The Jealous One Read Online Free PDF Page B

plucking chords under the cloudy summer night. Her fingers wandered for a while, erratically, among her rich mental repertoire of assorted tunes, and finally settled for ‘Oh Careless Love’, which she began to sing softly as she played.
    ‘Come on, join in, folks!’ she urged, after the first verse; and first Geoffrey and then Rosamund did so. But not Eileen. Was she sulking, or disapproving, or was she just hopeless at singing? If she was, then Lindy would know it—once more Eileen was to appear at a disadvantage.
    Lindy had a lovely voice. It rose into the summer darkness clear and true as a nightingale; or was it, rather, like a bird of prey?

CHAPTER IV
    That evening was the beginning; and at that stage Rosamund wasn’t being a jealous wife at all. Nothing had happened , yet, to make her think of Lindy as a rival, and the empty, frustrated feelings that assailed her as they returned home, long after midnight, had nothing to do with jealousy. It was just that she felt done out of the after-party gossip that she and Geoffrey usually enjoyed as they went to bed, laughing about this or that person or incident, comparingnotes about the pleasure or boredom they had derived from the evening.
    But Rosamund learned tonight that comparing notes is only a pleasure if your notes have been pretty well identical with those of the other person. It wasn’t comparing at all, really; it was just a companionable gloating over sameness, and all the more enjoyable for that. What fun they could have been having tonight, for instance, talking over Lindy’s affectations—her flamboyance—her veiled spite towards her sister—if only Geoffrey had seen her behaviour in this light too. But his innocent delight in the whole evening’s entertainment was like a bright, blank wall—it offered no door, no chink, through which any sort of conversation could start. Or so it seemed to Rosamund. It wasn’t conversation to exchange remarks like: ‘Yes, wasn’t it marvellous?’ or ‘Yes, she must be a very vital sort of person’ or ‘Yes, it will be fun having people like that next door instead of the dreary old Sowerbys.’
    It had been more fun, actually, having the Sowerbys, Rosamund thought rebelliously. The gloomy, disagreeable Sowerbys, with their eternal complaining and bickering, and their neat rows of moribund seedlings put in every spring by Mr Sowerby against the advice of Mrs Sowerby. Almost any evening it had been possible to start an amusing conversation with: ‘Do you know what the Sowerbys are rowing about now ?’—and thus, amid laughter, to savour the success and happiness of their own marriage in contrast to this miserable pair.
    As she lay wide awake that first night, staring through the window at the waning summer moon, Rosamund felt a terrible nostalgic longing for the Sowerbys. For Mr Sowerby’s boots, which he was for ever failing to wipe when he came in from the garden; for Mrs Sowerby’s relations, whom he was for ever failing to be polite to…. What fun it had all been! Like a long, catastrophic serial story, suddenly cut off in its prime to make way for one of those dreadful happy stories, where nobody has any proper troubles, and there is even a Pekinese with a red bow…. Rosamund could see thecreature as the centre-piece of a full-page illustration, clutched in the arms of a vapid, jolly girl….
    ‘The sister was nice, too,’ came Geoffrey’s voice suddenly—she had thought he was asleep. ‘Much quieter, of course, than Lindy. More reserved. But nice.’
    ‘Yes, they’re both very nice,’ agreed Rosamund, like a parrot, and was glad that Geoffrey couldn’t see her face. I hate nice people, she was thinking crossly. I like nasty people. Interesting, disagreeable, nasty people that you can really talk about—laugh about. People, she might have added who make me feel superior; but this was no time of night to be embarking on such a disturbing train of thought; so Rosamund closed her eyes against