‘He hasn’t the slightest idea,’ she interrupted quickly, in a rapid, husky little voice. ‘I mean, there’s nothing on his side. I never thought of him as anything but Deborah’s fiancé, and I don’t want to poach on any other girl’s preserves. Even Deborah’s,’ she could not help adding, rather bitterly.
He had not slowed the car while he talked, and did not even glance at her when she said that. But she thought he had noted it very well.
‘You don’t need to tell me that you behaved perfectly over the whole business,’ he said warmly. ‘That wasn’t what I was querying. What I wanted to say—and you must forgive me if I say it a bit clumsily, but I’ve got to make myself clear this once—is that you can’t go on eating your heart out for a man who’s going to marry another girl. Can’t you, somehow, put that all behind you, Anne dear, and accept what I’m longing to offer you?’
She didn’t answer him immediately. She saw that he wanted her to take her time. Besides—however completely she believed her heart to be given to David—what Robin had said was not to be dismissed lightly.
Anne sat there, with her hands clasped in her lap, looking out across the changing vistas of the lake, but seeing nothing.
Robin was offering her what, in some circumstances, would once have seemed great happiness. No girl could ask for a nicer, straighter, better fellow for a husband. That he loved her went without question. That she liked him was something she never even doubted.
But that she should marry him—that was something very different. And, for his sake as well as hers, she must face the fact.
It was true, of course, that many girls failed to marry their first love, and yet were very happy with someone else later. Often with someone who never raised them to the heights or dashed them to the depths in quite the same heartbreaking way.
If she married Robin, there were certain fundamental things of which she could always be sure. He had integrity, kindliness, reliability—She stopped herself suddenly.
No girl needed to catalogue a man’s virtues, in order to decide if she loved him, even the tiniest bit.
She liked Robin—liked him—liked him.
That was the beginning and, alas! also the end of it. And she could not marry, just because she liked. Particularly, she could not marry someone who loved her, when she could only like him in return. In a way, it had little to do with the problem of David. That was something separate. And when she came to that point, she spoke her thoughts aloud.
‘It isn’t because I love David, Robin. Though I do love him. I don’t mind telling you, because you’re so fine and understanding, and I know what I say to you is as safe as if I kept it myself. It’s just, dear, that I don’t feel for you the way one should feel for the man one marries.’
‘You mean you don’t love me?’
‘I mean I don’t love you,’ she agreed steadily, because there was no kindness in prevaricating. ‘I like you as much as I’ve ever liked anyone, I suppose. But that isn’t enough.’
‘If I were willing to be satisfied with that—’
‘No, Robin. Maybe there are cases where that is enough. Though I doubt it, if one loves and the other likes. But for you and me it wouldn’t be enough.’
‘Liking has been known to develop into loving,’ he insisted, refusing to accept the finality of what she said.
‘I couldn’t give you any hope of that, so far as one can read one’s own heart,’ she told him. ‘It’s true that my loving David is something which has no future in it for me, something I must get over, as reasonably and as thoroughly as I can. But I can’t pretend to myself or to you that I can do that by setting someone else in his place.’
‘Not perhaps at once,’ he conceded. ‘But I’d wait, Anne.’
She shook her head.
‘It would be wrong if I let you.’
‘You can’t exactly prevent me,’ he returned, with a faint smile.
‘Well—no. But I can’t give you any encouragement, Robin.’
‘All right, dear. Maybe I’m optimistic enough to manage without encouragement. Time is a strange thing, Anne, and one always likes to believe it’s on one’s side.’
At that, she smiled slightly in her turn.
‘I can’t say anything against that,’ she admitted. ‘Only I’d rather say that I hope time will eventually bring you someone else with whom you’ll be very, very happy.’
‘Much obliged,’ returned Robin, and grinned quite good-humouredly. But he looked obstinate and she thought:
‘I mustn’t stay here much longer. It will only bring unhappiness to someone who’s never been anything but good to me.’
They talked of other things after that. They were even quite lighthearted and gay with each other. And, when they had had lunch, they walked for a while by the Lake together.
But, at the back of her mind, Anne was thinking: ‘Everything has changed. People tell each other that they won’t let a proposal make any difference—that they’ll always be good friends. But it isn’t possible. It’s been lovely, this friendship, but it’s almost over. Like my stay here in the Lake District. Beautiful—beautiful—but passing.’
And she experienced a gentle, not entirely depressing melancholy, as though she were already beginning to say goodbye to the scenes where she had been both happy and miserable.
On the way back, he said:
‘I’ll just drop you at Greenslade, if you don’t mind. I ought to go to see a chap the other side of Ambleside, about some plans for his house.’
She assured him that she did not mind. But she guessed that he was making an excuse not to see her again with David. Or perhaps, since he was essentially generous, he was thinking that she might prefer not to have anyone there who knew, during the last meeting she had with David.
At the gate they said a friendly but unemotional goodbye to each other. And while he drove off again, she went, with a feeling of great reluctance, up the path to the house.
