Away Went Love (6 page)

“Don’t be absurd!” She actually laughed in spite of the gravity of the occasion. “As though anything could make me hate you! And, as for being humiliated by having to ask me anything—I don’t see how you can be. You
know
I’d be only too happy to do anything for you that I possibly could.”

“Anything?”

“Why, of course, Richard—anything.”

“Well, then”—he put down his coffee, untasted—“well, then, perhaps it doesn’t matter so much as I thought. Hope darling, I’m in a horrible jam, and you’re the only person I can come to. I know it’s frightful to talk of borrowing money from the girl you’re going to marry, but you’ve made it as easy as any girl could, bless you. I’ve got to have five hundred pounds, darling, and I’ve got to have it within the next couple of weeks. Perhaps it doesn’t sound very much to you, but—whether it does or not—will you let me have it, Hope?”

CHAPTER THREE

“FIVE—hundred—pounds!” Hope repeated in a thin strained little voice which sounded quite unlike her own.

“Yes.” Richard got up restlessly, as though he could no longer sit there and discuss the matter with any degree of calm. He thrust his hands into his pockets and walked up and down the room. “I know it’s a large sum, and I know, as I’ve said, that it’s terrible to ask for money from the girl one loves, but I—need it pretty badly, Hope.”

“Of course. I—I quite understand that.” She passed a hand over her face, which had suddenly begun to feel stiff and cold. “But I haven’t got it, Richard.”

He stopped abruptly in his walk and looked quickly over at her.

“Not in actual cash, I daresay. Naturally—you wouldn’t. But there must be a lot of money coming to you, Hope. There are ways of realizing on expectations. I mean—Oh, God, how sordid this all sounds! Believe me, darling”—he was kneeling beside her suddenly, his arms round her—“I wouldn’t be saying all this to you for the world, only—I must have the money. Don’t look so unspeakably dismayed. Have I shocked you terribly? But I had no one else to go to, Hope.”

“No, I know. That part’s all right.” She nervously patted his shoulder as though he were a little boy. “You don’t have to apologize or—or feel ashamed about asking. You should have the money if I’d got it. But I haven’t. I mean, there are not—not even any expectations of it. Daddy left practically nothing. That—that was what I was going to tell you.”

She stared at him with wide, scared grey eyes, and one part of her mind registered extreme astonishment that he could go so white that the tan on his face almost seemed to stand away from his skin.

“Oh, Richard, don’t look like that! Do you need it so badly, dear? What’s
happened
? What’s the matter?”

“It’s all right.” He leant his forehead against her. “It’s just rather a shock—when I thought everything would be all right, once I’d asked you.”

His faith in her brought the tears to her eyes, but she forced them back.

“Listen, Richard—we’ll think of something. There must be things one could sell. Has it
got
to be five hundred all at once? What happened? Why do you need it?”

He gave a little groan.

“I didn’t want to have to tell you that. You’ll hate me.”

“I’ve told you before that nothing would make me hate you. And you’d have had to tell me anyway, even if I’d got the money. I shouldn’t have given even you five hundred pounds without wanting to know what it was for,” Hope told him with affectionate candor.

He smiled very faintly at that and kissed her.

“Quite right too, my sensible darling. What I meant was that I shouldn’t have felt such a cad to you if the loan wouldn’t have represented much sacrifice. Now—Oh, well”—he ran his fingers through his hair, then, sitting down on the rug at her feet, he leant his arm on her knee—“I’ve got to explain, of course. But—but please listen with tolerant ears, Hope dear.”

“I shall—of course.” She gently smoothed his ruffled hair.

“Well, then, it began because I wanted to be able to offer you much more when I married you. I know I joked a lot about marrying a rich girl, and how convenient it would be. But that wasn’t really a bit how I felt, darling. I wanted to offer you everything in the world, and—short of that”—he smiled again slightly—“at least as much as you’d been used to.”

“But it didn’t matter, Richard dear. I didn’t mind—Well, never mind—go on.”

