The Catherine Wheel by Patricia Wentworth Read Free Book Online

complete silence she resigned herself and occupied the train journey in sorting out and polishing her own armoury of weapons. Because two things were quite certain. Whatever Jeremy said or Jeremy did, two things were quite certain. She was going to go down to the Catherine-Wheel, and she was going to have that hundred pounds.
    All the way home and all the way upstairs he never said a word. She drew the curtains, she put on the kettle, she laid the table, and got buns out of a tin. Jeremy propped the mantelpiece in abstracted gloom until his right trouser leg began to singe at the gas fire, when he came across to her, took a knife out of her hand, laid it down on the table, and said,
    “Will you marry me?”
    Jane felt as if someone had lifted her up and dropped her again, all very suddenly. Her voice came odd and breathless.
    “No—of course not—”
    He appeared to be undeflected.
    “What’s the good of saying ‘No—of course not,’ when you haven’t given it the least thought? You just blobbed that out without thinking. It’s a business proposition, and you’ve got to think it all out before you say no. And before you can think it out at all you’ve got to listen to me properly.”
    Jane said, “Oh—”And then, “How do I listen to you properly?”
    “You sit down on that sofa.”
    “And have you somewhere up in the ceiling talking down on the top of my head? No, thank you!”
    “I sit down too. I’m going to turn off the gas under the kettle first, because we don’t want to have it boiling over whilst I am proposing to you.”
    Jane gave a sort of gasp and sat down. Not so much because Jeremy told her to as because her knees were wobbling, and he might think—
    She sat down. When he had turned out the gas he came and sat down beside her. He was frowning deeply, and began at once in a businesslike voice.
    “I haven’t got a great deal to offer you, but they don’t kick you out of the Army unless you’re pretty bad, and there’s a pension. I get a pension when I retire, and you get one if anything happens to me, and if we have any children, they get something till they’re eighteen—or twenty-one—I’m not sure which, but I can find out.”
    “Jeremy, how frightful! Do stop!”
    “It’s not frightful at all—it’s a provision. And you ought to be listening instead of making frivolous objections which put me out. Then I’ve got three hundred a year private means.”
    Jane gazed at him with respect.
    “How on earth did you get it?”
    “My mother had two hundred, and my grandfather had a life insurance which brings in the rest. It’s not a lot, but it’s safe, and it makes a lot of difference to have something besides your pay.”
    “Jeremy—please—”
    He frowned her down.
    “I do wish you would listen. I think you’d like the life. There’s rather a lot of moving about, but you see places, and everyone’s very friendly. Anyhow you’d have proper shoes and enough to eat. And you wouldn’t have to try on other people’s clothes for a lot of desiccated vultures to gloat over.”
    Jane looked sideways from between her lashes.
    “They’re not all desiccated, darling. Some of them bulge.”
    He said quite violently,
    “It revolts me! It ought to revolt you. I want you to chuck it up and let me look after you.”
    Jane gazed down at her hands. There seemed to be something odd about them—they were a long way off. She said in a small obstinate voice,
    “I can look after myself.”
    “You think you can—girls always do. But they can’t. Anyhow you’re not going to.”
    Jane lifted her eyes.
    “Who says so?”
    “I do, and you do. How much notice do you have to give your Mrs. Harlowe?”
    “I’m not giving her notice.”
    “I don’t see any sense in a long engagement.”
    “We are not engaged.”
    He turned a rather daunting look on her.
    “You’re just being deliberately obstructive.”
    She shook her head, and then wished she hadn’t, because it made the room go