Escape to Happiness

by Mary Whistler

  All the same, if there had been a telephone in the cottage, and she could have rung Tregony’s Choice, she would have done so; but there was no telephone, no means of communication, and instead she built up the fire, felt too weary after the buffeting she had received to stir from the warmth, or even bother about lighting the lamp, and fell asleep with her head resting on the hard seat of a chair behind her and her slight body uncomfortably curled on the carpet.

  When she awakened it was to be bewildered because someone was standing over her, and an urgent voice was trying to penetrate the thick fog of sleep that was still clouding her brain. She scrambled to her knees, and Guy knelt down and caught her by her slender shoulders and drew her towards him, and she realized that he was very wet, his hair plastered to his head just as hers had been.

  “Oh, Rose, Rose, I’ve been half out of my mind with anxiety about you!” he told her. Then he shook her as if he thought she deserved it. “What right had you to give me such a fright?”

  “Right?” she whispered, not certain that she wasn’t dreaming, and she saw his blue eyes blaze angrily and ruefully at the same time in the fireglow.

  “You went for a walk, and you didn’t come back. You had no business to go out by yourself when it was obvious the weather was about to change!”

  “I didn’t notice the weather,” she admitted truthfully.

  “You didn’t? Then what did you notice?”

  “Nothing,” she answered, and he laughed lightheadedly and caught her close to him. “Oh, Rose - you idiotic Rose! - if you give me such a fright again I’ll punish you severely! As it is, I only found you by sheer chance. I saw the light in the cottage, and I came here to investigate. It seemed too good that I would find you here.”

  “But you did,” she whispered. “And you might have got blown over the cliff looking for me!”

  “In which case you would have been entirely to blame.” But his expression was tender, unutterably relieved. “You’d have had my death on your hands, you elusive, evasive, unsatisfactory Rose! But very soon I’m going to marry you,” he told her, while the wet streamed down from his hair and soaked the shoulder of her dress.

  She extricated herself from his hold and went to the kitchen door.

  “There’s a towel in here,” she said. “You must dry yourself.”

  He endeavoured to do his best while she stood watching him, the blood pounding through her veins like a mill-race, her pulses hammering because he had risked the violence of such a wild night to set out and look for her. Smiling quizzically, he handed her back the towel, and then when she said she would go and search amongst the contents of the kitchen for something that could be made into a hot drink he shook his head, and held out his arms to her.

  “I’m quite dry now - or reasonably dry - and we can both share this chair while I talk to you.” He drew her down into the depths of a creaking basket chair, and although she struggled he held her strongly. “I’ve just told you I’m going to marry you, Rose!”

  “Let me make some tea,” she pleaded.

  “Later,” he promised. “You shall make tea, or coffee, or both - later on! - for I’m afraid well have to spend the night here. But at the moment I’m minded to have a serious conversation with you.”

  He put his fingers under her chin and tilted it, and looked deep into her eyes.

  “Next week, Rose, we’re going to Paris ... And you are you going to become my wife!”

  “Because you’re so afraid of Carmella?”

  He smiled curiously.

  “Let’s leave Carmella out of it for the time being, shall we?” he said. “It’s you I intend to marry, and I’m going to keep you, Rose ... always! You’ll be tied to me, hand and foot, and all because you once worked late in old Mancroft’s office, and the Fates willed that I should come upon you at such a time!”

  Her big brown eyes grew troubled, and her mouth quivered a little.

  “I told you I wouldn’t marry you,” she said. “And I meant it!”

  “You sweet, foolish child,” he murmured, and gently stroked her cheek. “It’s what I’ve decided that counts. And in Paris I’ll have such a lot to show you. It’s an exciting place, Rose ... possibly the most exciting capital on earth! I’m afraid you’ll have to have a very dull sort of a wedding - in a mayor’s parlour instead of a church - but there’ll be no doubt about the legality of it, and - as I said - you’ll be tied to me. You’ll be Rose Wakeford instead of Rose Arden, and I shall have a wife at last.”

