Curtain of Fear (2 page)

They had been talking, in half breathless snatches between kisses, for only a few minutes when Wendy said: “Darling, I've got an awful chore for you. I know you'll hate it, but will do it for my sake and be on your best behaviour.”

He smiled at her. “Of course I will. What is it?”

“I've fixed up for us to stay the weekend after this with Aunt Agatha,” she replied a little hurriedly.

His sudden frown did not surprise her. Aunt Agatha was her mother's sister, and the widow of Colonel the Honourable George Lis-Hartley. She had been left extremely well off and lived in almost pre-war luxury at Lis Court, a fine old Georgian manor in Shropshire. She entertained lavishly, ruled her estate despotically, and still rode to hounds enthusiastically at the age of fifty-eight. In fact she represented everything that Nicholas most heartily condemned.

“Now don't be difficult, my sweet,” Wendy hurried on before he could reply. “As you are going to marry me you'll have to meet her some time, and the sooner you get it over the better. You really must get it out of your head that everyone who has a title or a lot of money is necessarily horrid.”

“I never said they were.”

“But you are inclined to think it, aren't you? Anyway, Aunt Agatha is a dear. She's fat and jolly and awfully kind.”

“If you say so I'm sure she is, darling; but all the same I can't accept her invitation.”

“Oh, Nicky! But you must. As I was telling you the other night, I'm her only niece, she's awfully fond of me and has made me her heir; so it would be not only stupid but most unkind to offend her. You really needn't be nervous about staying at Lis Court, or about the people you'll meet there. I know you haven't got a dinner jacket, but you could easily hire one, and …”

“Thanks!” He cut her short with an edge on his voice. “I don't need to wear their absurd livery to hold my own with a bunch of snobs.” But he added quickly, “Sorry, darling! I didn't mean that. I haven't yet got used to thinking of such people as your friends; and I'd willingly dress myself up, even as Punchinello, to please you. It isn't my ingrained dislike of all that your amiable aunt represents that makes me say no, either.”

“What is it, then?”

He hesitated a second, angry with himself now at having put off telling her before, because he felt certain that his intention would displease her; then he blurted out:

“Next weekend I have to attend a conference of the new I.L.P. at Llandudno.”

Her brown eyes opened wider. She was aware that he contributed articles to several Left-wing journals, but had not known that he took an active part in extremist politics; so she asked:

“Do you often attend such meetings, Nicky?”

“No,” he shrugged. “Only those that I think may be of particular interest.”

“Then surely, as it is to please me, you wouldn't mind terribly not going to this one?”

“I'm afraid I must. You see,
it
has been specially called to discuss a matter of major policy, and some of my friends who will be there are counting on my support. I'm sorry, darling. Really I am. I'll come to your aunt's any other week-end you like, and I'll be as good as gold about hiding my red light under a bushel.”

Dropping her eyes she murmured, “All right, then. I suppose it can't be helped. I'll make some suitable excuse to Aunt Agatha.”

After a moment's awkward pause, he plucked up the courage to say, “I'm afraid I've got another disappointment for you, sweetheart. I've had to scratch our game in the tennis doubles for to-morrow.”

She looked up quickly. “Oh, Nicky, why?”

“My cousin telephoned me last night.”

“Your cousin! I thought your only relatives lived in Czechoslovakia.”

“They do, except for Bilto. I've seen very little of him during the past few years, and I suppose that's why it never occurred to me to mention him to you. He came here as a refugee soon after Hitler marched into Prague. As he is a very able scientist he has done quite well for himself. During most of the war he was employed on atomic research in Canada and the States, and he now holds a senior appointment at Harwell. Anyhow, he rang me up to say that he wanted to see me urgently on an important family matter, so I promised to meet him in London tonight. In the circumstances, I couldn't possibly refuse.”

“No, I quite see that,” Wendy agreed. “But if you are seeing him to-night, what is to stop you catching a train back to-morrow morning? Even quite a late one would get you here in time for our match.”

