But Not For Me

by Mary Burchell

  “But—” Caroline returned her kiss bewilderedly—“I don’t understand. You seem almost happy.”

  “I am happy. Don’t you see? I am happy. It’s the same with me. I don’t love him, either. I think he’s a dear, but—”

  “You’re pretending. You’re just saying this to make me feel less awful.”

  “I’m not pretending. I ought to have seen what was happening. Poor dear nice Frank, being so conscientious, and all the time there was nothing to be conscientious about.”

  It was extraordinary how affectionate, how ridiculously sisterly she felt towards him now that she no longer had to marry him. In a minute or two, of course, she would have time to realize the seriousness of it all, to wonder just where all the Dobsons stood now in relation to all the Muldanes. But at present she could think only of the single, wonderful fact that she need not marry Frank—she could not marry Frank—because her best friend loved and him and he loved her.

  “Then have you been making yourself miserable about the change in your feelings too?” Caroline still looked very doubtful, and rather pale with the strain of the scene. And all at once Ariane saw that she must give Caroline something of the truth, if only for her peace of mind.

  “Listen, Caroline dear,”—and this time there was an answering pressure on her arm—“I can’t explain it all exactly, but with me it wasn’t so much a change of feeling as that I was never more than—well, very much attached to him. I thought that would be enough, that I could make him happy and be—be very happy too. But I’ve been finding for some while that I was wrong, and now you’ve cut the Gordian knot in the most extraordinary way.”

  “I see,” Caroline said slowly. “I think I see. But what I can’t understand is how you, of all people, ever imagined you could marry anyone without being terribly in love. You just couldn’t. You simply aren’t that kind.”

  “No,” Ariane admitted, almost as though she were speaking to herself. “No, you’re quite right. I just couldn’t do it.”

  And the thought followed quite naturally: “Then I suppose I shall not marry at all now, for Harvey would never want me.” It was strange that she could feel so sure about it. But there it was.

  “You’re going to find it difficult to convince Frank that you’re speaking the truth,” Caroline said. “I think I feel only half convinced myself, and Frank is so conscience-stricken that he may not believe you at all.”

  Ariane coloured slightly with quick shame and remorse.

  “It isn’t Frank who should feel conscience-stricken.”

  “You mean I should?”

  “No! Of course not. I’m the only one who should be feeling small. And I do.”

  “I don’t understand your attitude.” Caroline shook her head. “But anyway, let’s all stop abasing ourselves and think out the best and most commonsense way of settling things.”

  “Oh, Caroline, how nice to hear you talking just like your old self again.” Ariane laughed a little. “I realize now that you’ve been different for quite a while.”

  “Worry and jealousy, I expect,” said Caroline with a grin. “Darling, I’m so sorry. But you’re going to be awfully happy now. I’ll get Frank down this evening and make him understand.”

  Caroline squeezed her arm.

  “And it isn’t going to make any difference between us?”

  “Only to make us better friends than ever,” Ariane said.

  “Not possible,” declared Caroline. And then: “By the way, nearly all our set are coming tomorrow for the first tennis party of the season. Do you think—that is—well, how do you feel about it?”

  Ariane considered for a moment.

  “I think the really sensible thing is for me and Frank both to come quite calmly, as we should in the ordinary way. I’ll have explained before then, you know, and—and broken things off. If people realize from the first that we’re all quite amicable about it and no bones are broken, I don’t believe they’ll have half so much to say as they would in the ordinary way.”

  “Don’t you think so?” Caroline looked doubtful.

  “I’m sure of it. We needn’t make any announcements from the housetops, of course, but they’ll realize that our engagement is over, and we’re just friends. And then, by and by, when you and Frank fix things up and they see there isn’t the slightest scrap of difference between you and me—perhaps even Norchester will realize there’s not a great deal of gossip about.”

  “Perhaps you’re right.”

  “I’m sure I’m right. Who is coming?”

  “Oh, nearly everyone we know.”

