But Not For Me

by Mary Burchell

  “No,” Frank said with obvious sincerity, “I don’t find her attractive a bit. And the more I look at her, the more I think poor old Harvey’s crazy.”

  “But, all the same, don’t say so, will you, Frank, please?”

  “What do you mean?” Frank smiled. “To whom mustn’t I say it? To you?”

  “No, of course not. You can say what you like to me.”

  “Thanks, darling.”

  “Only don’t say it to Harvey. If he has to start defending her he’ll end by adoring her even more than he does already.”

  “I dare say you’re right.” Frank laughed a little. “Anyway, I’ll be the soul of tact.”

  Ariane smiled absently at him, because she felt he expected it, but actually she was thinking: “It’s going to take much more than tact to get us all out of this tangle.”

  It was not until much later in the evening that she had a moment to speak to Caroline again, and when she did, it seemed quite natural to say smilingly: “You seem to be making something of an impression on Frank tonight.”

  “I do?” Caroline looked rather taken aback. “That’s a very generous remark from a fiancée to another girl,” she added more lightly, “especially at her engagement party.”

  Ariane supposed it had been a little odd, but then, of course, she never could think of Frank as her property at all. She hoped nervously that it had not set the quick-witted Caroline thinking, and she changed the subject as hastily as possible.

  “What do you think of the guest of honour?”

  “Is ‘honour’ quite the word?” Caroline asked dryly.

  “Caroline, you mustn’t say these things,” Ariane laughed protestingly. “What on earth would your mother say if she heard you?”

  “She probably wouldn’t understand, bless her,” declared Caroline. And at that moment Harvey came up and drew Ariane aside.

  “Ariane, do go and talk to Marta in the library, will you?” he whispered. “I’ve just had a long-distance business call come through from London, and I may be some time. She doesn’t want to come back in here and—well, anyway, please do go, will you?”

  Ariane went. There was nothing else to do. But the feeling of reluctance was almost overwhelming, as she opened the library door and came in.

  Marta looked up and smiled faintly.

  “Have you come to talk to me? Harvey said you would, but I thought you might be afraid of my contaminating your morals.”

  “Oh Ariane wondered quite what to make of such frankness from almost a stranger. “Well, no. I’m not quite so silly as that,” she said gravely at last.

  “No?” Marta stared at her, those long, dark eyes of hers amused and just a little scornful. Then she said impulsively: “Tell me, why do you bother to put yourself out about me? You are the only one who tried to be normally friendly. And yet in your heart you are just as shocked as all the others. You don’t really imagine I have a place in this safe, conventional circle, yet you behave as though I might become the third Muldane daughter-in-law at any moment.”

  For a second Ariane didn’t answer, then suddenly she decided to match frankness with frankness.

  “And that, I gather, is the last thing you mean to become?” she said slowly.

  “What? Daughter-in-law to that fierce old patriarch? Thank you, but no.”

  “Then why don’t you leave Harvey alone?”

  It was terrible, really, to strip the conversation like this of all pretence of decency, but Marta was quite unperturbed. She shrugged good-humouredly.

  “So long as a man wishes to run after me—let him run. It is not my legs nor my pocket that are hurt. Only his.” And she made a slight grimace that was almost frightening in its shameless candour.

  “But Harvey is too nice for that sort of thing, you know.” Ariane managed to speak quite calmly, though, in reality, she was a good deal shaken by this queer discussion. Did this woman always adopt such frankness after a couple of hours’ acquaintance? she wondered.

  Marta shook her head.

  “You are making a false set of values for yourself out of your own sentimentality,” she observed calmly. “For me a man is not nice or nasty. He is good business or bad business. Harvey, poor darling, is attractive—very. But he has the marriage complex badly. He is very rich—oh, quite entrancingly rich—and so, just for once, I allowed myself to come and inspect the family circle—see for myself what marriage to him would mean.”

  “And what would it mean?” Ariane could not conquer the slight breathlessness of her tone.