  She struggled violently in his hold.

  “But I’m not the wife for you. You know it, and you must let me go! And - and there’s Carmella. You know very well there will always be Carmella!”

  “Forget Carmella,” he said softly, and brought his mouth near hers after she had felt it pressing light kisses on her hair. “Rose darling, you haven’t let me come anywhere near you since that night when I asked you to marry me, and that was the night I discovered how very, very sweet you could be in my arms. Darling, remember we’ve got to stay here till dawn, and stop advancing so many arguments! I won’t listen to them!”

  But before his lips touched hers there was one argument she had to advance, and she did so.

  “You stayed here with Carmella,” she reminded him. “It was on a night like this. She reminded you of it only this morning.” And she twisted all ways to avoid that downward movement of his mouth.

  He frowned, and his blue eyes looked bright and angry in the flickering light from the fire.

  “Forget Carmella!” he ordered, and caught her face between his hands and finally frustrated her efforts to keep it turned away from him. “How stupid can a young woman like you be?” he demanded, and fastened his lips to hers.

  Rose ceased to have any desire to resist him, and while the clock ticked away ponderously on the mantelpiece she lay in his arms in the basket chair and he kissed her as he had kissed her before, with tenderness, with rising passion, and finally with something so demanding in the passion that she fought once more to release her mouth, and he allowed her to bury her head under his chin and keep her face pressed to the cloth of his coat.

  But his arms still retained her as a prisoner, and she could feel the quickened beating of his heart, and the slight trembling of his hand as it touched her hair. Even his voice was not particularly steady as he whispered to her.

  “Oh, Rose, you’re quite unlike any experience in my life before! I don’t know what to say to you, how to convince you, but ... you do like me a little, don’t you, Rose? Perhaps more than a little?” endeavouring to force her face out into the open again.

  Her eyes gazed up at him, brown and revealing. She didn’t like him at all, but she loved him with the whole of her heart, and the truth was there for him to read between the fluttering eyelashes. He touched the bright tips of them gently with his fingers, and his whole expression softened so much that her heart expanded.

  “I’ll make you very happy, Rose,” he promised with a touch of huskiness, “if you’ll only say that everything is settled between us!”

  “And you won’t - ever - have any regrets?” she inquired, her big eyes anxious again.

  He smiled at her as he might have smiled at a doubting child, and slightly shook his head.

  “I’ll have you, Rose!”

  She went back into his arms again, and put her head down on his shoulder, but deep down inside herself she sighed. It had never even occurred to him that he could reassure her entirely by telling her that he loved her!

  She lay very still in his arms, and he seemed content to hold her, and by degrees she grew very drowsy, and dozed where she lay. Outside the wind died, the huge waves thundering against the foot of the cliffs grew less frenzied in their efforts to demolish the whole of the wall of rock, and the moon climbed high in the sky.

  The sitting-room grew cold as the fire died down, and at last Guy roused the sleeping girl and wrapped her up warmly in her coat, and carried her out to his car on the cliff road. When the
y slid noiselessly up the drive of Tregony’s Choice the house was in darkness, as if everyone was in bed, but Mrs. Bewes came at once to his knocking. She explained that she had kept a big fire going in the kitchen, and had been waiting for him.

  She helped Rose upstairs to her room, and then she returned downstairs to her master, who was sitting in front of the library fire and endeavouring to coax it into a blaze. Mrs. Bewes looked at him curiously.

  “Why don’t you go to bed?” she said.

  He smiled at her lazily.

  “Because I prefer to sit here, Bewsie. Bring me a pot of strong, hot coffee, and I’ll keep the fire company until morning.”

  “You’d be more comfortable in bed,” she suggested.

  His eyes regarded her without any smile.

  “I’ve a lot to think about, Bewsie!” he told her.

  CHAPTER XIV

  On arrival in Paris Carmella took over the role of adviser, mentor, guide, and well-meaning dose friend to Rose in earnest.