  “Did you ask—Harvey?” She despised herself, but even after all that she and Caroline had been saying, that still seemed the most important thing.

  “I did. And the girl-friend. Mother was a bit sniffy when she heard, but it seemed a ridiculous omission to make. It isn’t as though they are having an affair. At least, not so far as anyone knows. On the face of it, it’s merely a case of her choosing to have a quiet week before her American tour in a country town she already knows and likes.”

  Ariane smiled very faintly.

  “You couldn’t expect either your mother or my mother to look at it quite like that.”

  “No, of course not. But trust Mrs. Bellamy to let all Norchester know if there were anything to know. She keeps an eye on every inch of her wretched inn.”

  “I suppose so.” Ariane felt unspeakably depressed by the thought that Harvey and Marta were with each other again, but she must not let Caroline see that, or she would attribute it to a wrong motive. And so she had to pull herself together somehow and make cheerful conversation until they parted.

  When Ariane reached home she found two circumstances not calculated to raise her spirits. One was that her father was not at all well, and the other—a lesser evil but highly irritating—that Sally Muldane was there.

  Sally and Ariane had less than nothing in common, and something about Sally’s carping outlook made Ariane understand Harvey’s lurid comments when his brother’s wife came to stay. Sally, fortunately or unfortunately, rather liked Ariane, and was inclined to seek her company on the fairly frequent occasions she was in Norchester.

  “Hello, Ariane. I’ve just been telling your mother that I’m going to steal you for most of the day tomorrow,” she announced as Ariane came down from greeting her father.

  “Are you?” Ariane said cautiously, wondering just how her broken engagement was going to effect that.

  “Yes. The Ventnors are giving a tennis party tomorrow—I expect you know, and I want you to come to lunch with us first, and then come on home with us afterwards for the night.”

  “Oh, but—” began Ariane. Sally, however, allowed no interruption when she was announcing her intentions.

  “We shall all be late home, because there’s to be dancing afterwards, so you might just as well come with us. Your mother won’t want you coming in very late, with your father ill in bed.”

  “I assure you I never disturb anyone when I come in late,” Ariane managed to put in coldly, because she very much resented Sally’s management of her affairs.

  “No, of course not, dear,” Mrs. Dobson said peaceably. “But, as a matter of fact, it might be better so. It’s very nice of Sally to suggest it.”

  “Why? Daddy’s not very ill, is he?” Ariane’s eyes widened.

  “No. No, of course not.” Mrs. Dobson looked slightly worried. “Still, he’s not at all well. I wish he had called me home sooner. But the best thing is to keep him quite quiet and undisturbed now. It’s a good idea for you to accept Sally’s kind invitation since you will be in late.”

  There seemed nothing else to say, and Ariane accepted as graciously as she could. But she was really thinking—“How horribly awkward. I can’t tell them I’m breaking off my engagement. I hate telling Mother, in any case, when she’s so worried. Perhaps I’d better just have it out with Frank, and then not have either of us say anything until tomorrow is over.”

  “Oh, by
the way,” Sally interrupted her thoughts, “Frank asked me to tell you he’s terribly sorry he had to make a business trip today, and won’t be back until tomorrow morning. But if you’re coming over to lunch, I dare say he can manage to wait those few hours longer to see you.”

  “I daresay,” Ariane said dryly. And, to herself, she thought: “Why is she so anxious to have me?”

  Only when Sally was going did the real reason come to light. “I’m specially glad to have you come back with us as one of the family, Ariane. Harvey has that dreadful woman staying down here again, and I’d like to make the distinction very complete between our attitude towards you and towards her.”

  “How idiotic and unnecessary,” reflected Ariane. “And how exactly like Sally.” But she had to suppress her real feelings now, for it was too late to do anything.

  The next morning, quite early, Frank rang up to say he would come down for her in the car. With her senses now sharpened to observation, Ariane wondered how on earth she had missed before the earnest, conscientious note behind Frank’s inquiries and comments. It seemed to her so pathetically obvious now that he was almost overreaching himself in his desire to be as attentive as he should.

