“She’s getting so forgetful, you see,” Mrs Clarke explained. “Mr Rivers is afraid she might lose something important, and then it might be a lot of trouble and worry for everyone. It’s best he should have the handling of all her papers himself.”
In vain Ellen urged that she herself would be responsible for seeing that old Mrs Rivers did not lose anything. Mrs Clarke adhered rigidly to her instructions; she would not even say positively that there was or was not a letter at all.
Ellen turned away. While admiring Mrs Clarke’s rigid loyalty, she was also a little hurt that an exception should not be made for herself. After all, Mrs Clarke knew that she was Leonard’s fiancée—had seen her in and out of his flat for years.
Well, it couldn’t be helped. Perhaps Cousin Laura would have forgotten about the letter by the time she woke up; and anyway, Leonard himself would be back by nine this evening.
As it turned out, he was back a lot earlier. It was barely six, and the sun slanting across the old pear tree seemed to have lost none of its heat, when Leonard came hurrying round the house into the garden. He looked white and tired; and Ellen felt a rush of unaccustomed tenderness as he came towards her.
“Oh, I’m so glad you’re back!” she cried, thankful, in that secret, ever-watchful corner of her mind, that this time the words were not the tactful lie that they sometimes were. It was partly this secret thankfulness that made her throw her arms round his neck with a fervour she had not shown for many months.
Leonard responded with surprise and gratification. He clung to her tightly—almost desperately.
“Oh, Ellen!” he whispered. “You do love me, don’t you? You’ll stick by me whatever happens? Whatever you may hear….?”
Was it love, this warm, exultant flood of feeling? Or was it just pride and triumph at being so trusted and relied on by by a naturally difficult, distrustful man? Oh, why spoil the moment with such introspection? This is the nearest you’ll ever get to love, you spinster you! Take it with both hands and be thankful….
“Of course. Of course,” she murmured, kissing him again; and this time she was wise enough not to ask him what he meant. Slowly, hand in hand, they strolled through the afternoon sunshine towards the house, experiencing, on Ellen’s side at least, a deep, unwonted peace. It would always be like this, she mused impractically, if only she could always remember to be tactful … not to ask the wrong questions … mention the wrong subject … blurt out the wrong opinions….
Or walk in the wrong directions. For as they came out on to the lawn, in full view of Cousin Laura’s recently vacated chair, Leonard’s arm suddenly stiffened. He dropped Ellen’s hand and turned on her sharply.
“My mother’s bag!” he snapped. “Her shawl! She’s been here this afternoon?”
“Of course.” Ellen was suddenly, stupidly, guilty. “I told you—she’s staying here. I told you on the phone.”
“Staying here?” Leonard’s voice was almost shrill. “How can she be? Ellen—what are you up to? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I did tell you!” Tact be damned—if facts are unwelcome, then they are unwelcome. No one can be protected from everything. “I told you when you rang up. I told you specially, but the line was so bad …”
She went on, hurriedly, to explain the circumstances of Cousin Laura’s arrival, and the doctor’s verdict that she must remain here. Leonard listened intently, but his expression of suspicion and dismay scarcely lightened. However, he seemed to be making a great effort to control himself, and when he answered her it was more gently and reasonably than she had expected.
“Ellen,” he said quietly, taking her hand once more and resuming their stroll across the grass, “I know this must all seem rather odd to you—I wish to God it was in my power to explain it, but I mustn’t. But can’t you take it on trust when I tell you that my stepmother must not be in this house unless I am with her? I can’t tell you why—I—— Oh, God, Ellen, won’t you believe me when I say I can’t?”
There could be no doubt of his sincerity at this moment. Ellen tightened her hand on his in sympathy, and did her best to answer the ensuing volley of staccato questions about Cousin Laura’s activities since her arrival yesterday.
“And she wasn’t alone with Father at all,” she concluded, in answer to Leonard’s last query. “Well, only for a very few minutes, while I was washing up; and when I got back I found they’d been getting on famously. She’s asked him to be executor to her will, you know, and he loves the idea….”
