"FREEDOM FOR TWO"
PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT. COPYRIGHT.
By
MARGARET WATSON.
1 CHAPTER 111. T j iContinued). 3 On New Year's Eve there was a ball at the Town Hal), a farewell party foi the old year, a house-warming foi the new. At midnight Erica stood just . within one of the open windows, and heard the beginning of the three-hour 1 peal the Rector’s ringers were perfor--1 ming for the first ambitious time. "Good luck. New Year!" said Martin at her shoulder. The Rector had worked so hard, had been hurrying round all day with his greying hair rubbed erect, and his face furrowed with anxiety, with his fingers tucked in books of expert advice, and his eye perpetually on the clock. Erica had watched him affectionately as she donned her coat ready for the ball, and patted her brown hair sVill more securely into its shining waves. To him this was excitement. The contrast was all the more overwhelming when Martin came in. like a being from another world. There was nothing flambuoyant about him, even in his most communicative moods; and yet he came into the rectory with a personal force which seemed to demand more space than its walls afforded, as if a demi-god from some wider air had unaccountably strayed into their puny world. The curious part of it was that'though the Rector was aware of the contrast, he was not dwarfed. His interests remained of such real importance that he could bear to catch at the demi-god’s sleeve as he entered, and demand: “Do you know anything about campanology?” Martin had laughed, and humbly admitted ignorance. “I was afraid you wouldn't” said the Rector, and rushed away to ring bells, while his daughter and Martin shared the frivolous pleasures of the ball. Erica felt him at her shoulder now as something tremendously vital and yet elusive. He had been thrown into her life in such haphazard manner that she could still hardly believe in him, and certainly not in the possibility of his remaining there. She turned and looked at him. big and dark against the whirl of colour in the hall behind, the flutter of rainbow streamers and the gleam of dresses. The features of his face were half-concealed, but she could see. as on the night that she had met him, the hint of a smile that came and went round his mouth, and the dark eyes fixed upon her. “I wonder.” she said slowly, “what this year will bring you? I wonder where you’ll be next New Year’s Day? Up on the moon, maybe.” She heard him laugh, gently and richly, to himself. Then he took her elbow and drew her back to the dan-
cing floor. “That depends on you." ho said. “Come on, let's dance." She did not try to make him explain himself, and she thought that he was
tacitly refusing to do so; but on the way home, with the last proud notes of the Rector’s peal ringing in their ears, he said suddenly: “Do you realise that we really are at the beginning of a New Year? Something so new that anything may happen in it What would you like your year to bring? Where would you like it to take you?” “Out of this place, first; as far. away from it as possible. Into mountains and jungles, over rivers and seas—” She lifted her head and looked at him fiercely. "Oh, what’s the use But anyhow I hope you’ll enjoy it. I hope it will bring you everything you want. Me? I’m a prisoner. The only way I shall ever really get out is pillion behind one of our minstrels. I’m grateful even for that, though I can’t be quite satisfied with dreams.” They had reached the shadow of the church tower over the close, where the reverberations of the peal seemed to sing still in a vibrating thrum through every stone of the fabric. She stopped just within sight of the gates of home. “I suppose you'll be oft’ soon?” “Oh, yes, very soon, I hope; but it all depends.”