Nicholas shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot, then he said uneasily, “Darling, I'm afraid you are going to be awfully annoyed with me, but I've committed myself for the whole weekend. You remember I told you about this new economic
monthly that Igor Sinznick is planning to start. He has been urging me for the past three weeks to go up and have a really long talk with him about it, but I've kept putting it off because of us. I can't afford trips to London often, and since I've got to go up to see Bilto anyhow, this seemed the perfect opportunity. The Sinznicks can always give me a bed at their house in Cricklewood, so I wired Igor this morning, saying that I'd arrive late to-night, and would stay over with them till Sunday evening. I had no chance to discuss the matter with you, and when I sent off my wire to Igor I didn't think you'd really mind.”

“But I do mind!” Wendy took a swift pace back from him and her mouth became a firm, angry line.

“Oh come, my sweet!” he protested. “You have to go to a party to which I am not invited on Saturday night, and as Sunday is your grandfather's birthday you are tied up for dinner that night as well. It is unreasonable to expect me to forgo this chance of spending the weekend with one of my oldest friends just to be with you for a few hours on a tennis court.”

“It's not that!” she flared. “It is that you are going back on your word. When we became engaged we solemnly agreed that we would not allow politics to interfere with our private lives.”

“Yes, that's what we agreed; and I stand by what I said.”

“How can you say that, when you have just refused to come to Aunt Agatha's next weekend because you want to attend a conference of the Independent Labour Party, and this weekend you are scratching our match in order to stay up in London for the purpose of planning the issue of some filthy red rag with a Communist agitator?”

Two crimson spots appeared in Nicholas' lean cheeks, as he snapped, “Igor may be an agitator, if by that you mean a man who has the courage to speak openly in defence of the downtrodden masses, but he is not a member of the Communist Party, and I resent your stigmatising our honest project to expose capitalist abuses in a new periodical by terming it a filthy rag.”

“All right, then I resent it if you like; but I refuse to be
treated like this. If we are to make a success of our marriage, from now on you must give your political activities second place to our life together.”

“Wendy, my work is not for myself but for others; so I cannot give it up. But I swear to you that I'll do my best to honour our agreement.”

“Very well. Meet me half way, then. Either come to Aunt Agatha's next weekend or get back here to-morrow in time for the match.”

“Damn it, I can't,” he cried in sudden exasperation. “I am already committed for this weekend and next.”

She was very near to tears as she stammered, “I think you're horrid. I'd … I'd have half a mind to give you back your ring, if …if your head had not been too full of your beastly politics for you to think of giving me one.”

“I'm sorry about that,” he said contritely. “I meant to but I've had little chance. I'll get you one while I'm in London and give it to you on Monday.”

“I may not feel like accepting it,” she retorted angrily. “Stay up in London if you like, but while you are there you had better think things over. If by Monday you have not decided to meet me half way and come to Aunt Agatha's, I shall consider our engagement at an end.”

“Wendy, please!” He held out his arms to her, but she evaded his embrace, turned on her heel, stalked swiftly to the door, wrenched it open and slammed it furiously behind her.

It was not until she was half way down the corridor that she realised that she had forgotten to snatch up the attaché case that held her sandwiches. Nothing would have induced her to go back for them, and she felt in no state to face her fellow students in the canteen. The prospect of a lunchless interval added further fuel to her anger, and during it she shed bitter tears in a quiet corner of the grounds. As she finally dried her eyes her resolution was taken. She had faced the fact that on this question time could be no healer. She must make her stand now, before she became further committed by publicly announcing her engagement.
Desperately as she loved Nicky she must force herself to give him up unless, on his return from London, he was prepared to put her happiness before his other interests.