“Ellen, you’re not going to let him, are you?”
“Let him? What do you mean? Why ever not? And anyway, it isn’t any of my business. It’s between him and Cousin Laura.”
“Ellen, don’t be so childish! Look facts in the face, for goodness’ sake! You know your father’s an old man; he’s getting pretty muddle-headed and will be even more so by the time——”
“He’s not! He won’t! His mind is as clear as can be. He’s more than capable of a piece of business like that, and will be for years! And anyway, I could help him, and see that nothing got forgotten.”
It was like the gooseberries over again. Kind friends hovering like vultures to snatch from Father all the occupations that still remained to him. Leonard must have seen the protective determination hardening in her face, for apart from muttering something about “Father-fixation” he did not pursue the point. Then, after a moment’s silence, his expression changed:
“Has it occurred to you, Ellen,” he enquired, “that the whole business of my mother’s will is going to be pretty embarrassing? I mean, when it turns out that she hasn’t any money to leave? That she’s been living on me all this time? Do you specially want your father to be a witness to her humiliation?”
“But, Leonard, Father knows!” expostulated Ellen. “You know he does. He was there in the room when you were telling me about it. It was just after your mother had gone to settle in Leeds; don’t you remember?”
“So he does. Yes.” Leonard frowned deeply. “But suppose he dies first? Then who gets let in on the secret?”
“Only me,” said Ellen consolingly. “I would take over—Cousin Laura says she is arranging that. We didn’t tell him, of course, because he so loves the idea of outliving her in spite of being two years older! It’s a very lucky arrangement, really, because now there’s no possibility of any outside person coming to know the truth. Though I don’t really see why it should matter so much—not after she’s dead….”
But Leonard was still frowning. His face in the golden light looked strained and tense.
“You don’t think, do you, Ellen,” he resumed, “that there’s any risk of your father telling her? That’s one of the things I’m afraid of if she hangs around here too much. He hasn’t told her, has he, Ellen? You’re sure?”
“Quite sure,” said Ellen firmly. “For one thing, I’m certain he never thinks about it at all, from one year’s end to the next—you know how he never bothers about anything that doesn’t affect him. And for another, he promised not to tell, just as I did. He wouldn’t break a promise.”
“You see the old devil through rose-coloured spectacles,” grumbled Leonard. “But I can only hope you’re right. God, how I hope you’re right! Because, if she ever should find out….’
He swung away from Ellen in a sort of desperation, and flinging himself on to the old garden seat he leaned forward, clutching his head with both hands. Ellen lowered herself timidly on to the seat beside him, quite bewildered, and not daring to make any comment. When he spoke again it was without looking up, and his voice was muffled:
“It’s crazy, isn’t it? When you think of all the people who get themselves hanged by trying to lay hands on a legacy that isn’t theirs; and now here am I—— My god, it’s ironic!”
He stopped, apparently waiting for Ellen to answer; but she was still utterly at a loss.
“Ironic?” she ventured doubtfully, out of the depths of her bewilderment, and braced herself for the expected snub.
But it did not come. Instead, Leonard turned his face sideways to peer up at her with a bitter little smile.
“Don’t you think it would be ironic, Ellen, if I got my throat cut for the sake of a legacy that doesn’t even exist? When I’m the one who all these years has been making everyone believe that it does? Don’t you think it would be funny? An absolute scream?”
He covered his face again with his hands, and Ellen, utterly helpless to deal with this inexplicable bitterness, could only lay her arm across his shoulders in a gesture meant to be comforting.
But it was not. He jerked away from her touch with a sort of groan. And yet perhaps some good had been done, for a moment later he took his hands from his face and sat up straight.
“I’m sorry, Ellen,” he said gravely. “Perhaps I’m not being fair to you—I keep expecting you to understand things that you can’t possibly understand. But—though I can’t explain the whole thing—can’t you imagine, just a little, how difficult it is for me? Trying to stage-manage Mother’s will so that it’ll look all right to her and to the lawyers? Trying to keep the truth from her without perjuring myself with anyone else? Christ, I’m beginning to feel like a common criminal … and all for having done my best for her …!”