  “Boredom—and then disaster.” Marta made one of the slight but comprehensive gestures for which she was famous.

  “Then you mean,”—Ariane hesitated—“you mean you will leave him alone in future?”

  “Alone? No-o. That would be too unkind.” Ariane supposed people paid quite a lot of money to watch that smile, but to her it was fast becoming revolting. “Harvey does not, I think, wish to be left alone.”

  “Of course not. You have him absolutely infatuated about you. We may as well be frank.”

  They had not, of course, been anything else right from the beginning, Ariane remembered then.

  “Oh yes,” Marta agreed, “by all means let us be frank. In fact, let me admit—quite frankly—that I find Harvey’s infatuation charming. And by and by, when he has got over this strange idea of regarding me as a possible wife, he will play another, less permanent role to perfection.”

  Ariane felt the blood rush into her face.

  “Isn’t that unpleasantly like a deliberate attempt to drag a man down?” she said coldly.

  “Entirely like,” Marta agreed with great composure.

  “But—I don’t understand—” Ariane could not hide her bewildered distress. “How can you—how can you square that sort of thing with your conscience?”

  Marta laughed slightly and pressed her smooth dark head back against the cushion of her chair.

  “My conscience? You cannot really suppose that I consult my conscience over anything so rich and attractive as Harvey Muldane. No, no. I consult my common sense. And my common sense tells me that—provided I do certain things—I shall have a delightful and profitable affair with him. Now do you see?”

  “No, I don’t! And I think it’s horrible, horrible that you should even speak like that.”

  Ariane shuddered, but Marta only looked at her with that good-natured contempt which was somehow much more frightening than any real unpleasantness.

  “Well, it is of no consequence. Of course you can’t really understand. How could you? We talk an entirely different language. But if I still puzzle you, you have become much more understandable to me. You didn’t reply to my first question at all, but you have no need to now, because I know the answer.”

  “What question?” Ariane looked at her with a puzzled dislike impossible to hide.

  “About your attitude to me this evening. I know now why you bothered to be kind to me. Not for my own sake at all, but for Harvey’s.”

  “Isn’t that rather natural?” Ariane said stiffly. “You are no friend of mine and—and Harvey is.”

  “Friend? Hm-hm.” There was an extremely amused note in Marta’s lovely voice. “Is that what we call it? I think, my child, that the wrong brother put that very handsome ring on your finger. It may be Frank to whom you are engaged, but isn’t it perhaps Harvey who has your heart? And that is why you are so anxious to appeal to my—conscience.”

  For a moment Ariane could find no words at all. She stared at the ground in utter confusion.

  Then, on a sudden impulse, she spoke—quickly and breathlessly.

  “And suppose I told you that you were right—that I did love Harvey Muldane? Would that make any difference to your pursuit of him?”

  There was no reply to that. Perhaps Marta was thinking it over.

  And then, as the silence lengthened curiously, Ariane reluctantly raised her eyes.

  Marta was not worrying about replies. She was too much amused by the
simple fact that Harvey was standing just inside the doorway, grimly surveying the scene.

  CHAPTER VI

  For a second nobody moved. Then Harvey came forward into the room and said very calmly:

  “I’m sorry, to have been so long, but there were one or two things which had to be settled, and I couldn’t get away sooner.”

  “It doesn’t matter, Harvey.” That amused little undercurrent ran through everything Marta said now. “It doesn’t matter in the least. We have been able to amuse each other perfectly. Haven’t we, Ariane?”

  “Yes.” Ariane’s voice nearly failed her altogether, but somehow she got the word out. And once she had spoken, the rest came more easily. “But I must go now. I promised Sally—You must excuse me—”

  Afterwards she wondered just how obvious her confusion had been as she made her escape from the room. And then—just what had Harvey heard?

  Try as she would, she could not remember the exact words she had used. Had she made an actual statement that she loved him, and then asked a question on top of that? Surely she would never have been so crazy, even if she had been certain they were alone?