  She began even before they left London, where she insisted on getting in touch with the head of a chic little establishment in the West End and having Rose outfitted for the journey to Paris. The clothes were ready-made, but were altered at top speed, and delivered two mornings after they had motored up from Cornwall.

  The intervening period, while they waited for the concentrated efforts of the couturiere, were devoted to having Rose metamorphosed into something she had never been before by a hair stylist and beautician who had the reputation for working miracles even on the most unlikely subjects; and Carmella stood by - or rather, sat by, on a gilded chair - and watched the procedure with the interest of one who was committed to working miracles also.

  Afterwards they raced round the shops and bought things like gloves and shoes and handbags, while Guy paid his first visit to his flat for rather more than three weeks and instructed his manservant to pack for him. That same manservant - wooden-faced, like most of his tribe - waited on them at dinner that night in the flat’s small but superbly fitted dining-room, and afterwards brought coffee to them in the sitting-room that was a strange mixture of severe masculine comfort and ultra-modern elegance.

  Looking round it, and catching sight of the Picasso over the fireplace, and the delicate Epstein bronze on a pedestal near the window, Rose found it difficult to believe that this would one day be her home ... One of her homes!

  She was wearing one of the hurriedly altered dresses, a slim-fitting velvet in a lovely shade of green - absolutely right with the pale primrose cap that was now her hair - and the large brown eyes had a sort of uncertain awe in them as they gazed about the room. Guy, who had seen very little of her for twenty-four hours, smiled as he watched her, and there was so much tenderness in the smile that Carmella, watching him in her turn, decided that he was quite fascinated by the results of the hairstylist’s endeavours of the morning, and the clever young woman in the pink overall who had emphasized the beauty of a pale but delicate skin.

  In fact, for just one moment she wondered whether her tactics were the right ones ... And then she glanced again at the tender smile on the man’s lips, realized that the softness in his eyes was a half-humouring softness, as if he was dealing with a child, or a very young person, who had engaged his interest; and felt that she could lie back in her chair and relax.

  But Rose was not able to enjoy all the pleasures of the evening without her enjoyment being diluted, for she had wanted to visit her own tiny flat, that had been left without any preparation for an absence of any length of time, but Carmella had vetoed the suggestion so determinedly that she hadn’t done so, and she had wanted to visit Mr. Mancroft ... And that too had been dismissed as so much waste of valuable time.

  “We haven’t a moment to lose,” Carmella had declared, as soon as they were installed at the quiet hotel where they were not likely to draw much attention to themselves (or attract newspaper columnists if Guy should visit them!) “if we’re to do all the things we’ve got to do before we leave. Why, my dear child, you haven’t even a passport, and there are a hundred other things you seem to be bereft of,” for she had scorned the outfit collected for Rose by Mrs. Bewes when she first reached Cornwall. “If we’re to do all the things we simply must do before we leave England, and get away before the first of Guy’s old and infinitely curious friends has discovered that he’s back in town, then you’ll have to leave unimportant matters until a later date!”

  So, on her last night in England for she knew not how long - for Guy talked of going off on a prolonged honeymoon as soon as she was securely tied to him, and showing her parts of the world with which he himself was very familiar - Rose felt depressed, and a little wistful, for she hadn’t bidden her old landlady goodbye (although Guy had sent a most satisfactory cheque for the rent) and she hadn’t been anywhere near Mr. Mancroft’s office to explain the reason why she had stayed away from him for so long.

  “You mustn’t worry your head about these things,” Guy had said, when he discovered she was worrying. “Once we’re married, and our honeymoon is over, I’ll take you myself and present you to old Mancroft as my charming little wife. And if that won’t give him a surprise, I don’t know what will!”

  “Your marriage will give quite a few of your old friends a surprise,” Carmella remarked quietly. “After the collapse of your most recent set of matrimonial plans (apart from the ones we are pursuing at present, of course!) I should think most of them have decided that you’re cut out to be a bachelor.”

  Guy looked at her, a faint, quizzical twist to the corners of his lips.