  She wanted to say, “All right, Frank dear, the play is over. You can be as natural as you like now.”

  But instead she said: “Come a little early, Frank, and leave us time to drive round a bit. I’ve something I want to say to you.”

  “Yes, of course,” he promised, and she could tell from his tone that he was very far from guessing what it was.

  When Frank did arrive, she was a little surprised to find that she could greet him without a shadow of embarrassment. She had never liked him more than at this moment, when she was already regarding him almost as Caroline’s fiancé, and she felt tempted to offer him her congratulations almost before she had broken off the present engagement.

  But one must go a little more tactfully than that.

  So she allowed him to kiss her as usual, and, indeed, returned the kiss with a good deal of feeling. Then, having said goodbye to her mother and father, she watched Frank toss her case into the back of the car, and got in beside him.

  “Anywhere special?” he inquired.

  “No. Just somewhere quiet where we can pull up the car and talk for a few minutes.”

  He did give her an odd look at that, but without any comment, he drove out of town and towards the open country. Then, when he had found an unfrequented, leafy lane where the trees almost met overhead, he drew the car to a standstill.

  “Now? It’s not anything very serious, is it?” He looked at her with a slight smile, but she noticed that, most uncharacteristically, his eyes were very grave.

  “Well, it’s about us.” She hesitated. It was all rather more difficult than she had expected. She made another effort. “Frank, when you asked me to marry you, you said you didn’t know how one made a state proposal. And I—well, I haven’t the faintest idea how one breaks off an engagement gracefully and kindly. Only—that’s what I’m trying to do.”

  She saw his hands clench abruptly on the wheel.

  “Ariane!” His voice was terribly troubled. “Is it—something I’ve done?”

  “No, no, of course not. It’s nothing concrete at all. It’s just—”

  “I know. It’s just that I’ve failed you—made you feel the whole thing’s flat and wrong, after all.” He looked very unhappy.

  “It’s not. It’s absolutely nothing of the sort. Oh, I don’t know what you’re going to think of me, but I’ve got to be frank about it. I was never—well, never desperately in love with you. I liked you awfully. I do like you. Only—I hate owning to being such a mercenary little wretch—only it was important that you were such an excellent match, and—and things were in rather a bad way at home.”

  “Good lord!” He looked at her in genuine astonishment. “I never guessed at anything like that.”

  “Didn’t you?” She gave an unhappy little laugh. “Harvey guessed at once.”

  “Oh, Harvey!” Frank made an impatient movement. “Harvey’s a darned cynic, and always thinks the worst he can of people.”

  “No, that isn’t fair.” It was ridiculous, of course, to interrupt this scene with a discussion on Harvey’s faults and virtues, but she couldn’t help it. “In this case he was just clear-sighted.”

  “Ariane,” Frank took her hand rather gently. “You are telling me the real truth over this, aren’t you? You haven’t got some quixotic idea that I—well, that I—”

  She looked very directly at him.

  “My dear, it’s stupid of us to confuse the issue once again. I do know that you and Caroline are in love with each other, but you must believe me when I say that I’m nothing but delighted about it. I’m only sorry that I held things up in the beginning by doing what I did.”

  Frank went a little pale.

  “How did you know?”

  “Caroline had the courage to tell me yesterday. And perfectly right of her too. Please don’t be hurt if I say the relief was enormous. I never liked you better than now that I haven’t got to marry you, and I am only too thankful that one of the three of us was brave enough to look facts in the face.”

  “Is that the absolute truth?”

  “The absolute truth, Frank. I couldn’t do it so convincingly, you know, if I were secretly heartbroken.” She smiled at him with an irresistible little flash of humour now that the worst part of the explanation was over.

  He smiled slightly too. It was a tremendous relief to find that life was still perhaps a light-hearted matter, but his first experience of a really serious problem was too recent for him to shed it easily.

