Instead of the Thorn

by Georgette Heyer

  Then Stephen came downstairs, two at a time, and Elizabeth thought how tall and good-looking he was, and how well-tailored.

  “Here you are!” she said. “I’ve been telling them about my snapshots.”

  Stephen kissed Miss Arden and shook hands with Lawrence, warmly.

  “How jolly to see you again! Don’t encourage ’Lisbeth, I implore you! She produces snapshot after snapshot, points to a misshapen splosh in the background, and says, ‘And that’s Stephen!’ Do you like Martini, Miss Arden, or would you prefer a vermouth?”

  “Nothing for me, thank you, Stephen,” she answered.

  “’Lisbeth?” He asked her out of courtesy; she never drank cocktails.

  “Vermouth, please, Stephen,” she said, as though she had been in the habit of imbibing it for years.

  Dinner was a merry function that evening; they all talked, and together. It seemed to Elizabeth that she had seldom been so bright in conversation. Perhaps it was the cocktail, and the wicked sparkle of champagne in her glass. After dinner Stephen took Lawrence into the billiard-room, and Elizabeth and her aunt went upstairs for a quiet talk.

  They sat before the fire in Elizabeth’s room, and constraint fell upon them. Elizabeth was reduced to producing her snapshots.

  “Our little girl has quite blossomed forth,” Lawrence said on the way home. Then, as Miss Arden was silent, he added in a hurt tone, “Don’t you think so?”

  “She has changed,” Miss Arden said.

  “Oh, nonsense!” Lawrence replied uneasily. It was really rather mean of Anne to try and spoil his evening.

  “She isn’t herself. She’s thinner too.”

  “All your imagination!” Lawrence said loudly. “I saw no change in her—except that she has, as I say, blossomed forth.”

  “I daresay you didn’t. You’re only a man.”

  Lawrence was accustomed to hear his sex referred to in a disparaging way, but to-night it annoyed him.

  “That’s as may be. I am at least Elizabeth’s father.”

  “It’s not to be expected that you would notice things as I do.”

  “I repeat, you’re imagining it. Next you’ll say that her marriage is not a success!”

  “I hope not,” she said seriously.

  “Good gracious, Anne! Well, really! It’s a good thing we don’t all see things in this morbid way! It struck me that Elizabeth was in great spirits. In fact, a thoroughly happy bride.”

  “I daresay,” Miss Arden said crushingly. “All I know is that she’s changed, and doesn’t look well.”

  This was very disturbing. Lawrence cleared his throat and sought for an answer.

  “A honeymoon is often rather a trying period,” he said airily. Then, as Miss Arden opened her mouth to retaliate, he added hastily, “Time will show.”

  “Yes,” said Miss Arden, and left it at that.

  *

  Mrs. Ramsay appeared next morning soon after breakfast, one end of her fur trailing behind her.

  “My dear, I nearly lost my note-case in the street, only such a dear boy picked it up and ran after me with it. How are you, darling? and did you have a jolly time? What an adequate way of putting it!”

  “I’m very well, thank you. It’s so nice of you to come to see me. I ought to have called on you with Stephen yesterday, but he made me rest instead. I do hope you’ll forgive me!”

  Mrs. Ramsay sat down in a large chair; the rest of her fur slid to the floor and remained there until a solicitous page-boy came to pick it up.

  “What nonsense, dear! I didn’t want to see you a bit yesterday, any more than you wanted to see me. I only wanted Stephen. Isn’t that delightfully rude, and don’t I put things badly? Did you get that frock in Paris? It’s charming.”

  “Rue de la Paix,” Elizabeth said. “I’m—afraid I was awfully extravagant.”

  “One always is. Paris makes me reckless. Such a nice, wicked feeling. I wish I’d brought Thomas. He’s dying to see his new relation.”

  “Oh, dear Thomas! He wouldn’t have been allowed here, so it’s just as well you didn’t bring him, perhaps.”

  “What a shame! Don’t you think I could have got round that burly porter? Never mind, though. Did you feel gory and mediaeval in Florence?”

  “N-no, not exactly. What a wonderful place it is!”