Mrs. Eskin admitted her, and told her that they were having tea in the garden at the back of the house. She showed no surprise at Anne’s arrival, so either David had said something tactful, or she was merely having one of her vague moods, when she took absolutely everything for granted.
The moment Anne stepped out into the garden, however, she knew that David had made no tactful preparations for her. Deborah’s expression of annoyance and surprise showed how unexpected and unwelcome Anne’s presence was.
As she crossed the lawn from the house to the group of garden chairs under the trees, Anne wondered why on earth she had been so foolish as to come, and, at the same time, she felt as angry with David as if she had not loved him at all. Surely the least he could have done was to make things easy for her instead of allowing her to appear as the pushing and unwanted guest.
Certainly he jumped up and welcomed her, with a warmth which might have been intended to cover Deborah’s lack of enthusiasm, but served only to throw it into relief.
Deborah accorded Anne a few words only. And Anne, not caring much about appearances now, replied with equal economy. It was left to Mrs. Eskin to fuss vaguely but hospitably with the tea-cups, and to David to make conversation.
This he did, addressing Anne more than his fiancée, and apparently choosing to ignore the momentarily increasing cloud on Deborah’s face.
After a few minutes, Anne felt bound to second his efforts, however little he might appear to mind the strained atmosphere. She said something at random about her drive with Robin.
Mrs. Eskin murmured something rather high-flown about the melancholy beauties of early autumn, and Deborah’s silence was not quite so noticeable.
Presently, in fact, when Anne was describing how lovely Belle Isle had been looking that morning, she roused herself to say, firmly rather than cordially:
‘You’ve quite settled down here now, haven’t you?’
Anne thought of Robin, and the necessity of not staying much longer.
‘No, I wouldn’t say that, exactly,’ sh
e replied, hardly glancing at Deborah. ‘I love it here, and I should always want to come back for holidays. But when Miss Percival comes back to the office, I shall return home.’
‘Meaning London?’
Deborah and David spoke almost simultaneously—he with obvious approval, and Deborah with hardly concealed annoyance.
‘Yes. I wasn’t quite sure at first if I should want to live here. That’s why I was very glad to have the chance of a temporary post.’ And Anne, finding it now difficult to look either of the other two in the face, addressed herself largely to Mrs. Eskin, who, however, was gazing away into the faintly hazy distance and displaying no interest in anyone’s plans.
‘Then you’ll be coming back in about a month’s time?’ David’s voice sounded incautiously eager, Anne thought, and she was aware that Deborah stirred angrily.
‘Probably a little less,’ she said, in her most businesslike tone. ‘Miss Percival is making a much better recovery than was expected.’
‘So that you’ll be back in London, probably before the end of the month, ready to take another office job?’
‘Ye-es.’
‘Will you come and be my secretary then?’
‘David!’
It was Deborah who cried out, in an astonishment greater than Anne’s, and with a degree of anger she made no effort to control.
‘I never heard of such nonsense,’ she exclaimed furiously, and in that moment it was hard to remember that she was usually a cool, self-contained girl. ‘You need someone careful and reliable and—’
‘Anne is all of that,’ David interrupted coolly.
‘She is not! And you know it. Or you would know it if you hadn’t let her pull wool over your eyes.’
‘Don’t be silly, Deborah. I’m not in the habit of letting people pull wool over my eyes,’ David said, growing colder as Deborah grew hotter and wilder in her accusations. ‘I simply don’t know what you’re referring to and—’
‘Of course you do! You’ve been indulgent and incredulous about that Firth & Farraday business all along. She made a muddle over that letter and lost you the contract. And when she found the letter in the drawer—’
‘But she didn’t find any letter in the drawer.’ Suddenly, Mrs. Eskin came back from her communing with nature, to make this mild observation. ‘I remember distinctly. David said he was satisfied there was no letter.’
‘David didn’t go into the room until some minutes after Anne,’ Deborah retorted triumphantly. ‘She’d already found and hidden it, and no doubt destroyed it later.’
‘I did not hide or destroy any letter,’ Anne stated coldly and categorically.
‘You see, Deborah,’ David said, almost carelessly, as though he simply refused to take the matter seriously.
‘Of course she did!’ Deborah was beside herself with rage. ‘It was gone when I—’
She stopped suddenly. And over the group in the garden a profound silence fell.
Anne found that she was shaking. Not with relief or excitement. But with disgust and a sort of revulsion of feeling.
She was not sure, even now, whether David had staged this scene—and, if so, with what motive—or whether Deborah had simply given herself away, quite naturally, in her anger.
In either case, Anne had no wish to see her enemy abased in front of her. She wished passionately now that she had refused to come here this afternoon—that she had interpreted David’s original request for silence quite literally, and simply refused to have the subject mentioned again. Then she heard David’s voice say, almost gently:
‘I couldn’t accuse you without proof, Deborah. It was necessary for you to accuse yourself.’
And after that, Anne got up from her chair and slipped away, feeling frightened and dismayed and relieved all at once, and absurdly inclined to cry.
