Nothing Venture Read Free

possible. She committed the extravagance of taking a bus, because this would give her forty minutes with Cynthia. She had ten minutes to put Jervis Weare out of her thoughts, and get the colour back into her cheeks. She rubbed them vigorously as she climbed Mrs Warren’s stair, which smelt of lodgers’ dinners, to the room at the top of the house which had been home for the last two years.
    She opened the door, and if she had had a thought to spare for herself, she would have known at once that, like Miss Villiers, she would probably have to go lunchless today. She had told Cynthia that she was coming back. They would have scrambled eggs and mashed potatoes, cooked on their gas ring. Cynthia was to buy the eggs, but it was quite obvious that Cynthia had not done so, since she was still in her dressing-gown.
    Nan took a breath, and shut the door behind her.
    â€œWell, Cynthy?” she said.
    Three months ago Cynthia Forsyth had possessed the frail, translucent beauty which compels a startled admiration and an almost terrified sense of its evanescence. The bloom on a wild flower, the iridescence of flung spray, the passing colours of sunrise and sunset, have this same power to astonish and to charm. Now she was just a too thin, too pallid girl with fair hair, a smooth skin, and rather appealing dark eyes reddened by hours of weeping. She sat on the floor, leaning sideways with one arm on the rickety double bed which the sisters shared at night, her faded blue dressing-gown falling away and showing a torn night-dress that had once been pink. On the honeycombed coverlet lay a pile of letters.
    â€œNow, Cynthy!” said Nan.
    Cynthia looked up.
    â€œI’m sorry, Nan—I didn’t mean to.”
    â€œYou promised you wouldn’t,” said Nan gravely. She came across to the bed and began to pick up the letters. “You’d much better burn them and have done with it.”
    Cynthia’s hand tightened on the soaked handkerchief which she held squeezed up.
    â€œNan, you won’t!”
    â€œNo, of course I won’t—but I wish you would.” She sat down on the bed and pulled Cynthia’s head against her knee. “What’s the good of keeping them, my child? You lock them up, and you promise me you won’t look at them, and when my back’s turned you get them out and cry yourself to a jelly.”
    Cynthia turned and clutched at her with a wild sob.
    â€œIt’s so hard —when we love each other—when it’s just money! If he didn’t love me, I’d—I’d try—to get over it—I would—I really would! But when we love each other—” Her voice was choked, her hot thin hand was clenched on Nan’s knee.
    Nan stroked the damp fair hair.
    â€œIt would be better to try, Cynthy,” she said.
    Cynthia shivered.
    â€œI don’t want to. If I can’t marry Frank, I want to die—only it takes such a long time. In books people die quite quickly when their hearts are broken, and I’m sure my heart’s quite as broken as anybody’s in a book—and yet I’m quite strong. I’ve lost my colour, and I’ve lost my looks, and my hair won’t curl any more—but I’m not dying.”
    Nan’s heart gave a foolish little jump. It was silly to mind Cynthy talking like that. She said,
    â€œYou’d feel better if you washed your face, ducky.”
    Cynthia sniffed and dabbed her eyes.
    â€œYes, you would. And did you get the eggs?”
    Cynthia dabbed again and shook her head.
    â€œThen I must fly, or we shan’t have anything to eat. We’ll have to have them boiled. Now, up you get and put on the saucepan! I won’t be a minute. Perhaps the old rabbit will oblige.”
    Mrs Warren having duly obliged, Nan returned with a couple of eggs, only to find that Cynthia had neither washed her face nor put on the saucepan. She had got up from the floor and was gazing