  “I feel an absolute hound, Ariane, all the same.”

  “But why? It’s I who ought to be feeling so much ashamed. So, Frank, don’t let yourself indulge in remorse, or I shall feel worse than ever,” she added with a pleading little laugh.

  He squeezed the hand he was holding very hard.

  “Well, you may say you don’t know the standard way of breaking off an engagement, but you certainly discovered the most painless way.” And he gave her something of his old, infectious smile.

  “It’s because we’re all three sincere friends really, and because we have a little common sense between us,” Ariane said. “I can’t help knowing that you and Caroline will be splendid together, and I can’t help being really happy about it. It’s quite inevitable. It would have happened in the beginning if I hadn’t stampeded you into—”

  “Ariane!” Frank looked terribly shocked. “I will not have you talking as though you were some dreadful designing female. You’re the most generous girl under the sun, and Caroline thinks so too.”

  “Very well.” Ariane smiled faintly. Perhaps it was not necessary to say any more, nor to let Frank realize how very near she had been to becoming the “designing female.”

  So Frank turned the car, and they drove down to the Muldanes’ house. She explained, on the way, about the awkward little circumstance of Sally inviting her to stay in the house that night, and Frank entirely agreed that any family announcement should be postponed until the next day.

  “Now we know comfortably where we are, one day doesn’t matter,” Ariane said candidly.

  “You are a funny girl.” Frank laughed slightly. Then he glanced at her a trifle diffidently. “I suppose there isn’t anyone else with you, is there?”

  “No,” Ariane told him quite calmly. “Oh no. There’s no one else.”

  “But there will be, Ariane.” He smiled at her with affection. “You’ll have a grand romance one of these days. You’re just the kind of girl for it. And you’ll deserve it too.”

  “Oh, thank you.” She managed to smile in return. But she wondered if, in a way, she “deserved” the unhappiness of loving Harvey in this hopeless, aching way.

  Lunch at the Muldanes’ was not too easy a meal. In spite of the frank and satisfactory way she and Frank had settled things, they were both a little consciou
s of the fact that no one else at the table knew the new state of affairs. And when Harvey came in, rather late, there was nothing in his face to give Ariane any happy reassurance in his case.

  It seemed impossible that the others could be so entirely unaware—or perhaps it was just uncaring—of that moody, almost. haunted expression of his. To Ariane it was vaguely frightening.

  He only greeted her quite curtly when he came in, and after that most of his conversation—what there was of it—was for his father. And even that was exclusively about business.

  Ariane, who knew the various reactions of the family very well by now, could see that the old man was in one of his profoundly irritated moods with his eldest son. But Harvey, though he looked white and tired, contrived to ignore any references that were not strictly relating to business.

  Afterwards, Ariane said involuntarily to Sally: “How very tired and—strung-up Harvey looks.”

  Sally shrugged.

  “It’s his own fault. Why can’t he settle down sensibly like Maurice and Frank? It only infuriates his father when he goes chasing round after that—well, I know what word I could use.”

  “It’s very silly of him, of course,” Ariane admitted. “But I don’t think even Mr. Muldane imagines it’s gone any further than a very regrettable infatuation.”

  “It had better not, either,” Sally said dryly. “If there were an open scandal, I think he’d almost put Harvey out of the business—brilliant though he is,” she added reluctantly.

  Ariane looked very troubled.

  “It wouldn’t ever really come to that, would it?”

  Sally shrugged again—a very favourite form of expression with her, since it implied a lot without committing herself to anything.

  “I don’t know. There was a terrible row last night, I believe. But I didn’t hear what was said. Maurice and I always keep out of unpleasant scenes like that,” she finished a little virtuously.

  Ariane felt exceedingly dismayed. She remembered very clearly how tranquil and almost happy he had been with her that one afternoon in London, and she wished passionately that he could get away from this atmosphere of “frightful rows” alternating with the unfortunate passion for Marta.