The Moving Finger - Agatha Christie [64]
“I suppose I was.”
“But, my dear boy, you can’t do things like that—not in a place like this. It will be all round Lymstock tomorrow.”
“I suppose it will. But, after all, Megan’s only a child.”
“She isn’t. She’s twenty. You can’t take a girl of twenty to London and buy her clothes without a most frightful scandal. Good gracious, Jerry, you’ll probably have to marry the girl.”
Joanna was half serious, half laughing.
It was at that moment that I made a very important discovery. “Damn it all,” I said. “I don’t mind if I do. In fact— I should like it.”
A very funny expression came over Joanna’s face. She got up and said dryly, as she went towards the door:
“Yes, I’ve known that for some time….”
She left me standing, glass in hand, aghast at my new discovery.
Twelve
I
I don’t know what the usual reactions are of a man who goes to propose marriage.
In fiction his throat is dry and his collar feels too tight and he is in a pitiable state of nervousness. I didn’t feel at all like that. Having thought of a good idea I just wanted to get it all settled as soon as possible. I didn’t see any particular need for embarrassment.
I went along to the Symmingtons’ house about eleven o’clock. I rang the bell and when Rose came, I asked for Miss Megan. It was the knowing look that Rose gave me that first made me feel slightly shy.
She put me in the little morning room and whilst waiting there I hoped uneasily that they hadn’t been upsetting Megan.
When the door opened and I wheeled round, I was instantly relieved. Megan was not looking shy or upset at all. Her head was still like a glossy chestnut, and she wore that air of pride and self-respect that she had acquired yesterday. She was in her old clothes again but she had managed to make them look different. It’s wonderful what knowledge of her own attractiveness will do for a girl. Megan, I realized suddenly, had grown up.
I suppose I must really have been rather nervous, otherwise I should not have opened the conversation by saying affectionately, “Hallo, catfish!” It was hardly, in the circumstances, a lover-like greeting.
It seemed to suit Megan. She grinned and said, “Hallo!”
“Look here,” I said. “You didn’t get into a row about yesterday, I hope?”
Megan said with assurance, “Oh, no,” and then blinked, and said vaguely, “Yes, I believe I did. I mean, they said a lot of things and seemed to think it had been very odd—but then you know what people are and what fusses they make all about nothing.”
I was relieved to find that shocked disapproval had slipped off Megan like water off a duck’s back.
“I came round this morning,” I said, “because I’ve a suggestion to make. You see I like you a lot, and I think you like me—”
“Frightfully,” said Megan with rather disquieting enthusiasm.
“And we get on awfully well together, so I think it would be a good idea if we got married.”
“Oh,” said Megan.
She looked surprised. Just that. Not startled. Not shocked. Just mildly surprised.
“You mean you really want to marry me?” she asked with the air of one getting a thing perfectly clear.
“More than anything in the world,” I said—and I meant it.
“You mean, you’re in love with me?”
“I’m in love with you.”
Her eyes were steady and grave. She said:
“I think you’re the nicest person in the world—but I’m not in love with you.”
“I’ll make you love me.”
“That wouldn’t do. I don’t want to be made.”
She paused and then said gravely: “I’m not the sort of wife for you. I’m better at hating than at loving.”
She said it with a queer intensity.
I said, “Hate doesn’t last. Love does.”
“Is that true?”
“It’s what I believe.”
Again there was a silence. Then I said:
“So it’s ‘No,’ is it?”
“Yes, it’s no.”
“And you don’t encourage me to hope?”
“What would be the good of that?”
“None whatever,” I agreed, “quite redundant, in fact—because I’m going to hope whether you tell me to or not.”
II
Well, that was that. I walked away from the house feeling slightly dazed but irritatingly conscious of Rose’s passionately interested gaze following