Gently with Love Read Free Page B

something disturbing about Anne’s gaze that I was at a loss to account for, a certain nervous tenseness: it might have been interpreted as apprehension. I reproved myself. I didn’t know Anne; clearly she was a difficult person to read. When I knew her better I would doubtless understand the subtle nuances that puzzled me now. When the music ended and we congratulated Earle, Anne kissed him briefly on the temple, and Earle hugged her waist for a moment and brushed her hair with his lips.
    I left early to avoid trespassing too far on Commander Stapleton’s patience. Earle chatted to me blithely as we skimmed back through the June twilight. His was a happy disposition and he seemed to have no care in the world. His only concern was because his father would be unable to make the trip from Toronto for the wedding. But that too had its compensation. He would be taking Anne to Canada in September; and surely the fall was the time, of all others, to introduce her to his native land. Meanwhile they were spending the honeymoon in France, driving southwards as the mood took them.
    ‘I guess I’m a lucky guy,’ Earle concluded, as he halted the Pontiac at Copdock Place. ‘Not the cleverest, but the luckiest. Why else would Anne have fallen for me?’
    I smiled. ‘You’re certainly a happy man. And not many people can say that.’
    He laughed delightedly. ‘I really
am
happy. I feel I want to share it with all the world.’
    I felt an impulse to ask him about Nigel Fortuny whose name had cast that sudden shadow, but I decided that it would be unfair to interrupt such a mood of bliss.
    He wrung my hand. ‘Till Saturday, fella. Get round to Verna’s at the earliest.’
    ‘Till Saturday, Earle.’
    He waved gaily and drove flamboyantly away.
    I watched his tail-lights wink and vanish and then I went up to my room. Lying on my bed was a sheaf of notes with ‘For your earliest attention’ inscribed upon it. I turned the leaves. It was matter calculated to inspire me with higher-executive principles. I put it in a drawer out of harm’s way, smoked a pipe, and went to bed.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    I T IS THE practice of policemen to write down the details of incidents as soon as possible after they occur (and if ever you are the subject of any such incident you may be advised to do the same). But of course I did not do this after the evening I spent at Verna’s, and it is possible that the account I have given above is a little inflected by hindsight. If I had indeed made notes that night I would probably have given more space to Verna. I spent much of the evening trying to read through her the sort of life that Colin had led. Apparently they had not been too compatible and her sense of loss was not overwhelming. At the same time I did not think that Colin had been gravely unhappy with her. Verna was a realist. If she hadn’t loved Colin, at least she would have arranged to live with him amicably, and because I felt certain of that I felt also a degree of gratitude towards her. She’d done her best. If her best wasn’t love, it was as much as many men would settle for. Verna would have run a happy home and have presented a cheerful face. And love there had been: it had come from Anne: that was another thing I had read. About Alex I wasn’t so certain, though I could imagine him having an affectionate respect for his father. But Anne had been close to him. She was a Mackenzie. I had the picture of Colin and James Mackenzie before me. Just so she would have run to be hugged by her father, with just such pride have introduced a friend. The grief at his death had been Anne’s grief, of which that of the others had been a pale shadow. And now, happily, that love had been transferred to a mate who I felt persuaded would not betray it; and who, though perhaps he would never realize it, was the lucky beneficiary of a man he had not known. If Colin’s marriage had not been ideal, he had yet paved the way for his daughter’s happiness.