“Perhaps
I
shouldn’t have minded either, quite so much, if I hadn’t known once what it was to be very comfortably off,” he admitted. “But I was doing darned well before I started on my own, you know. And of course I lost everything in the crash.”

“I know, dear,” Hope said gently. That was the one reason why she had always felt it would be little less than poetic justice that his marriage should make him better, and not worse, off. Richard had been a very successful young architect with a large firm a few years earlier. Then he had given up his job and sunk all his capital in his own business, taken on a partner, and worked up a promising connection. But the partner had embezzled most of the funds and then left the country, leaving Richard bankrupt. He had had to start at the bottom again in the office of a big architectural firm and one of the hopes which she had entertained was that, after their marriage, he would be able to start again on his own.

But all that was over now—and from what Richard was saying, a good deal else was over too.

“—And though I’d never done much in the speculating line,” Richard’s voice recalled her to the present, “this seemed something too good to miss. It was intoxicating, Hope. I cleared a hundred and fifty pounds in two days. I knew that if I could lay hands on something really substantial I could make—well, not a small fortune exactly
—
but enough to feel I’d got real capital behind me. Don’t be too shocked at this bit, but—I handle a good deal of my firm’s money, you know—”

“Oh, Richard, why didn’t you come to me then?” she cried in dismay.

“But it wouldn’t have been any good, would it?” he said in a tone that was almost naive. “You wouldn’t have had it.”

“N-no. Of course not. I’d forgotten that. But at least I’d have warned you not to—Well, what did you do, Richard? Don’t say you—you used the firm’s money to make a private speculation?”

“Darling, it isn’t anything like as bad as it sounds when you put it like that,” he explained eagerly. “For one reason or another, I often don’t pay in certain sums for a few days and—”

“Such big sums as that?” Hope sounded sceptical and dismayed.

“Well—not so big as that, of course. But it was literally only a case of borrowing for a day or two. I thought—”

“Don’t try to minimize it, Richard dear. I—I’d rather you didn’t somehow. The fact was that you took the firm’s money, though you meant to put it back.”

“Is that such a crime?”

“You know it is. I suppose the market slumped, or whatever it does, and you lost the lot?”

He didn’t answer that, but the silence answered for him. “Did you—is there—
nothing
left, Richard?”

He shook his head.

There was a long pause. Then she said:

“How long have we?”

“What do you mean?”

“How long have we to raise the five hundred?”

“Hope! do you mean you think you can help me somehow?”

“I don’t know. But I’ll try every way I can possibly think of. When do we have to have the money?”

“The—the auditors will be coming a fortnight tomorrow. They’re coming a month earlier than I expected
—
that’s why I’ve got to hurry.”

“Yes, I see.” Hope looked round the room. “I wonder—what—one could sell.”

“Do you mean—the
furniture
and things?” He looked, she thought, disproportionately shocked, considering his rather matter-of-fact recital of what had so profoundly shocked her.

“Of course—if it would realize anything like enough.”

“But it’s your home!”

“What does that matter? Material things don’t matter in a crisis like this. Besides, this wouldn’t be my home after we were married, would it?”

Afterwards, she was to remember that he looked blank and put out for a moment, at this point.

“But of course it wouldn’t realize anything like enough,” Hope went on, still too intent on her calculations to notice his slight silence. “And I haven’t any really valuable jewellery—nothing that would raise more than thirty or forty
pounds
.

“Hope, I hate to hear you talking of selling your possessions like this,” he exclaimed almost violently. “Tell me more about—about what your father left. Isn’t there
anything
coming to you?”

“Very little, if anything at all. Besides, Errol Tamberly’s taken on the education and maintenance of the twins, and if there were anything, it ought by rights to go towards their expenses.”

“Good heavens, he wouldn’t expect that, would he?” Richard exclaimed.

“I don’t know if it’s what he would expect. It’s what I should expect,” Hope said a little crisply. “I don’t feel justified in taking money from Errol Tamberly if there is any of our own available.”

“No. No, of course not,” Richard agreed. “I only meant
—
Well, isn’t he the son of old Augustus Tamberly?”

“I believe so.”