  “Well, they’re in for a surprise, aren’t they?” he observed.

  “They certainly are,” she agreed.

  He took Rose by the arm and led her up to the Picasso.

  “If you don’t like this, you can do what you like with it when we get back,” he promised her. “I’ve seen you directing at it some very puzzled glances since you first found your way into this room, and I give you permission to turn the whole place upside down once we return to it as an old married couple. How will you like that, Rose?”

  She glanced up into his face with the shyness that came over her whenever he referred to their marriage.

  “I think the flat is perfect, and I wouldn’t want to alter it,” she admitted. “But I’m afraid I don’t understand Picasso!” as if she recognized it was a fault of her upbringing, and no reflection on his taste.

  He took her chin in his hand and tilted her face.

  “There are a lot of things you don’t understand, Rose,” he told her, almost soberly, and under the eyes of Carmella, who was hugging a mink stole round her in readiness to leave, he bent and kissed her upturned face very gently full on the mouth. “Perhaps you will one day!” he added quietly.

  Carmella drew the stole more tightly about her.

  “I think we ought to go now, Rose,” she said, crisply and clearly. “We still have a lot of packing to do, and we have to be up early.”

  Guy turned, and caught and held her eyes with his own. The black and the blue ones seemed to clash.

  In the morning, while he locked the doors of his car at the airport, and gave instructions about its bestowal, Rose stood shivering on the tarmac, and Carmella stood beside her. Rose was shivering with excitement at the thought of her first flight - and also, perhaps, because it was a very cold November morning, and the leopard-skin lining of her pale beige coat didn’t quite keep out the cold. Carmella, in three-quarter-length mink, looked much more impervious to the weather.

  “When we get to Paris we’ll have to get you some real furs,” she said, as if she was the one who would be footing the bill. “Christmas isn’t far off, and you must persuade Guy to give you a really splendid Christmas present, as well as a wedding present.”

  But Rose looked frightened at the thought of all that Guy had spent on her already. She wasn’t married yet, but he insisted on paying for all Carmella’s wild extravagances in connection with herself, and how she wou
ld ever repay him if ... if...

  But when Guy turned to her her heart grew warm at once, and somehow it no longer seemed that her future was at the mercy of an “if”. He looked at the small, anxious face under the jaunty leopard-skin hat, and instantly he decided that she was having an attack of nerves at the thought of her first flight, and he put his arm around her and kept it there while they followed the stewardess across the tarmac to the number that had been called.

  “There’s no cause to be alarmed,” he assured her, in a comforting whisper. “You had far more cause for alarm when you drove me down to Cornwall that night! Remember?”

  And she looked up at him gratefully.

  He gave her hand a squeeze.

  “In any case, I’ll be sitting next to you!”

  But when they arrived in Paris Carmella declined to listen to his suggestion that they should drive straight to the Crillon, and insisted that her maid was expecting her and Rose. Guy must, of course, go to the Crillon, as his house was not in any order to receive him, and he must dine with them that night. But, until then, he would have to say au revoir to Rose, and the two of them would have to get along somehow or other without one another until eight o’clock that evening.

  This was said so dryly that Rose flushed, and Guy looked a little displeased and inclined to dispute such an arrangement.

  “Half-past seven, if you feel you can’t hang out until eight!” with a derisive gleam in the superb dark eyes.

  Guy saw them both into a taxi, and watched it move away, and then hailed another taxi for himself. Looking back at him out of the rear window, Rose knew a curious feeling of desolation because she was to be separated from him for a brief while, and as the taxi gathered speed and she lost sight of him altogether the desolation spread. It was not until Carmella drew her attention to one of the most famous features of the Paris skyline, the towers of Notre-Dame, that a faint feeling of excitement began to stir in her, because this was, after all, a new experience, and France was utterly strange to her, and she shook off the feeling that she had been deprived of a vital part of herself, and sat up and looked about her. And then they were running along beside the Seine, and it was calm and grey in the greyer November atmosphere.