  “Isn’t it? Funnily enough, Stephen’s father took me there on my honeymoon. I don’t remember where we stayed, but I know that George lost his stud one night and had all the staff into our room to help him find it. So trying for me; I was dressing, you see, and at that time I hadn’t grown accustomed to George’s ways.”

  Elizabeth laughed, and there fell a silence. Mrs. Ramsay started off again.

  “As usual I began at the wrong end of the stick. I didn’t come to talk about George’s stud—no one ever found it, by the way. I don’t think George ever really got over it— Where was I? Oh, yes! What I wanted to say was, how lovely it is to see you both home again! Stephen’s very happy, my dear. I’d like to thank you for making him so, but I know that’s quite out of place. Cynny’s coming to call soon, but she said she wasn’t going to inflict herself on you at once. I expect you’re pretty tired, aren’t you?”

  “Oh—not really,” Elizabeth replied.

  Mrs. Ramsay cast her a fleeting glance.

  “Well, you look it, darling. I shall speak severely to Stephen. He mustn’t let you overdo it. He’s a strenuous boy, you know. Always was. Never would lie still in his perambulator. Dear me, it’s awfully hard to realize that he’s married!”

  “Yes, I expect it must be. I—I find it hard to realise that I’m married sometimes!”

  Then Stephen came in, and Elizabeth was able to sit quiet while he talked. It was strange that she could not be bright and conversational with Mrs. Ramsay when she had been so talkative to her own relations. You couldn’t get rid of the feeling that, in spite of her inconsequence, Mrs. Ramsay was clever, far cleverer than you were yourself. That tied your tongue; you were afraid to advance an opinion because your opinions were always so different from those of the Ramsays. You felt too that the Ramsays thought privately that you were very ordinary. Not Stephen, of course.

  Mrs. Ramsay went to have tea with Cynthia that afternoon, and Cynthia curled her lip, and said, Well?

  “Oh, Cynny, I don’t know!” Mrs. Ramsay sighed. “She’s—a dear little thing, but I can’t get any further with her! I’ve tried and tried, but she makes me nervous, and I can’t say what I want to. I talk the most arrant nonsense, and she smiles, and says, Yes, I know. So very uninspiring. I wish I could get beneath her—her perfect manners.”

  “Probably you wouldn’t find anything,” Cynthia said.

  “Darling, that’s horribly ill-natured. I won’t believe that it’s true. Poor child! I can’t help feeling sorry for her.”

  “Good lord, why?”

  “Well, my dear, Stephen’s very like his father, and— and not a bit like Elizabeth.”

  “Funny point of view. If I’m sorry for anyone I’m sorry for Stephen—tied to a pretty face.”

  Mrs. Ramsay rescued her gloves from Thomas.

  “So nice to sit opposite Elizabeth’s face every morning at breakfast,” she murmured.

  “Are you being sarcastic, mater?”

  “No, not at all. I mean it. The thing that bothers me is—Cynny, this is between you and me alone—I don’t—I can’t be sure that Elizabeth cares for Stephen —really cares for him.”

  “Oh!” said Cynthia, and set her cup down with a click. “That’s it, is it? God help them both, then, for they won’t help themselves.”

  “Cynny, I’m not sure—it’s only just a—a sort of feeling that I have, and I may be quite wrong!”

  “Yes, I understand. What attracted her? Money, or fame?”

  “Don’t, my dear! It—it sounds so crude and hateful. I’ve probably been misled by her manner. And then, of course, she’s shy. That aunt, too. I wish I could get near Elizabeth. I’d be such
a lot of use to her. Only I can’t. She holds me off, she’s so—so proper. What a horrible word!”

  Cynthia selected a cake with some deliberation.

  “What about Stephen?”

  Mrs. Ramsay did not answer for a moment. Then she looked across at Cynthia and spoke quite slowly, and with none of her usual sparkle.

  “I believe what he wants me to believe. Everything is all right.”

  “I see,” said Cynthia.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Queen’s Halt lay in a hollow beyond Cranbrook, with a giant elm for gate-keeper, and slim poplars as sentinels around.