On his journey to London that evening Nicholas was a very worried man. One of the things he admired most about Wendy was her strength of character. She was not the sort of girl who could be cozened into meek submission by a display of tact and a little petting; and he had an uneasy feeling that she really meant what she had said. The thought that she might stand by her ultimatum appalled him, for he had never wanted anything so much in his life as he wanted her. Yet how could he possibly continue with what he had come to regard as his life's work if he ceased to collaborate actively with the little group of people who thought as he did, and believed that given the power to do so they could remedy all social ills?

That damnable problem had been lurking in the back of his mind ever since the wonderful evening when Wendy had first confessed her love for him. For the past fortnight his overwhelming joy in being with her and thinking of her had enabled him to put it out of his thoughts for the greater part of the time, but at unexpected moments it had kept popping up and he had known that sooner or later it must be faced.

Idealist as he was, Nicholas was by no means unconscious of the practical benefits which would accrue to him from marrying the rich Miss Stevenson. Apart from the delights and material comforts that a loving wife in any circumstances would bring him, now that he had agreed to let her accept the help that her
doting father would almost certainly offer he could look forward to exchanging his dreary lodgings for a pleasant home. Entertaining on a modest scale would not be beyond them, and Wendy already had her own little car. Once the Stevensons were reconciled to the marriage they would probably insist on providing the means for the young couple to take pleasant holidays—perhaps even trips abroad—and if there were children it was certain that old man Stevenson would make himself responsible for seeing that they had the best education money could provide.

As Nicholas had thought of all these things he had suffered certain qualms of conscience, recalling uneasily his own past diatribes against ‘worthless parasites who battened on the rich'; but he had succeeded in persuading himself that provided he did not use any of the ‘tainted' money for personal ends he need not reproach himself. That he could not avoid benefitting from it indirectly was inescapable, but against that he set the argument that it would be little short of brutal to compel a girl who had had Wendy's upbringing to scrape and slave when there was no necessity for her to do so. Moreover, he considered himself far from worthless, and further placated his scruples by the somewhat cynical reasoning that marrying a girl with money must result in his having far more free time which could be devoted to his political work.

About that, too, he had, up till now, managed to lull himself into a false optimism. As a student Wendy had shown such promise that he had felt certain that with her good brain she could in due course be brought to see ‘the Light', abandon the shibboleths of her bourgeois antecedents and be moulded into his right-hand in the great crusade for internationalism and equality. Only in the past few days had he begun dimly to realise that her patriotism, fervid loyalty to the monarchy, and belief that the Socialists were incapable of governing the country in its best interests, were far more the fruit of her own reasoned convictions than habits of thought accepted instinctively from the world of comparative affluence and privilege in which she had always lived.

Another pleasing prospect that had taken shape in his imagination was that as a result of marrying Wendy he might hope for professional advancement. It so happened that her father and his immediate chief were friends of many years' standing, as they had been brother officers in the First World War. The latter, Professor Benjamin Salting-Sala, was regarded by Nicholas as a charlatan of the first water; and it was probably true that he owed his present position more to the connections he had made during half a lifetime spent at Oxford, and his flamboyant personality, than to his academic achievements. He was a fat, florid
bon viveur
with charming manners and a cynical wit that made him excellent company. Being a rabid anti-Socialist he lost no opportunity of using his occasional lectures as a vehicle for tilting with derisive mockery at the revolutionary tenets that Nicholas held most dear. Had they both lived in Paris in 1793 and Nicholas had been a crony of Robespierre's, he would have seen to it that Salting Sala was given a specially high priority for a one-way trip to the guillotine; as things were, the corpulent, luxury-loving professor was far too occupied with his own concerns even to be conscious that the most intelligent but disreputable-looking of his juniors was not among his many admirers.

His blindness in this respect was now, in view of Nicholas' marriage prospects, particularly fortunate, for Salting-Sala was a power to be reckoned with in the University; and while he was too much of a snob to extend his patronage to a member of his staff whom he looked upon as his social inferior, all the odds were that, having no personal prejudice against Nicholas, he would readily do so to him, as John Stevenson's son-in-law.