Through The Wall by Patricia Wentworth Page A

thirty-five, he was fully aware of the folly and on the edge of being able to laugh at the romance. No, that wasn’t true. He would have liked to be able to laugh at it, to keep a back way out in case the whole airy structure crashed and let him down flat after the manner of so many castles in Spain. But he couldn’t manage it. If the castle came down, it came down, but nobody or nothing was going to stop him walking into it with his eyes open.
    He told himself, as he had done at intervals during the past month, that he was allowing an obstinate whim to drive him. To which there always came the spontaneous reply that it might not be a whim at all but an instinct. He had seen Marian Brand once as he passed the window of her compartment before the train was wrecked, and once for a moment before he fainted when they had just been dug out of the debris. There had been dust in her hair, and blood on her face. He had talked with her on and off for something like two hours with a smashed railway carriage tilted over them in the ditch which had saved their lives. He had sent her flowers, and a copy of The Whispering Tree. He had written to her three times. During the rush of his business in the States he had found it a refreshment to write those letters. They did not touch on intimacies, but they were intimate because they had been written without taking thought as to what was said or how it would be received. The whole world might have read them, but they could only have been written to one person.
    There was the background. And now he was going to lunch with her. Either the thing was an instinct, or it was a folly. He would know at once. It was a lovely May morning with a blue sky and just enough light cloud moving to keep the sea in change instead of that eternal blue glitter which tires the eye.
    He came to the white house standing behind its wind-driven shrubs, walked up to the twin blue doors, and knocked on the right-hand one. It was opened. He stood looking at Marian Brand, and she at him.
    At once everything was quite easy. He might have been walking up to that front door every day of his life. There wasn’t any castle in the air. There was a welcoming house, and the woman he wanted. It was as simple, as inexplicable, and as comfortable as daily bread. He held her hand and laughed, and said,
    “Take a good look at me! I’m clean, which is more than I was when you saw me before.”
    She said, “I knew exactly what you would look like.”
    “How?”
    “I don’t know—I did.”
    And then she was taking him through to the study, and they were talking about the house, about his journey, and each of them had so much to say that they were taking turns, catching each other up and laughing about it, interrupting and being interrupted, like friends who have known each other for a long time and don’t have to bother about being polite. It wasn’t in the least the way that Marian had thought it would be. She had been so pleased and proud about his coming, and then quite terrified. If she could have run away and kept a single shred of self-respect she would have done it. She had wondered what they would talk about, and been quite sure that, whatever it was, he would find it dull. And then it didn’t matter. They were easy and comfortable together. She could be just herself. It didn’t matter a bit.
    When he asked about Ina she could say just what was on her mind.
    “I’m worried about her. I told you about Cyril. He’s gone off in a temper.”
    “Because you wouldn’t give him half your kingdom?”
    “Something like that.”
    “You won’t do it?”
    “Oh, no—he’d only throw it away. But Ina’s fretting.”
    “Is she fond of him?”
    “She was.”
    He whistled.
    “Like that, is it?”
    “She’s very unhappy. I’m afraid she won’t be here for lunch—she’s gone out—” She hesitated, and then went on. “She didn’t tell me—just left a message to say she was going down into Farne to see about a