"FREEDOM FOR TWO"

Wairarapa Times-Age, 9 May 1940, Page 10

"FREEDOM FOR TWO"

PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT. COPYRIGHT.

By

MARGARET WATSON.

CHAPTER X. “What are you trying to tell me? What do you find so funny in it? What are you insinuating about my husband? And about your brother, too?” Dagmai- said: “My brother!” in a voice almost inarticulate with rage and contempt. “My brother!” “What is he to you, then?” “My husband, of course!” Then clearly each of them heard Jon’s step cross the hall, and sprang round to see him enter. He came leisurely, not from the outer door, but from the direction of the stairs, with a cigarette between his lips, and his hands in the pockets of a black silk dressing-gown. He was smiling as ne came through the doorway, the slight contented, approving smile of a conqueror; and he looked form one to the other of them as a Caesar might look with patronising amusement upon a well-matched pair of gladiators.

Erica saw a new Jon, or one wnc was new to her. Was it possible that there existed, in this most northern of men. something of the East also? A streak of the sultan in—what had Martin called him?—the Lion of the North. For he looked at Dagmar with a tolerant. possessive contempt, and upon herself with the pride and content oi a proprietor. Dagmar went close to him, and her lovely cold face was set into a venomous mask. She said in a low tone: “Send her away at once! Do you hear me? Send her away!" “After all the trouble I had to bring her here My dear Dagmar, why should I?”

“Because if you don’t, I'll make you wish you had. I warn you, you’ve had everything you're getting out of me. Do you think I’m stone? Do you think you can go on for ever treating me like dirt? Either you send her back to the mainland now, tonight, or I go; and if I go, I’ll be the death of you. Now—is she leaving, or am I?” He wasted no words upon her, but simply held open the door, and said quite gently “Get out!" “Very well!" said Dagmar, in a long hissing breath. Her pale but brilliant eyes flickered from one to the other of them with a cold, malicious glance. She said, “I wish you both joy!” and walked away steadily, swinging her gloves in her hand. Erica stood by the window, saying nothing, pnly watching keenly, as Jon closed the door, and putting one hand behind his back, quietly turned the key. Then he came a few steps towards her, and she saw that he was still smiling.

“You'll make allowances for Dagmar, I’m sure. She isn’t used to having to describe herself as my sister, and I don't think she likes it very much.”

Erica said the one thing which would not remain unsaid. She knew, she could see perfectly, how she herself stood, how he had taken advantage of her distress; but for the moment it seemed to matter very little. There was only one really important thing. “Where’s Martin?” Jon flicked ash from his cigarette. “At the bottom of the harbour, I hope." He had not looked for him, of course, or if he had. it had been in order to hand him over to the police. That would be such a simple, such a legal way of getting rid of him. She could not, then, do anything for Martin, she .could only fight for herself, get away from this man, get away from this island, back to Stockholm. In the meantime, she would not give him the satisfaction of seeing in her either fear or bravado. She must at all costs keep Jon’s interest and admiration; and the best way to do that was to be be unexpected. Excitement helped her, by virtue of alert body and flushed cheeks, to look unafraid. “I see,” she said easily, and held out her hand in the most prosaic way. “Give me a cigarette, please.” She sat down close to the window; it was large, and outside it there was the sea; but of what distance or gradient lay between she had no idea. Probably cliffs, since the blue appeared so near; but she dared not stand up to get a better view, for fear he should suspect her interest, and place himself between. As it was, he seemed quite secure of his prisoner; for he had seated himself upon the arm of a couch facing her, and was watching her with quiet pleasure. “You needn’t have fastened the door,” she remarked coolly. “I'understand that I'm in your power; and I don't usually argue with the inevitable. Still, I suppose it was a compliment." She smoked with a concentration not consciously deceptive, though her mind was working furiously on the problem of how to get out of the house. “So Dagmar was telling the truth, after all. You and she are man and wife. You arc a liar and a cheat —I couldn’t believe it. You have trapped me. and you have thrown her to the lions.” “Yes," he said, placidly smiling, “all that is true. My wife has, I think, been expecting this crisis for a long time —ever since I called her my sister for your benefit. Though Dagmar has let herself be called stranger things than that before now. Still, women of her quality are quick to scent danger; like wild animals, which in many ways they are.” “And what are you?” cried Erica. “Merely a man in love.”