He was not far from tears, and Ellen threw her arms round him in an abandonment of sympathy. Over and over again she assured him of her support, of her unbounded admiration of the devotion and generosity which had got him into this jam.
For jam it was; and no amount of admiration for his motives could blind Ellen any longer to the legal difficulties in which his quixotry might land him. Once again, and more forcibly than ever, she found herself doubting the wisdom of the kindly deception. She knew he would not listen to any suggestion that Cousin Laura should be told the truth—indeed, Ellen could not advocate such a step herself; after all this time the blow to the old lady’s pride would be too severe. But she wished most heartily that the whole scheme had never been embarked on. Why had she not dissuaded him right at the beginning? Of course, at that time, Cousin Laura’s will was not in the forefront of anybody’s mind. But could not the lawyers be told—in strictest confidence, of course? Surely they would sympathise, and work out some way of keeping the old lady in happy ignorance without infringing the law? Especially as Leonard himself was the sole prospective legatee—that should make it easier.
But when she suggested this, Leonard shook his head impatiently. It wasn’t as simple as that; why did women always think that by oversimplifying a problem you were solving it? … Ellen could have cried at this sudden snapping of the current of sympathy which she had felt between them; automatically, she cursed her own tactlessness.
But perhaps there had been no snapping of the current? Perhaps she had imagined it—taking too seriously a hasty remark? For only an hour later, when supper was barely over, he rang up from his flat to ask her to marry him at once. This very week. He had to go back to Leeds tonight, he said; and he would be back on Saturday. Could the wedding—a registry office wedding, of course—could it be fixed for Saturday afternoon? Could she arrange the whole thing while he was gone?
CHAPTER XV
ELLEN FELT AS IF she had received a blow in the face rather than a proposal of marriage. She dropped the receiver back in its place, and stood waiting for this whirl of emotions to settle into some one single emotion, definite and recognisable. Anger, perhaps, at the off-hand style of the proposal? Or excitement? Or panic? Or—of course—joy? It was like waiting for a roulette wheel to settle—the same helpless suspense, the same utter impossibility of guessing the outcome in advance. How wonderful it would be if joy should turn out to be the predominating emotion! All her doubts and uncertainties would be at an end; all the humiliations, real and imagined, of her spinsterhood. Her marriage with Leonard, which had been hanging over her all these years, would be an accomplished fact.
“Hanging over her?” An odd, uncomfortable sort of phrase to come into a woman’s mind in such a connection. But then, her mind hadn’t stopped spinning yet … anything that came into it now could be counted as it were off the record. Why, she was in such a daze, she couldn’t even remember exactly what she had answered. Something like: “Oh, Leonard!”—something quite non-committal, anyway.
Non-committal? After being engaged for seven years, the whole thing settled and taken for granted? How could she draw back now?
But of course she could draw back. Suddenly Ellen felt overwhelmed by the awful freedom of her choice. She felt a deep, desperate envy of those women of more primitive societies whose marriages are arranged for them. If only someone would tell her that she had got to marry Leonard. Or that she mustn’t marry Leonard. If only they would drag her screaming to the altar—or else shut her up in a tower so that she could never see him again. Little knowing how many women have felt like this before her—for who, in this emancipated country, would confess to such feelings?—Ellen turned instinctively to the nearest substitute she knew for a primitive authoritarian society.
Melissa. Melissa, with her definite, uncompromising opinions about absolutely everything; her practical common sense; her bossy, selfless delight in ordering other people’s affairs: all these rather prickly talents seemed to Ellen at this moment to be the qualities of an angel from heaven … in a matter of seconds she was bounding up the stairs, two at a time, to Melissa’s flat.