“Then he must be a pretty rich man himself. The old bounder left something like a hundred thousand.”

“Possibly so,” Hope admitted. “In fact—yes, of course, they must be very well off,” she added, remembering the casual expensiveness of the Tamberly home. “But, anyway, that’s beside the point.”

“But—is it, exactly?” Richard said slowly, as though a new thought had struck him.

“Is it what?”

“Is it exactly beside the point that Tamberly’s a rich man? It’s a desperate matter, this five hundred, Hope. If we can’t raise it on—on anything we’ve got, don’t we have to consider if there’s anyone we know who would lend it?”

“Lend—?” Hope looked back at Richard in uneasy astonishment. “But you can’t suppose that Errol Tamberly would lend you five hundred pounds, Richard! He’s not at all that sort of man.”

“No—not lend it to
me.
Of course he wouldn’t do that. He doesn’t even know me. But—to you, Hope. Is there any possibility that he would lend you money if he knew you were in great trouble?”

“Oh, I couldn’t,” Hope cried in quick protest. “I—I don’t think I
could
ask him. At least,” she amended, at the change in Richard’s expression, “at least, only as the very last resort.”

“I only meant as a last resort,” Richard assured her unhappily. “But, if he’s undertaken to look after the twins, surely he must have some sense of responsibility towards you too?”

Hope didn’t answer that directly. She was remembering how very deeply she had resented such a suggestion from Dr. Tamberly himself. It was no less disagreeable now that Richard offered it as a reason for begging an enormous favor from him.

“Let’s try to think if there’s
any
other way,” she urged anxiously.

So they both thought while two or three heavy minutes ticked away. Once more Hope reckoned up in her mind the possible value of her personal possessions. Even at most favorable rates they would not realize anything like the sum needed, and—since any sale would have to be a hurried one—it was unlikely that she would even be able to get good terms.

Richard was right in one thing—they would
have
to call in the assistance of someone else. And the choice was strictly—horribly—limited.

“There—there isn’t anybody to whom
you
could apply, is there?” she suggested tentatively, remembering, even as she spoke, that he had described her, herself, as his only hope.

He shook his head dispiritedly, and Hope desperately tried to think of something with which she could comfort him. He had been terribly wrong, of course—when she was alone once more she would, she knew, experience all over again the shock of learning that he could even contemplate such a thing as he had done—but she never for one moment thought of abandoning him. For one thing, she loved him. And, for another, she felt some sort of personal responsibility because it was, indirectly, for her that he had done this thing.

Hope sighed, and brought her thoughts back to the crux of the matter.
Where
could they find the money?

“You don’t think”—she turned to him with sudden hope—“you don’t think it might be best to make a clean breast of the whole thing to the heads of your firm, and ask them—”

Her voice trailed off at the short, grim laugh he gave, even before he said dryly, “No, darling, I don’t.”

She bit her lip. It was getting terribly near the one unwelcome possibility.

Reluctantly she tried to imagine the scene.

“Richard, he—he’s a very hard man.”

“Who?—Tamberly? I don’t doubt it. Most rich men are,” Richard added.

“They’re nothing of the sort,” retorted Hope, unable to allow the stupid and envious generalization to pass, even at this moment of crisis. “But, anyway, that’s not the point, of course.”

“No. The point is—what chance of success have you with Tamberly, on the strength of his personal feeling for you?”

“Oh, he hasn’t got any personal feeling for me.” Hope explained quickly. “At least, he doesn’t even like me much, if that’s what you mean.”

Richard smiled faintly.

“Nonsense. He must. No one could work with you and know you, darling, without being at least a bit in love with you.”

“Oh, yes, they could,” Hope assured him, though she smiled too at this evidence of his charming prejudice. “Errol Tamberly started by thinking me a tiresome little fool—he called me a decorative time-waster, in fact—and though I think he’s revised his opinion about my wits and my work, I don’t expect he likes me any the better for having proved him wrong. Besides”—she paused and considered the point with some surprise—“somehow we always do scrap naturally. I suppose we just resent each other in some way and can’t help showing it.”