(1941) Up at the Villa Read Online Free Page B

farmhouse with tall cypresses that
stood black and solemn against the moonlight `Are you going to marry Edgar
Swift?' he asked suddenly. She looked round at him.
    `Did you know I was thinking of him?’
    `How should I?' She paused for a while before she
answered.
    `Before he went away today he asked me to. I said rd give
him an answer when he got back.’
    `You're not in love with him, then?' Mary slowed up. It
looked as though she wanted to talk.
    `What makes you think that?'
    'If you had been you wouldn't have wanted three days to
think it over. You'd have said yes there and then.’
    `I suppose that's true. No, I'm not in love with him.’
    `He's in love with you all right.’
    `He was a friend of my father's and I've known him all my
life. He was wonderfully kind to me when I wanted kindness, and I'm grateful to
him.’
    `He must he twenty years older than you.’
    `Twenty-four.’
    `Are you dazzled by the position he can give you?’
    `I dare say. Don't you think most women would be? After
all, I'm not inhuman.’
    `Do you think it would be much fun to live with a man you
weren't in love with?’
    `But I don't want love. I'm fed to the teeth with love.’
    She said this so violently that Rowley was startled.
    `That's a strange thing to say at your age.’
    They were well out in the country now, on a narrow road;
the full moon shone down from an unclouded sky. She stopped the car.
    `You see, I was madly in love with my husband. They told
me I was a fool to marry him; they said he was a gambler and a drunkard; I
didn't care. He wanted me to marry him so much. He had plenty of money then,
but I'd have married him if he hadn't had a cent. You don't know how charming
he was in those days, so good to look at, so gay and light-hearted. The fun we
used to have together! He had immense vitality. He was so kind and gentle and
sweet - when he was sober. When he was drunk he was noisy and boastful and
vulgar and quarrelsome. It was terribly distressing; I used to be so ashamed. I
couldn't be angry with him; he was so sorry afterwards; he didn't want to
drink; when he was alone with me he was as sober as anyone, it was only when
there were other people there that he got excited, and after two or three
drinks there was no holding him; then I used to wait till he was so blasé that
he let me lead him away and at last I could put him to bed. I did everything I
knew to cure him, it was useless; it's no good. I
don't believe a drunk can ever be cured. And I was forced into the position of
nurse and keeper. It irritated him beyond endurance when I tried to restrain
him, but what else could I do? It was so difficult, I didn't want him to look
upon me as a sort of governess, but I had to do what I could to keep him from
drinking. Sometimes I couldn't help flying into a passion with him and then
we'd have an awful row. You see, he was a dreadful gambler and when he was
drunk he'd lose hundreds of pounds. If he hadn't died when he did he'd have
gone bankrupt and I should have had to go back to the stage to keep him. As it
is I have a few hundreds a year and the bits and pieces of jewellery he gave me
when we were first married. Sometimes he wouldn't come back all night and then
I knew he'd got blind and picked up the first woman he met. At first I used to
be furiously jealous and unhappy, but at last I got to prefer it, for if he
didn't do that he'd come home and make love to me with his breath stinking of
whisky, all hunched up, his face distorted, and I knew it wasn't love that made
him passionate but drink, just drink. I or another woman, it made no
difference, and his kisses made me sick and his desire horrified and mortified
me. And when he'd satisfied his lust he'd sink into the snoring sleep of drunkenness.
You're surprised that I should say I was fed to the teeth with love. For years
I only knew the humiliation of it.’
    `But why didn't you leave him?’
    `How could I leave him? He was so