Away Went Love (8 page)

“Very well. I’ll give you the five hundred pounds—”

“You
will
?”

“—on two conditions.”

“Y-yes?”

“One is that, having handed over the money to Fander, you arrange not to see him again—”

“But—but I can’t do that! I’m going to marry him.”

“No. Not if you fall in with this arrangement. The second condition of my handing over the five hundred pounds is that you marry me.”

CHAPTER FOUR

“MARRY you!”

Hope’s chair scraped back harshly on the floor as she sprang to her feet.

“Um-hm. I said ‘marry’.” He seemed unmoved—even faintly amused—by the violence of her reaction.

“But—why? It’s a preposterous suggestion. I’m engaged to Richard, and you and I—we don’t even like each other.”

“Oh, pardon me, I’ve never said I don’t like you.”

“Not in so many words, perhaps. But it’s obvious in everything you do and say.”

“Is it really, Hope?” he said slowly. “I don’t mean to give that impression.—At least, not often,” he amended with dry candour. “But sit down while we discuss this.”

“There’s nothing to discuss,” she retorted, but she sat down.

“There’s a proposal of marriage to discuss,” he reminded her.

“But I couldn’t even think of it. You know perfectly well it’s out of the question. And anyway, I’m engaged to Richard.”

“And still determined to marry him, in spite of the latest revelation of his character?”

“Certainly.” She flushed, but kept her temper under control.

“You’re a bad judge of your own interests, my dear,” he told her. “But I should say your Richard is a good judge of his. And that being so—now don’t fly off the handle, but consider this quite honestly—are you quite sure he’ll still want to marry
you,
now that he knows you have no money?”

“Of course I’m sure!”

“No misgivings at all?”

Those piercingly shrewd dark eyes were full on her in that moment “Of course n—” She stopped. It was ridiculous of her—disloyal—fanciful, but for the life of her she could not complete that emphatic testimony to her faith in Richard. Deep in her heart there lingered still those terrifying doubts which had assailed her when she first knew she was poor. Richard’s teasing, laughing self-congratulation on her supposed wealth had been just a joke when there was no sting of anxious truth connected with it. Now—

She slowly raised her eyes, to find Errol Tamberly still regarding her with interest, and, for a terribly disturbing moment, she thought she saw something like pity in his glance.

“Not quite so sure as you thought you were?” he enquired.

“It’s not that.” She found her voice with difficulty. “Of course, the fact that I’m not rich after all affects the whole question of—of our marriage arrangements. There hasn’t even been a chance to discuss that with Richard yet, so—so, technically speaking, I can’t answer for his views. But I—I
know
it won’t make any difference to his wanting to marry me.”

Yet, even as she said that, she remembered Richard saying easily that he would love her just the same if she were poor, only ‘whether they would have any prospect of marrying and being happy would be another thing’.

“Well, Hope, ‘technically speaking’ ”—he seemed to find the phrase amusing—“I am not qualified to answer for Richard Fander’s views either, but, if I were a betting man, I’d be prepared to lay pretty long odds that he’ll revise his matrimonial plans. How about that?”

“Why should I be interested in your opinion about it?” she said coldly, though she wished her hands would stop trembling.

“No reason at all, except that it’s the opinion of a fairly knowledgeable and worldly person. What I meant was—how about it if I’m right and he does want to wriggle out of an unprofitable marriage? Do you still want to help him to dodge prison, to the extent of five hundred?”

Again Hope nervously moistened her rather dry lips with the tip of her tongue.

“I couldn’t let Richard go to prison. Especially I couldn’t let him go because of this. You see, it—it was largely for me that he wanted to make a lot of money.”

“Indeed?” Errol Tamberly’s thick dark eyebrows rose to an extremely sceptical height.

“Yes. He thought he saw a chance of making a great deal of money—and then he wouldn’t have had to feel that my money mattered at all. He didn’t like the idea, really, that we should be living on my money as well as his. He—he wanted to feel that he was keeping his wife on his own money.”

“High-minded fellow,” murmured Errol Tamberly.

“There’s no need for you to sneer about it!” Hope cried, all her anger flaring up again. “You’ve never been at your wits’ end for money, or wondered how you can possibly manage something on which your happiness depends. I’m not defending what Richard has done. I’m at least as much shocked as you and a great deal more m-miserable about it. But it’s easy to be shocked because someone yields to a temptation you’ve never had to face yourself. I’m t-trying to put myself in his place and—and understand why he did it. I don’t know why I ever thought it would be any good coming to you. I might have known you’d sneer and laugh. I wish—I wish I hadn’t hu-humiliated myself for nothing.” And groping rather unsuccessfully for her handkerchief, Hope stumbled to her feet again.

“No—wait a moment. Sit down again. We haven’t finished this.” Imperturbably he handed her his own handkerchief across the desk, and after a further unsuccessful search for her own, she accepted it. Having dried her eyes, she felt tempted to fling it down on the desk again and walk out of the room, but as she looked at him over the crumpled handkerchief, she saw, to her incredulous astonishment, that he had drawn out a cheque-book and was writing in it. It was difficult to read upside down what he was writing, but at least she saw that the amount had two noughts on the end.

Slowly, and in slightly awe-stricken silence, Hope sat down once more.

He completed the writing of the cheque, blotted it rather deliberately and tore it from the book. Then he looked across at her.

“Better?”

“Oh, yes, thank you.” She felt a good deal ashamed of herself.

“All right. I’ve made out a cheque to you here for five hundred pounds, which you are quite at liberty to pay over to young Fander on the conditions I named, but—”

“I’ve told you they’re impossible terms! It’s cruel of you to prolong the argument and—and actually write the cheque!”

“Wait a moment. There is one other set of circumstances in which you may pay over the money without conditions.”