He was very controlled, but she knew now that it was only out of security, and the enjoyment of his power, that he could sit watching her so quietly. She met his eyes full for the first time, and they were darkly steadfast under brows drawn straight.

Through the curve of blue smoke which his cigarette made his face looked formidable and still as that of a bronze god to which incense is being burned. There came that deliberate, cynical, even tragic orientalism again; and still he was not melodramatic. She said:

“You’re the oddest creature I’ve ever known.”

His lips rose in a smile as bitter as anger. “That’s something, at any rate, even if the only superlative I can get from you is a patronising one.” It was strange to Erica that she should still be able to believe Jon loved her. She had never been so sure of that as she was then, when it had become obvious that he would stop at nothing. She said reflectively: “You know, it’s strange. I can’t really hate you. I wonder why?” “You should," he said, shrugging his shoulders. “I’ve taken advantage of you in a shameful way, haven't I? I’ve lied to you without turning a hair, and trapped you into an impossible position, and fully intend to keep you in it. If you told me that you hated and despised me, that I was a liar and a scoundrel of the meanest sort. I should agree with you. But, being Erica, you don’t reploach me. Do you wonder that I find all fair in this sort of war? At least when you’re the prize?” There was plug set in the wall, close to the window frame, from which the wire of the electric light ran. It was useless while there was daylight, of course; but if they used the same room at night it might be useful enough. Her eyes, roaming silently, made a note of it while she was saying in a placid tone: ‘There’s really no need for me to say what I think of you. because I'm sure you know it all; and I don’t suppose you like it any the better for being - allowed to imagine it. Only, if you had the slightest desire to stand well with me, it seems a pity that you should throw away your chance like this; because you’ll never have another.”

“I hadn’t the slightest desire. Don’t you realise that? It was you I wanted, from the moment I saw you. And now that I have you so securely, I can be civilised; I can wait my time; the mood, perhaps or a little softening of your rigidity. It’s a pity, in a way, that a splendour like yours should ever come into anyone’s power, even mine; but it was inevitable that it should. Whenever anything so rich, so complete, so immaculate as you comes into existence, there must exist in someone a wish to possess it; and to possess is to destroy.” “I didn’t realise you were a poet,” she said, smiling.

“I’m not. I’m simply a man who sees two ways at once. While I was your friend, I was in torment to be your lover; and when I’m your lover, I shall be in agony to have you back as you were before, my distant semi-goddess. Erica so far forgot her position as to laugh; there was some relief in mirth; for she had never felt less feebly human that she did at that moment. “You're very sure of yourself.”

“My dear, this is my island. There’s no way of leaving it unless I choose to let you! no one but the hotel clerk knows or guesses that you’re here; and hotel clerks are notoriously reticent on the subject of married guests who depart in the company of men not their husbands, and in some haste. Of course, I'm sure of myself.” “You're still the oddest person I’ve ever known.” she said with conviction. “And you are the most exquisite. Why did you marry Martin? A clod like that! If you had waited ——” "For you?"

“For your own hour. Couldn’t you see that his fire was an aimless sort of lightning, without any point at all? That his adventures were loved for their own sake, not for any value they had to a single soul beside himself? That he wanted you—loved you if you like to call it that—only because rhe shape in which you happen to have been born has glamour, and because your mind had a sort of recklessness through being confined so long? Do you think he has ever grown up? Do you think he would ever have allowed you to grow up? And Peter Pan was male. He couldn’t ever have been feminine. Women, especially women in love, always grow up.” Erica felt her mind melting in her. It was all so unbearably true that she found it, even spoken in his alien and embittered voice, strangely moving. It was a pity that she could not hate him. but she felt that she could not hate anyone again; not even poor Martin whom she loved so. and who had so utterly betrayed her faith in him. “You're talking about my husband." she reminded him.

"I’m talking about my rival." "You’ll gain nothing that way. You see, Martin was first.” Jon tossed back his mane of blonde hair, and said in a tone of wondering regret: “I believe you still love him. He robs, he murders, he decieves and lies to you; and I believe you still love him.”

Erica said nothing. It was dangerous to talk any longer to this curious likeable, repulsive man who knew her so much better than she knew herself, and could express in so few and such simple words what she had laboured with for days in vain. And more than ever, she had to get away, that evening, before her resolution was gone. She knew that she was buoyed up by nothing more substantial than excitement. and that its influence would not continue long to afford her strength. (To be Continued).