Nothing Venture Read Free Page A

tearfully out of the window.
    Nan pressed her lips together and said nothing.
    Whilst she put on the eggs, Cynthia walked up and down talking in a soft exhausted voice.
    â€œYou can have both eggs—I don’t want anything. It’s all very well to say pull yourself together, but Frank’s just as miserable as I am, and I’m not only thinking about myself, I’m thinking about him. And in ten days he’ll be gone to Australia, and I shall never see him again. And to think that it’s just money that’s keeping us apart! If his uncle hadn’t changed his will at the last minute, he’d have had two thousand pounds and been able to buy that partnership.”
    â€œYour egg’s done,” said Nan. “I don’t know why you like them nearly raw.” Frank Walsh’s nonexistent two thousand pounds was a subject to be escaped from with all possible despatch.
    â€œIf I only had two thousand pounds!” said Cynthia. She stood still in the middle of the floor and flung out her hands. “Isn’t there anything one can do to make money quickly?”
    â€œI don’t think there’s anything you can do, ducky,” said Nan.
    Cynthia turned away with a sob. She went back to the window and stood there twisting her fingers and crying. Through the faded dressing-gown Nan could see her shoulder-blades moving as she drew quick sobbing breaths. She went on speaking in a matter of fact sort of way.
    â€œCynthy, you really would feel much better if you would dress and have something to eat. Sitting and thinking about things makes them a hundred times worse.”
    â€œIt’s all very well for you,” said Cynthia in a hopeless voice. “You don’t know what it is to want someone all the time, and to know that he’s going right away and that you’ll never see him again. You’ve never been in love, so you don’t know. ”
    â€œNo,” said Nan. “Cynthy, do come and eat your egg or it will be cold, and a cold egg is simply unutterable.”

IV
    Nan was very tired when she got back to the office. She had got Cynthia to eat something, to dress, and to promise that she would go out. She felt as if she had been moving a lot of very heavy furniture. Cynthia was loving and sweet and gentle, but she was a dead weight, and there were times when it took the very last of Nan’s strength to carry it.
    She found Miss Villiers on her knees in the deed room sorting papers after her own peculiarly languid and dilatory fashion.
    â€œNo, dear, I haven’t found it. But I’ve had a perfectly lovely idea for making up that length of georgette I got—you know, the pale blue with the faded patches. Well, if I have it scalloped just where the fade comes—Oh, I say, dear, you’re not going! I made sure you’d give me a hand when you got back.”
    â€œI’ve got the Harrington deeds to type,” said Nan.
    She took off her hat, sat down to the typewriter, and passed with relief into a formal world of set, correct phrases and stilted repetitions.
    Mr Page came in presently with a pleasant word.
    â€œFeeling all right again, Miss Forsyth?”
    Then click, click, click, the swish of the moving keyboard, and such words as, hereditaments, messuages, hereinbefore , and party of the first part .
    Nan began to feel less tired. It wasn’t work that tired you; it was fighting with yourself and trying to carry someone else all the time. If Cynthia would only get a job. But standing in a shop tired her feet, and typing made her back ache, and she didn’t seem to be able to manage children. Besides, her looks had always been against her; she was too pretty and too fragile, and too gentle.
    Nan forced her attention back to that comfortable formal world in which there were no emotions.
    And then suddenly the outer door was flung open and Jervis Weare strode through the room, wrenched at the handle of Mr Page’s