty that had convinced me.
When I re-entered the room she was leaning forward, drooping her head down. She looked the picture of despair. She said again:
“I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do.”
I came and sat down beside her. I said the things I thought it was my duty to say, and tried to say them with the necessary conviction, uneasily conscious all the time that that same morning I had given voice to the sentiment that a world without Colonel Protheroe in it would be improved for the better.
Above all, I begged her to do nothing rash. To leave her home and her husband was a very serious step.
I don’t suppose I convinced her. I have lived long enough in the world to know that arguing with any one in love is next door to useless, but I do think my words brought to her some measure of comfort.
When she rose to go, she thanked me, and promised to think over what I had said.
Nevertheless, when she had gone, I felt very uneasy. I felt that hitherto I had misjudged Anne Protheroe’s character. She impressed me now as a very desperate woman, the kind of woman who would stick at nothing once her emotions were aroused. And she was desperately, wildly, madly in love with Lawrence Redding, a man several years younger than herself. I didn’t like it.
CHAPTER IV
I had entirely forgotten that we had asked Lawrence Redding to dinner that night. When Griselda burst in and scolded me, pointing out that it lacked two minutes to dinner time, I was quite taken aback.
“I hope everything will be all right,” Griselda called up the stairs after me. “I’ve thought over what you said at lunch, and I’ve really thought of some quite good things to eat.”
I may say, in passing, that our evening meal amply bore out Griselda’s assertion that things went much worse when she tried than when she didn’t. The menu was ambitious in conception, and Mary seemed to have taken a perverse pleasure in seeing how best she could alternate undercooking and overcooking. Some oysters which Griselda had ordered, and which would seem to be beyond the reach of incompetence, we were, unfortunately, not able to sample as we had nothing in the house to open them with – an omission which was discovered only when the moment for eating them arrived.
I had rather doubted whether Lawrence Redding would put in an appearance. He might very easily have sent an excuse.
However, he arrived punctually enough, and the four of us went in to dinner.
Lawrence Redding has an undeniably attractive personality. He is, I suppose, about thirty years of age. He has dark hair, but his eyes are of a brilliant, almost startling blue. He is the kind of young man who does everything well. He is good at games, an excellent shot, a good amateur actor, and can tell a first-rate story. He is capable of making any party go. He has, I think, Irish blood in his veins. He is not, at all, one’s idea of the typical artist. Yet I believe he is a clever painter in the modern style. I know very little of painting myself.
It was only natural that on this particular evening he should appear a shade distrait. On the whole, he carried off things very well. I don’t think Griselda or Dennis noticed anything wrong. Probably I should not have noticed anything myself if I had not known beforehand.
Griselda and Dennis were particularly gay – full of jokes about Dr. Stone and Miss Cram – the Local Scandal! It suddenly came home to me with something of a pang that Dennis is nearer Griselda’s age than I am. He calls me Uncle Len, but her Griselda. It gave me, somehow, a lonely feeling.