Abigail by Malcolm Macdonald Read Free Book Online Page A

how such things happened then?”
    Her vehemence and obvious sincerity shook him, for he had been sure, then and since, that Abbie knew.
    “You really didn’t?” he asked.
    She ran and threw her arms about him. “Oh, Steamer! I had no idea what you would say. Or even how I could bring myself to tell you. And it’s so easy, isn’t it?”
    “How did you find out? Who told you?”
    “Never mind. That’s not important. A girl at a dance. She had a headache and I played the Miss Nightingale. It was quite dark. And confidences always come more easily then, don’t you find?”
    This piling up of irrelevant circumstantial detail sounded convincing, she hoped.
    “Well!” He broke free and addressed the cue ball again. “So now you know…everything!”
    “And she told me such quaint phrases, too, Steamer! ‘Putting Nebuchadnezzar out to graze’…‘seeing the elephant’…‘the four-leg frolic!’”
    She laughed, hoping he would laugh too, both as a relief and as a welcome into the grown-up world. But he paused in mid-shot and fixed her with a piercing stare. “I see!” was all he would say.
    Twenty points further into his break he said, “You read a deuce of a lot, Abbie. What—for instance—did you think Othello was all about?”
    Abigail pondered a while. How strange that until this moment she had related her new-found knowledge only to the actual world. As if the world of literature were hermetic and guided by different laws of behaviour and motive.
    “To tell the truth,” she said, laughing at herself (for it was the truth), “I always thought it much too much ado about nothing. To go and strangle your wife merely for lending your handkerchief to a friend!”
    When their laughter died she said, “Steamer, is it really the best fun ever?”
    To her dismay she saw that the question embarrassed him acutely. “You really shouldn’t ask,” he said. Too coolly. “It will be time enough for such knowledge when you marry.”
    “But I shall never marry.”
    He smiled provokingly. “Then it need never concern you.”
    Suddenly she hated him. He was marvellous when he talked to her as equal to equal; but when he became superior like this he was…offensive. Like Winnie when she played big sister.
    “Don’t think I shan’t try to find out,” she warned.
    He slammed the cue down upon the table. The tip leapt from it in an explosion of chalk dust. She had not seen him so angry in a long time. “You would,” he choked, fighting to master himself.
    She would do anything to placate him now, to stop this terrifying anger. “I was only hitting out,” she said, “because you keep such secrets. I wouldn’t really try.”
    He became a little calmer. But when he grasped her shoulders she could still feel him trembling. “Oh, but you would,” he said, as much rueful as angry. “You would. Out of curiosity—or to spite someone—or simply through being swept away. You, of all people, my love, you would.” He looked around as if for aid or comfort. “What to do?” Annie had looked about her in just that way before letting out The Secret.
    She wanted to say, “Spike my curiosity,” but she knew that if the suggestion came from her, he would never act on it. Instead, in a breathless voice, full of hollow sincerity—well-meant enough but hollow—she said, “I wouldn’t, Steamer. Truly now, I just know I wouldn’t.”
    The empty frailty of her vow persuaded him. Still he held her shoulders. “Listen, love. You’re going to have to grow up rather early, for a girl of your class. I’m going to have to trust you with information that is normally kept only for married ladies, or ladies of a certain maturity. But it is to save you from any experiment that might damn you forever.”
    She squirmed in his grip and looked back at the table, implying she would far rather be going on with the game. But of course—and as she had intended—the gesture only made Caspar the more determined to speak out.
    “It