“Yes?” She hardly dared to draw breath in the eagerness with which she awaited his next words.

“If you’re right about Richard Fander, Hope, and he does want to marry you, with or without money, then I’m willing to admit that I’ve done him an injustice,” Tamberly said slowly. “If he’s not an unprincipled young adventurer, but merely a man who was very much tempted and made a bad slip, I see no reason why I shouldn’t help him
—but
I want some proof of that.”

“But—what proof can I possibly give you?”

“Your contention is that he wants to marry you, rich or poor?”

“Yes.”

“And that all he requires is this five hundred, in order to get out of his present scrape, and then he will start a happy married life with you, regardless of the fact that you’ll both be much poorer than he ever expected?”

“Yes.” Against her will, she looked down at that point, instead of looking him in the face.

“Well, my dear, if, after handing him over the five hundred pounds, you can make him say that he wants to make arrangements for the wedding at once, I’ll agree your contention was correct, and be willing that my money should go to help on a perfectly desirable marriage which has all the elements of success about it.”

“You—you mean that, if Richard really wants to marry me, we can have the five hundred pounds without any conditions being imposed?”

“You can.”

“But—I don’t see—where the catch is.”

He laughed and flushed slightly.

“Confound it! I don’t want to put a ‘catch’ in it, just for the sake of outwitting you, as you seem to think. What you haven’t considered is the situation if
I
am right and Richard does want to wriggle out of the marriage.”

“He doesn’t,” she said quickly.

“Then you have nothing to fear,” he assured her dryly.

There was a short, uneasy pause. Then she said slowly: “But if—for the sake of argument—he—he did want to avoid marrying me, what then?”

“Then, my dear Hope, you would either have to get back the five hundred pounds from him—which I think you would find singularly difficult—or else fulfil the two conditions I named.”

“Agree not to see him again and—and marry you?”

“Exactly.”

Again there was silence.

“Rather too stiff a test of your faith in him, Hope?” he enquired, watching her.

“Isn’t it rather—capricious of you to put this sort of choice before me?” she retorted.

“Capricious? Oh, no, my dear, I don’t think so. If Richard Fander is the worthwhile young man you make out, then there is no reason why I shouldn’t help him and no reason why I should question your likelihood of being happy with him. But if he is what I think, then I certainly don’t intend him to have five hundred pounds of my good money unless I get something very handsome in return. What I intend to have is the reassurance that you give up your association with a man who will have proved himself unworthy and dangerous, and secondly—well, Hope, you know the other condition.”

She looked at him curiously and then said:

“But why do you want me to marry you?”

He laughed a good deal at that, but he brushed it aside. “I’ll tell you that when the time comes—if it ever does. You see, your Richard is not the only one who is willing to speculate on a slim chance.”

Hope bit her lip. She knew, of course, that to take on his proposition was to take on something of a risk. Everything would depend on Richard, and Richard’s character in the last few days had become just a little unpredictable. But there lay that cheque for five hundred pounds—the solution to all their difficulties, the big stepping-stone to their marriage. Was she really to refuse it because she felt she could not risk everything on the certainty of Richard really being what she insisted he was?

“Of course,” Errol Tamberly went on, “I rely on your honesty for you not to tell young Fander what is involved. All I wish to have proved is that, once out of his present tangle, he is willing and eager to marry you, rich or poor. He musn’t have it represented to him that he ought to marry you in order to save you from something of a—well, a predicament, shall we say?”

“No,” Hope said. “That’s fair.”

“You hand over the five hundred pounds and then see what his reaction is to immediate preparations for your marriage. I presume an immediate marriage was what you were contemplating before the complications arose?”

“Yes,” Hope agreed. “Oh, yes, of course.” And as she recalled Richard’s eager plans and how, at the news of her parents’ death, he had insisted that the only thing was for them to get married at the first possible moment, all her confidence returned.

What was the matter with her that she had allowed unworthy doubts of Richard to sway her judgment over the very thing which would save him? What sort of fiancée was she, even to think of refusing the five hundred pounds which would keep him from prison?—and that only because someone had put doubts into her mind about Richard really loving her. He could hardly have proved his love with more distressing clearness than by this unfortunate speculation which had started all the trouble. He had risked everything for her, and she had been toying with the possibility of letting him take the consequences, when she could save him merely by affirming her faith in him.

She looked across the desk at Errol Tamberly, steadily and even defiantly.

“I accept, of course. On the exact terms you’ve laid down.”

“Very well.” He picked up the cheque and handed it to her. “There’s the five hundred pounds. And don’t bother to thank me,” he added ironically.

Hope got up, and stood there for a moment, twisting the cheque in her hands.

“I—I do thank you, just the same,” she said, staring at the slip of paper but speaking with great earnestness. “It’s amazingly generous of you to let us have such a large sum of money. You say that if—if Richard is a worthwhile person, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t help him, but I know there are very few people who would help someone else to that extent.”

“Oh, that’s not generosity,” he said rather roughly, as he too got up. “Call it a bet on long odds. Now go along. I have some work to do.”

“But there’s just one more point—”

“Yes?”

“How—how long have I got to prove my own view?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Well, we shall both probably be so excited about having got the money and making the arrangements to—to put it back and so on. There may not be a chance of fixing up our wedding, too, at the same time.”

“You’d be wise to make your suggestion of an early marriage follow as closely as possible on the presentation of the cheque,” he told her dryly.

“But I can’t say, ‘Here’s the five hundred pounds, now when are we going to be married?’—just like that. It’s—it’s indecent.”

“Very well.” He grinned. “I’ll study your susceptibilities to that extent. You can have a week to bring him to the point. Come back in a week’s time and tell me whether you’re going to marry him—or me.”

“I will,” she said rather breathlessly. And then, without even pausing to say good night, she hurried out of the room.