  Legend, or history, ascribed its name to the passing of Queen Bess, who was supposed to have rested there a night in the course of one of her pilgrimages. It was more probable that if the Queen had journeyed this way she would have chosen the Manor as her halt, a mile on, up the hill, but the Ribblemeres, who had lived there since the beginning of things, laid no claim to this distinction and showed no desire to wrest its title from the old white house below.

  Queen’s Halt, gabled and beamed, with friendly windows, and squat chimneys, and swallows nesting under the eaves, stretched itself in the middle of its garden, which had grown and spread about it on many levels.

  Before it the flower gardens lay, and the new tennis-court; on either side the orchards and the old pleasance, and behind, an uneven yard with moss padding between the flagstones and an aged pump keeping watch beside the rain-tub.

  The yard merged into a meadow, studded over with chestnut-trees and oaks, through which a little stream, crystal-clear, bubbled and sang its way over the rounded pebbles on its bed. Violets grew there in the spring, and irises, pale primroses and blue forget-me-nots, and all the year round hens, speckled, and buff, and white, were dotted here and there on the grass, walking at will about the coops, languidly searching for grubs. Sweet-faced ducks waddied in solemn procession from the yard to the stream and stayed there, half in, half out of the water. Beyond the stream the wood began, straggling at first, then dense —with Kentish undergrowth, and alive with scuttling, bobtailed rabbits.

  The orchard, born at a distance from the house, to the east, had wandered through many years nearer and nearer to the house, and spread stray apple-trees and plum all amongst the flowers in the garden. So that in the spring white blossoms and palest pink fluttered down like snow upon the daffodils and lay, flecks of foam, upon the close-cut turf.

  In September, when Elizabeth first saw it, the garden was rich and warm beneath the changing tints, and the house basked golden in the autumn sun. Very slowly were the leaves turning, so that here and there, peeping from out the softer green, splashes of red and orange showed, heralds of the year’s decline. The late roses were wide-spread, trembling before their approaching end, and all about them the Canterbury bells nodded to each other, and the lavender waved, thick and fragrant on either side the flagged walks. Beyond were masses of phlox, purple and white, and palest pink. Blue bordering flowers stretched at their feet, and a few tall lilies stood about them, pure white with golden hearts. Asters flaunted every colour on a neighbouring bed, and beside the old wall of mellow red, the sweet-peas rambled, casting their scent about them.

  A hedge of yew with an arch clipped in the centre shut the sunk rock-garden from view. You walked down the flagged path, over the tiny flowers that pushed their way up between the cracks, and stood beneath the arch, at the top of the moss-grown steps that wound their rustic way down through the terraced rockery to the pond below. There gold-fish dwelt, and frogs, beneath a fountain playing rainbow-coloured in the sun, and there a mournful willow bowed its head until its whispering leaves dipped listless to the water’s edge.

  Elizabeth cried out when first she saw Queen’s Halt, thinking it the most beautiful home on earth. Everything in it, all its quaint, old furniture, every plant in the garden she thought delightful, only Nana, tall and prim, made her shy and ill-at-ease. She had expected the old nurse of fiction, buxom and smiling, domineering perhaps, but kind. She found a thin woman with an impassive countenance, w T ho treated her with quiet respect, and with ceremony handed over the keys.

  Just as Mrs. Ramsay found it impossible to pierce beneath Elizabeth’s outward veil, so did Elizabeth, in her turn, find it impossible to become intimate with Nana. She thought perhaps Nana was jealous, and disapproving; no trace of those feelings was apparent in her bearing. Her manners were unimpeachable; if she disagreed with Elizabeth she put forward her own suggestion with deference, and showed no desire to domineer. She baffled Elizabeth with her calmness, and her tight smile. Elizabeth hated her.

  Stephen was afraid that Elizabeth might be dull at first, buried as she was in the depths of the country. She assured him that there was no fear of it. While the country was there to explore, while the fowls required attention, and while rabbits scuttled in the woods boredom, for her, would be impossible. There were Stephen’s dogs too to be exercised and groomed, three of them, all different. Of Hector, the Irish wolfhound, she was at first nervous. She had never seen so large a dog before, but she was careful to hide her alarm of him in case Stephen should laugh, or not understand. The silky cocker, Flo, was her favourite, because Flo was gentle, and had liquid, mournful eyes. But Flo would never willingly leave Stephen.

