James Hilton: Collected Novels Read Online Free PDF Page A

story about an unhappy past and a husband she ran away from because she couldn’t stand him…and the upshot of it all is, Jeff’s now urging her to get a divorce so that he can marry her himself.”
    “What’s her attitude?”
    “I only know through him—and of course he’s so completely prejudiced in her favor that it’s not much to go by. But remember he’s quite a catch, even if it does ruin his career.”
    “And it would? Because of the scandal?”
    “Possibly…But worst of all, as I see it, is the thing itself—to put himself at the mercy of someone who has such evident power to distort and overthrow his judgment … judgment …the most valuable attribute a man of his profession can have…because if he still had any of it left, he’d drop her. After all, how could he expect a marriage of that sort to turn out a success?…It’s a sad thing, Boswell, to see a first-class intelligence functioning like a baby’s.”
    “Why don’t you go out and talk to him personally as soon as you have the time?”
    “Yes, I shall do that—I wired him today about it. But somehow I’m not sure that I can do much on my own—that last telephone talk was simply shattering—the most I could get was a promise that he’d think it over, but he can’t think, that’s the trouble—he’s in a world utterly beyond logic and argument—you can’t prove anything to him—he just believes this woman’s a sort of martyr heroine and her husband’s an impossible brute and—”
    “How do you know he isn’t?”
    Winslow got up suddenly, walked to the window, then came back and touched George on the shoulder with a queerly intimate gesture. “I didn’t know—definitely—until today. But I’m a bit positive at this moment…” And after a second pause, standing in front of George, he stammered unsurely: “I hope I haven’t been so damned tactful that you’re going to ask me what all this has got to do with you….”
    Then George looked up and saw in a flash what it had got to do with him.
    He felt himself growing cold and sick, as if a fist were grasping him by his insides. Try as one might, he reflected with queer and instant detachment, the actual blow of such a revelation must be sudden; there was no way of leading up that could disperse the shock over a period; one second one did not know, the next second one did know; that was all there was to it, so that all Winslow’s delicacy had been in a sense wasted. He might just as well have blurted out the truth right at the beginning.
    George knew he must say something to acknowledge that Oxford had managed to convey with subtlety in an hour what Browdley could have tackled vulgarly in five minutes. After a long pause, he therefore spoke the slow Browdley affirmative that, by its tone, could imply resignation as well as affirmation.
    “You mean you do understand, Boswell?”
    “Aye,” George repeated.
    “I’m terribly sorry—I could think of no other way than to put it to you—”
    “Of course, man, of course.”
    Winslow gripped George’s arm speechlessly, and for several minutes the two seemed not to know what to say to each other. Presently George mumbled: “Is that—all—you can tell me—about it? No more details of any kind? Not that they’d help much, but still—”
    “Honestly, Boswell, I’ve told you just about everything I know myself.”
    “I understand…But how about the people on the tour whom she was supposed to be looking after?”
    “Maybe she just left them stranded…It would be crazy and irresponsible—but no more so than—than—”
    “Than anything else. That’s so.”
    “I admit the whole thing sounds—must sound to you, in fact—well, if you were to tell me you simply didn’t believe a word of it, I’d—”
    “Aye, it’s a bit of a facer.”
    “But you do believe it?”
    “Reckon I have to, don’t I? After all, you took a good look at that photograph…”
    “Yes, it’s the same. I knew that at once…”