  Then had she just put it as a query—Suppose, for the sake of argument, she had been in love with him?

  No, she could not believe it had taken quite such a harmless form as that.

  Besides, Marta had accused her, in so many words, of loving Harvey. And, whatever else she had done, she had not denied it.

  By the time the party broke up, Ariane felt weary and sick and scared beyond description. But she had to go on pretending that she had enjoyed herself thoroughly, and that it had been a splendid party.

  At last, however, even the good-byes were over, and she and a very sleepy Julie were in the car with their parents once more, on the way home.

  “A very successful evening, I think—in most ways,” commented Mrs. Dobson.

  “Yes, very,” Ariane agreed mechanically.

  “They’re not quite as I expected,” her father said suddenly, as though he had been slowly absorbing some idea all the evening, and now had arrived at some conclusion.

  “In what way?” His wife glanced at him a little anxiously. “Well, old Muldane isn’t so aggressive as one might imagine. For some reason he seems anxious to please us, although he must know that his fortunes are rising while ours are—not.”

  “Yes, I don t think any of us have quite realized their attitude before.” Ariane spoke earnestly, forgetting for a moment her personal problem. “I believe half of old Mr. Muldane’s rough-shod methods are due to an uneasy sense of—well, inferiority. He knows he is a good business man and he thinks he’s nothing else at all.”

  “In which he is perfectly correct,” murmured her mother rather grimly.

  “Oh, Mother Ariane smiled slightly. “It makes me a little unhappy and ashamed really. Poor old man—he’s almost flattered that we—that I—”

  “And so he should be, my dear,” her father said, kindly but firmly. “He is a very fortunate man to be having you for a daughter-in-law, and certainly not many men in his position could hope to ally themselves to a firm like Dobson’s.”

  Ariane said nothing. She knew her father had no idea he was being patronizing and—yes, very slightly ridiculous. Did he really suppose it was a privilege to be allowed to use one’s money to bolster up a dying firm, simply because that firm happened to be called Dobson’s?

  Apparently, from his contented, slightly gracious expression, he did. That had been his attitude always, and Mother’s attitude too. In a lesser degree, she supposed, it had once been her own view.

  Suddenly she thought she saw just why Harvey despised and resented them. And the discovery was not a pleasant one. “Anyway, I don’t think I shall find the elder Muldane difficult to work with—” Daddy already spoke as though Muldane’s had become a branch of Dobson’s. “The really perfectly dreadful member of the family is that eldest son. What’s his name?—Harvey.”

  “I like Harvey,” came sleepily but determinedly from Julie’s corner. “He’s dark and romantic, just like villains who repent in the end and turn out to be much more exciting than the hero. When he marries Marta Roma I shall ask if I can go to stay with them. I think they’d like it.”

  “You’d better go to sleep again,” Ariane told her firmly. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Is he proposing to marry the flashy young person he brought with him?” Mr. Dobson asked distastefully. But neither his wife nor his eldest daughter seemed able to enlighten him. And as Julie had definitely fallen asleep by now, the query went unanswered.

  Ariane thought she must surely lie awake that night, worrying desperately over the many problems confronting her. But perhaps the very complexity of her unhappiness confused her, and sleep came very quickly.

  The next morning she and Julie spent quietly and pleasantly together, for, in spite of the difference in their ages, they were exceedingly good friends. And, although the afternoon meant return to school for Julie, even that grim circumstance took on a rosy hue by virtue of the fact that she had so much sensational news to impart to her school friends.

  Mrs. Dobson was anxious not to make Marta Roma into a forbidden subject, and thereby add to her lustre, but she did say a little reprovingly once:

  “Remember, Julie, it was to celebrate your sister’s engagement that you came home. Please don’t talk so much as though Miss Roma were the only important part of the week-end.”

  “Oh, I don’t mean it like that!” Julie cried cheerfully. “Ariane knows I don’t. But an engagement’s only an engagement after all, isn’t it? I mean, anyone can get engaged. Whereas Marta Roma is—well, somebody in the newspapers and that sort of thing. You don’t mind, do you, Ariane dear?”