  She was older than the others and preferred to be under Stephen’s desk when Elizabeth went with Hector, and Jerry, the Airedale, for a tramp through the woods.

  “Keeping house,” the duty to which Elizabeth had so eagerly looked forward, proved to be less pleasant than she had expected, and not a duty at all, but a hobby. For years Nana had held the reins of this office; Elizabeth acknowledged that it would be unfair to wrest them from her. Nana assumed that Elizabeth would find the task onerous; Stephen would not hear of her attempting it. Sadly she thought, how little they understood her! She assumed joint responsibility with Nana; Stephen laughed, thinking it a child’s hobby.

  Almost at once after their return he plunged into the work that awaited him. Elizabeth looked with awe upon the sheets of scrawled manuscript, marvelled that he could write so fast and in so great a muddle. His study, he said, was inviolate. She asked, Against me? He told her not to say silly things. It was inviolate against all spring-cleaning or tidying invasion. She pointed to the dust upon his desk.

  “I like it,” he said simply.

  “But how extraordinary!” she exclaimed.

  “Have you ever looked at dust with the sun on it?” he asked.

  She never had; she considered the question absurd.

  “It’s perfectly beautiful,” he said.

  She ventured to arrange a bowl of roses on his desk, the petals fell; he ordered that the bowl should be removed. She was hurt, but she said nothing.

  In imagination she had seen herself seated quietly in the room while he wrote, sewing, or perhaps with a book. When first she made this dream reality, and tiptoed into the room, he spoke impatiently, and without raising his head.

  “Yes, what is it!”

  “It’s all right,” she said in a low, soothing voice that she would have assumed when speaking to a sick person. “It’s only me.”

  He looked up then, and his frown disappeared.

  “Oh, you, darling! What do you want?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “I’ve just brought my work in here. Don’t stop writing. I shan’t talk to you.”

  He watched her sit down on the sofa. There was a doubtful look in his eyes, but she did not see it. After a few moments he bent again over his paper, and went on writing.

  She was morbidly anxious to make no sound, therefore she sneezed, stifling it to a tiny noise in her throat. Again Stephen looked up, amused.

  “Darling, what a funny little noise! What was it?”

  “A sneeze,” she said. “I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

  “How awfully conscientious! ’Lisbeth, if that’s one of my socks, give it to Nana! I don’t want you to slave over my things.”

 
; “I’m not. Stephen, if you talk to me I shall feel I’m hindering you.”

  He went on with his work, but he wrote more slowly now, and spasmodically. In the pauses between the hurried scratching of his pen he stared out of the window, chin in hand. Elizabeth watched him covertly.

  “The lawn wants mowing,” Stephen said, absent-mindedly.

  “I’m afraid you’re not getting on very fast,” she replied, in some concern. “Does my being here worry you?”

  “Not in the least. The only thing that worries me is Geoffrey. I’m not at all sure that I shan’t give him another name.”

  “Is Geoffrey your hero?” she said.

  He made a grimace.

  “You little horror! It sounds .like a Victorian melodrama.”

  “What does?” she said, bewildered. “Hero?”

  “Of course. One pictures a golden-haired and blue-eyed young colossus, with the strength of a lion and the face and bearing of an archangel. Don’t ask me what my ‘villain’ is like!”

  “But if you don’t call him your ‘hero,’ what are you to call him?”

  “Geoffrey. No, Norman. God, what an inspiration! Norman! It’s perfect. It changes the whole disposition of the man. Elizabeth dear, go and pick flowers, or feed the fowls, or bathe in the stream. I’m going to tear all this up and start afresh.”

  She gathered up her work.

  “I’m worrying you? You’d rather I went?”

  He had pulled fresh paper towards him, and was scribbling fast.

  “No, dearest, but I shan’t be pleasant company until I’ve started Norman in life, so you’d better go. I don’t want to bore you.”