Touch Not the Nettle by Molly Clavering

Author:Molly Clavering
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dean Street Press
Published: 2021-03-18T00:00:00+00:00

IV

“Why should there have been anything wrong with him?” cried Amanda, making a last wild effort to maintain her silence. “After all, he is my husband, and he’s missing. Isn’t that enough to distress me and make me hate to—to have his name dragged into conversation by outsiders? I hardly know you. We’ve only met a few times.”

“Very pretty. Quite a good performance, considering that you’ve had no chance to rehearse it,” he said. “It’s no use lying to me, though, and you know it. We aren’t strangers, either, however few times we’ve met. I know you, and you know me. Stop pretending that you’re hoping he’ll come back, and tell the truth. You’re dreading it, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” said Amanda, with a dry sob.

“You poor little wretch. And that’s the worst of the tiger-cats safely out of the bag. He must have given you a hell of a time, one way or another. I know he must, so you may as well tell me about him.”

“It doesn’t seem fair. If he does come back, no one ought to know them. And if—if he’s dead, why shouldn’t the things that I’ve kept to myself for such a long time die with him?”

“Because if you bottle them up they won’t die,” he grimly. “As nobody knows better than I. If I didn’t, do you suppose I’d have had the damnable impertinence to speak to you like this?”

“Yes, I do suppose it. I don’t believe that the fear of being thought impertinent would stop you from saying anything outrageous,” said Amanda. Her cheeks were wet, she imagined with the mist blowing coolly in their faces, until she suddenly realized that the drops trickling down to fall on her white waterproof were both hot and salt. ‘I must be crying!’ she thought, in dull amazement. ‘This is the first time I’ve cried for years!’

“I dare say you’re right. People are always kind enough to tell me that I’m not hampered by any scruples of decency or good breeding,” he said. “But I’m a very safe person to tell secrets to, because even if I passed them on, I’m such a disreputable character that no one would ever believe ’em. Well, I won’t bother you any more, if you’d really rather suffer the torments of the damned in silence. Let’s talk about something else.”

“It’s too late now!” Amanda’s voice rose almost to a wail, so that his horse, uneasy, pricked his ears and gently nosed at his master’s sleeve. “Don’t you see that I’ll have to tell you now, whether I want to or not? I can’t keep it to myself any longer!”

“I know, I know,” he said, so soothingly that her tears ran faster than ever.

“You don’t know! How could you? I’ve been married to Cocky for seven whole years! I was just twenty-one, and he was twenty-four—”

“Poor lass. Was it as bad as that?”

“Oh, Larry! Oh, Larry! It was awful. People talk, of things being hell, but this—and it was partly my fault. Perhaps if I’d been easier at first I might have made him better.

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