“On what?” she asked listlessly. “On you. of course, just as I said.” He caught the sudden sparkle of her eyes, red-brown in bewilderment, and leaned abruptly closer. “Did you really think I could go away free as I came, and leave you here in prison? Do you still think I could bring myself to go away without you? Oh, no, you're coming with me. I want to give you the world. I want to drop every adventure under the sun into your hands, and pop every sweetness there is into your mouth. You don't know what it’s like to be telling you stories. There's always the feeling that everything would have been twice as grand if you'd been in it. And from now on you're going to be. We'll turn the world upside down, Erica." lie had her by the hands, and was drawing her towards him. She stared, smiled, and was silent, too deep in the texture of dreams to speak., but she knew that she loved him. that every nerve and every sense she possessed had followed her imagination into this new, vast and exciting captivity. “Whats the matter?” he asked against her hair. "You do’ love me. don't you? You must love me—- “ 'She loved me for the perils 1 had passed. And I loved her that she.did—' " He broke off there; the word “pity" did not apply; and while he hesitated, smiling, she said softly: " 'envied them'?” "Oh, my dearest, you shall have them, every one, but without the madness. You shall have everything you've | ever wanted, if only you'll marry mol and come away out of your chrysalis. Still she had nothing to say; she was dumb with wonder; but she lifted her face out. of his arms with a simplic-
' ity which answered for her; and Mar. tin bent his dark head into the shadow and kissed her. 1 CHAPTER IV. Sometimes, and startlingly, even on that first night of her overwhelming happiness, Erica was afraid. Supposing she could not live up to Martin? Supposing, whatever her will to adventure, she found herself losing her head in every crisis? Just as she had lost it behind the wheel of the defunct two-seater, that evening in the lane when she had almost run him down. Supposing that she could not heep his pace? When these thoughts came she fell suddenly silent within his arm; and he would feel her abrupt stillness, and try, in his masculine way, to extort the reason of it. “Are you cold? Would you rather we went in?'' “Of course not! I’m quite all rignt. Let’s go in.” And then the shadow and the fear would be gone, like a cloud lifting, so absolutely that she could never afterwards even remember that it had existed. They loved each other; that was the whole matter in four words; and all the “do-you-remembers” and “supposings” could add nothing to it. “I’ll take you all over Europe,” said Martin, “on one grand frolic- " “Don’t say ‘l’ll take you’; say ‘We’ll go.’ ” “Independent little wretch,” said Martin, laughing in high defight, “how I love you for saying things like that." She knew it, and was a little vain of her aptitude; but at the same time there was something ominous in the fact that she had consciously thought out those words before she said them, with a calculating understanding of his mind which left them little sincerity. “All right, then, we’ll go off on one glorious bust; and when we come home I’ll pick up that job Jameson's beer keeping warm for me for the past twe years, and we’ll have a flat in London and ”
Erica took his big wrists in her hands.
“Wait a minute, skipper, wait a minute. Don't go throwing out any anchors yet. You said that you'd take that job if ever you found you were growing old. I suppose falling in love with me is a sign of senile decay?” “It s a sign of growing up. anyhow. And, darling, I think a married man should have an anchor.”
She said, with sudden intense gravity; "I don t want you to change your life for me. I don’t want to take from you anything you love‘doing. I don't want you to think, afterwards that through me you’ve lost your world, Monte Cristo. Remember all you've said about stagnation——” "I haven't forgotten, and I haven't changed my mind; but this won't be quite stagnation, dear. If I take it there'll still be travelling for me to do—” “Commercial travelling,’’ she said with a shaky laugh. “Well ,business is business; but I shall spend a lot of time roaming round the Baltic, I expect, and of course you'll come with me. You shan’t be cheated of your adventures, I promise; but there'll be a home too.” She thought, not without a qualm: “He says it as if he hasn’t the haziest notion what sort of thing it is. A home is a word to him; it means absolutely nothing. And deeper within her heart she knew that it meant a great deal to her. and wondered why she was urging him against all her better judgment: this for only a moment.
“Very well. then, if you'll be-happy. But we shall have time to think of that, shan’t we?”
To 'her parents they talked in chorus', reassuring phophesying. cajoling. The marriage would be perfect; how could it choose but be perfect? They would have a home in town, periods of travelling in Scandinavia, a long honeymoon rambling all over Europe, everything they could wish to possess. The Rector gave them a blessing curiously tempered by a slight worried frown. “I hope you'll both be happy; I think you ought to be happy. But a marriage doesn’t consist so much of having, you know; there's a lot of giving to be done, too, giving your mind principally. People have to wear together. And that takes a long time in some cases.” They stood together with hands carelessly linked, listening to him with smiles which unconsciously rejected every word he said. Of course ho was right to talk like that; it was what one expected and required from him; but there was nothing new to them in any of it. They knew they had to give; they were giving already. Wasn't he ready to change his whole life for her'.’ Wasn't she prepared to pull up her roots from the soil in which she had grown, to follow him?
“1 know it seems very hasty.” said Martin, turning his steady, smiling eyes from the father to the mother, and back again to the sheen of Erica's head just below the level of his face. "But we're making no mistake. I've been pretty well all over the world, and seen a lot of desirable things without desiring them; and when 1 saw what t wanted—well. I knew •from the first moment that nothing else would
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Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 April 1940, Page 12
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1,846"FREEDOM FOR TWO" Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 April 1940, Page 12
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