By great good luck Melissa was alone, and she was not busy. That is to say, she was sewing—that was the nearest she ever came to not being busy—and she welcomed Ellen quite cordially, and without so much as a glance at the clock. She cleared her workbox off the window-seat beside her to make a place for her visitor, and Ellen hurried gratefully across the big, untidy room. Well, no, not untidy exactly, for Melissa was always methodical, and “a place for everything and everything in its place” was no doubt her rule; but the places thus allotted were not the ones that would have been chosen by a more house-proud kind of woman. Such a woman would not have made that pretty polished table under the side window the place for her typewriter and her piles of papers; nor would she have kept a camera tripod and the treadle sewing machine in the panelled alcove that just caught the evening sun.
Hastily stifling such ungrateful and irrelevant criticisms, Ellen sat down, and, too excited for either hesitation or embarrassment, she laid her problem before her cousin.
“But of course you must marry him!” declared Melissa, in just the forthright, unanswerable manner Ellen had hoped for. “There’s no question about it. And do it quickly, just as he says. Before he changes his mind. Snap him up, girl, snap him up while you have the chance!”
Ellen considered this decisive, though not very flattering verdict on her case with mixed feelings. But relief was on the whole predominant.
“Are you sure? But don’t you think,” she added—not in argument exactly, but more for the sheer relief of flinging all her doubts, one after the other, under the steam-roller of Melissa’s certainty—“don’t you think it was rather an odd way of proposing? I mean—just ringing up like that? And wanting me to arrange it all, and everything?”
“Oh, men are all like that!” declared Melissa airily, snapping off a length of wool. “They like to feel they’ve been bullied into marrying you, and then if anything goes wrong it won’t be their fault. Look at Roger—I had to do everything —I practically had to guide his hand to sign his name in the register. But that didn’t mean he didn’t want to marry me. He did—terribly.”
“Yes, I’m sure he did.” Ellen was silent for a moment. Could Melissa’s steam-roller squash this next and greatest doubt? How wonderful if it could!
“But Melissa,” she blurted out “I don’t think I love him. I’m almost sure I don’t—at least, only very occasionally. I feel—sort of—protective towards him sometimes. And very—sort of under his influence. Terribly pleased when he’s being nice to me, I mean, and terribly upset when he isn’t. But that doesn’t really add up to love, does it?”
Oh, Joy! The
steam-roller could manage even this one!
“I don’t know about adding up to love,” said Melissa briskly, her needle darting across and across the bright staring hole in the elbow of Jeremy’s jersey. “And what’s more, I wouldn’t worry about it. I didn’t love Roger at all when I married him. I thought he was rather nice, of course, and I liked him loving me, and I wanted to be married. Thousands of girls get married like that, Ellen. Millions. Most of them.”
Melissa hadn’t conducted a survey of the subject, of course; she hadn’t interviewed all these millions of girls, nor analysed their replies to questionnaires; but such was the decisiveness of her manner that you felt exactly as if she had.
“We’re very happy, too,” she added, obligingly forestalling the question that Ellen was trying tactfully to frame. “You mightn’t think so, the way we squabble all the time, but we are. Really we are.”
There was conviction in her voice, and Ellen heard it with joy; she was listening to Melissa’s discourse as if the whole of her future happiness depended on believing every word of it. Cheerfully unaware of this formidable responsibility, Melissa went on:
“In this world, Ellen, you have to make your life out of what you’ve got, not out of what you haven’t got. What you’ve got is Leonard. Perhaps there are nicer, kinder, better-tempered men in the world—but you haven’t got one of them. You’ve got Leonard. You’re not passionately in love with him? All right—then passionate love is another thing you haven’t got. You’ll have to build your marriage on something else—something you have got. What you have got is being fairly fond of him, fairly dependent on him, and wanting a husband and family enough to put up with his moods and contrariness. That’s as much as millions of women have to start marriage with—and men too, I dare say, if we only knew….”
“What’s that about men?”
Roger had appeared in the doorway, grinning expectantly, and carrying the plate of cold sausages that Melissa had left for his supper—she usually found it impractical to keep a meal hot for him on his late nights. “What about men?” he repeated, pushing Melissa’s work-box aside to make room for his plate, and sitting down facing them across the cluttered table. “What are they up to now? Leaving towels on bathroom floors again?”
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