  Ariane shook her head and laughed.

  “Oh no. I see that I and Florence Nightingale must face decent obscurity together when it comes to comparison with Marta Roma.”

  Mrs. Dobson clicked her tongue impatiently, but Ariane only smiled and said: “Never mind, Mother. It’s very natural.”

  And that was what it was, of course. Very, very natural that Harvey, too, should scarcely even see her when the thought of Marta filled his mind.

  All the same, it was hard to keep up that attitude of cheerful, detached philosophy when, later, Harvey came to collect Julie once more, and she knew quite well that, sitting there waiting for him, beside the driver’s seat, was Marta.

  However, the really important thing was to remain utterly calm and at ease for the few minutes Harvey was in the house. Everything about her must suggest that if he thought he had heard anything outrageous and embarrassing last night he was entirely mistaken. Only by maintaining that attitude could she keep the last rag of self-respect.

  And somehow she managed to do it. Because when they were in the hall and Julie was saying good-bye to her mother, he drew Ariane aside and said quietly: “Thank you for your help this week-end. You’ve been a perfect little sport.”

  And he would not have said anything like that if he’d really heard something last night, surely?

  The days after Julie’s departure seemed to drag in an oddly monotonous fashion.

  One missed anything so much in evidence as Julie always was, of course, but it was not only that. Ariane found that the things which had always interested her were unable to hold her attention ; that it was an actual physical effort to make herself go about with Frank and pretend to enjoy herself; that even the easy, undemanding relationship between herself and Caroline seemed to have undergone some indefinable change, so that they never seemed quite so close together as they had been nearly all their lives.

  “Is it that Caroline thinks it necessary to change because I’m engaged, I wonder?” thought Ariane worriedly. “Or is it that I myself am changing because of this miserable strain?”

  Of Harvey she saw nothing at all. His work seemed to keep him in town most of the time, and during the short visits he made to Norchester she had no occasion
to meet him. It was impossible, of course, to let herself suppose that that in itself accounted for the depression and restlessness. But at least it did nothing to help it.

  Once or twice she thought she even detected a slight discontent and puzzlement in Frank’s manner. And then she used to wonder guiltily if she were failing him and her family and everyone else.

  It was not an easy period of Ariane’s life, and perhaps although nothing was said, her mother realized that too. At any rate she watched her daughter rather anxiously; and when an early spring began to furnish some really warm days, she said: “You know, Ariane, I think it would be nice if you and I had a couple of weeks in London. I was disappointed not to get up there at all last year, and as it will really soon be time to think seriously about your trousseau, it seems to me a good time for us to go.”

  “Just as you like, Mother.” Ariane spoke listlessly, in spite of all her efforts to the contrary.

  It was stupid of her, of course, but the mention of her marriage, although fixed at nothing more definite than “some time in the summer,” made her feel terribly afraid.

  Mrs. Dobson said nothing more at the time, but merely made her own arrangements; and on a beautiful day in early April, she and Ariane left for London, with the vaguely expressed intention of “seeing about Ariane’s trousseau” as the sole object of their visit.

  As the train rumbled its way through the green and hilly country which surrounded Norchester, Ariane felt a weight slowly rolling away from her heart. It seemed as though she were leaving so many problems behind.

  True, it was only for a little while, and the very word “trousseau” seemed to show how short the respite was. But somehow the thought that for two whole weeks she would not have to keep up her elaborate pretence—to Frank, to her father, to Caroline, to everyone—brought with it a comfort beyond description.

  And perhaps most important of all was the fact that she was leaving the scenes which reminded her perpetually of Harvey without ever satisfying her longing to see him.

  “It’s going to be a real test,” Ariane thought thankfully. “There’ll be nothing at all in London to remind me of—of how things are. Perhaps I shall even sleep better.” Because lately her nights had been very broken and troubled.