She walked home. And, during the walk, had time to pull herself together, for she had no wish to appear before Mrs. Thurber in obvious distress for the second time within twenty-four hours.
As she let herself into the house, Mrs. Thurber called out brightly from the back sitting-room:
‘Is that you, dear? Had a nice day?’
‘A nice day’ was such an engaging way of describing all the strains and stresses of the last few hours that Anne laughed aloud. And, if the laugh had a faintly hysterical note in it, Mrs. Thurber did not notice. She was too well satisfied just to note the fact that her nice young Miss Hemming had come in in a much more cheerful mood.
‘It was a lovely drive round the lake.’
Anne stood in the doorway of the room and smiled at Mrs. Thurber, aware that this evasive piece of cheerfulness would serve very well for a satisfactory answer.
‘I am so glad. And Mr. Eskin is an extremely nice young man,’ Mrs. Thurber observed, with a delicate mingling of suggestion, consolation and approval in her tone.
‘Very nice,’ Anne agreed most sincerely.
But she was not anxious to be drawn into further discussion of Robin’s ‘niceness’ just then, and, after a few words more, she went up to her own room.
She thought she would sit there quietly, and try to think calmly and collectedly of all that had happened. But she found, almost immediately, that it was impossible to sit still. She was too deeply agitated.
Softly, she walked up and down her room, asking herself innumerable questions, and finding no answers.
Had it been David’s intention, all along, that Deborah should give herself away like that? And if so—to what end?
Why had he been so insistent that Anne should come that afternoon? And what had he meant by saying it was so important for him that he could not even tell her how important?
What was he going to do now? What had prompted his rash repetition of the suggestion that she should become his secretary? Did that offer still stand? And if so, did the changed circumstances justify her accepting it?
Anne’s excitement mounted, instead of diminishing. She felt she could hardly wait to know the answer to even a few of the questions which crowded upon her.
Then she remembered, with a sudden pang, that she might have to wait even weeks before she did know much more. For David was leaving tonight, and she would not see him again until she herself returned to London.
Would the question of her possible secretaryship be left open until then?
The thought that she might lose that, in the confusion of all the other events, suddenly brought home to her how determined she was to accept it now. She would write to him. In what terms she could not imagine, after all that had happened. But she would have to do something to make sure that she saw him again in London.
For the moment, perhaps she would grow calmer, if she could force herself to think of something else entirely—
But it was impossible to think of anything else. She could not occupy herself with her small immediate affairs. Already she felt herself detached from the life of recent months. Her thoughts ran on ahead to the only thing which mattered— her meeting with David in London.
She began to reckon the days until she might possibly be able to leave the office. Even if Miss Percival’s return were delayed, perhaps another substitute might be obtained. With luck, she might even get away in a week or ten days’ time.
It was all Anne could do to restrain herself from beginning to pack her luggage right away.
And presently she compromised between common sense, fact and rapturous conjecture, by sitting down and beginning to write to her cousins, to say that they might expect her back in London in the very near future.
That, at least, made her feel that she was almost on her way. And she was still engaged in this delightful piece of make-believe when Mrs. Thurber’s footsteps were heard ascending the stairs, and she knocked softly on Anne’s door.
‘Come in,’ Anne called. But she got up and went to the door to admit her landlady.
‘It’s someone to see you, dear,’ Mrs. Thurber explained, in a stage whisper. ‘I said I would see if you were home, in
case you didn’t want to see him. I think it’s that Mr. Jerome, but he doesn’t look specially stern or angry or anything. I’ve put him in the front parlour and—’
But the rest of her words were addressed to Anne’s back. For at the words ‘I think it’s that Mr. Jerome’, Anne had started to run downstairs. And Mrs. Thurber, listening anxiously, heard Anne jump the last three steps like a schoolchild.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
He was standing by the window, looking out into Mrs. Thurber’s garden, when Anne came into the room. But at the sound of her step he turned and came towards her.
‘Anne, will you forgive me?’ was the astonishing thing he said, as he took both her hands in his.
‘For—for what?’ she stammered, aware of hardly anything but the fact that he was holding her hands against him, and looking down at her with amused, yet anxious, tenderness.
‘For putting you through that horrible scene just now, of course. I couldn’t do it any other way, my dear. Unless I made her sufficiently angry to lose her head, she would never have admitted what she’d done. And unfortunately, you were the one person necessary to make her as angry as that.’
‘But’—Anne’s voice was soft and diffident—‘why was it necessary to make her admit it? I thought you loved her and wanted the whole thing hushed up. I can’t see why you should arrange a—almost a public admission of guilt. If it was to satisfy my pride, I—I’d rather not have had it done, I think. I’m not—ruthless. Like you,’ she added, as an afterthought.
He gave a vexed little laugh at that. But, sitting down on Mrs. Thurber’s Victorian horsehair sofa, he drew Anne down beside him.
‘Just a moment,’ he said. ‘Let’s get this straight. What made you think I loved Deborah and wanted to hush things up? You can’t possibly suppose I could love her, after what she tried to do to you? Do you think—’
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