My Sister Celia

by Mary Burchell

  “But that could take ages!” wailed Freda.

  “Not so long,” he assured her soothingly.

  “It’s going to spoil the whole week down here, anyway,” she retorted gloomily.

  “Not so thoroughly as it would have been spoiled if she had announced her engagement to Laurence Clumber,” he pointed out.

  The truth of that struck Freda so forcibly that she was silent for a moment. Then another cause for shame presented itself to her, and she said, “We’ve behaved pretty badly to him, too.”

  “Have we?” Brian, perhaps understandably, looked only mildly interested. “In what way?”

  “Well, if he was really hoping Celia would fall for him—”

  “There always has to be a loser,” Brian said philosophically.

  “And it’s all right so long as it isn’t you, I suppose?” returned Freda crossly.

  “My dear girl, I’ve loved Celia since the days when I used to do her homework for her. He’s known her for a matter of weeks.”

  Again Freda saw the force of his argument. But she felt bound to say defensively,

  “It isn’t always just a question of time.” Smiling, Brian got up and ruffled her hair, in the casual, brotherly way that was so much more acceptable than any assumed lovemaking.

  “Freda dear. I’m not shedding any tears for Clumber,” he said firmly. “That’s asking too much of me.”

  She laughed a little vexedly. And then suddenly she smothered a yawn.

  “I’m sorry. But I too had a pretty early start,” she explained.

  “And a rather taxing day. Would you like me to drive you home now?”

  “There’s nothing I’d like better. But I suppose Laurence ought to find us here, rapturously discussing our future plans. I’m surprised he’s not back yet.” And she glanced at the elegant French clock on the mantelpiece, which had ticked away sedately in Miss Clumber’s time and now seemed, in Freda’s imagination, to be registering well-bred disapproval of all which had happened in the last hour it had recorded.

  “I expect he’s tactfully driving around the countryside, leaving us to our own devices,” Brian said, with a smile. “But, if you’re tired, my dear, you can certainly call it a day now, without anyone supposing that we’ve quarrelled.”

  “Very well. I’d really be glad to go,” Freda confessed. For she felt suddenly that she simply could not start putting on her engagement act again as she expressed it to herself, for the benefit of Laurence when he returned. “Just tell Larry I was tired, and thank him on my behalf for a very pleasant evening.”

  Somehow they both found they were able to laugh at that, and Brian added drily,

  “At least it’s an evening that neither of us is ever likely to forget.”

  As Freda stood in the hall, waiting for Brian to bring round the car from the garage, Ada came from somewhere in the back of the house.

  “Why, Miss Freda—” she stopped in surprise. “What are you doing all alone there? Where’s everyone gone?”

  “My sister was tired, and Mr. Clumber took her home early,” Freda explained. “And now I’m waiting for Mr. Vanner to bring round his car to take me home.”

  “A very nice gentleman,” commented Ada, whose natural propensity for mild gossiping had been so ruthlessly subdued in Miss Clumber’s time that it was inclined to break out a little freely now.

  “Yes, isn’t he?”

  “He would do very nicely for your sister, Miss Freda,” observed Ada, overstepping what Miss Clumber would have called The Mark by a long way.

  “Do you think so, Ada?” Freda couldn’t help being amused by this sign of instinctive knowledge. “You don’t think he’d do nicely for me?”

  “Oh, Miss Freda! I had thought—otherwise for you,” Ada confessed somewhat primly.

  “Had you?” Involuntarily Freda sighed.

  “And the odd thing is that when Mrs. Maude”— Mrs. Maude was the cook, who had also been there in Miss Clumber’s time—“when Mrs. Maude read our teacups this afternoon, there was an engagement in both our cups.”

  “But doesn’t that mean an engagement for you?” enquired Freda, curious in spite of herself.

  “Oh, no, Miss Freda,” Ada laughed. “Our time for that sort of thing’s been over for many a long day. It means an engagement in the house.”

  Or in the garden, thought Freda, with a gleam of humour, and she felt quite tempted to tell Ada that she reported more accurately than she knew. However, of course, she restrained the impulse. And as Brian appeared in the doorway just then, she bade Ada good night and went out to the car.

  “Ada and Mrs. Maude both had an engagement in their teacups this afternoon,” she informed Brian, as the car slid almost silently down the drive.

  “They had what?”

  “A clear indication, judging by tea-leaves, that there was going to be an engagement in the house,” Freda amplified obligingly.

  “Well, I’m dashed!” Brian laughed. “Did it look a phoney engagement or a real one?”

  “I didn’t like to ask too much about it,” Freda said. “But Ada thinks you’re a very nice gentleman and that you’ll do very well for my sister.”

  “The deuce! How does she know as much as that?”

  “She doesn’t. She just has a natural instinct for these things.”

  “And what,” asked Brian, curiously, “does her natural instinct tell her about you?”

  “Oh”—Freda laughed and was glad that the darkness covered her sudden flush—“she just thinks I’d make a good wife for someone.”

  “She’s right, too,” Brian declared heartily, as they came in sight of the cottage. “Hello—the lights are all out. Celia evidently went straight to bed.” “She said she was tired,” Freda reminded him. But, with a sudden heaviness of heart, she knew that her sister was trying to avoid any intimate discussion.

  Just as well, of course. The last thing Freda wanted was to have to retrace the details of her nonexistent engagement. But it hurt her to remember how much she had looked forward to that first night in the cottage with Celia. They should have rounded off a happy day with a cosy gossip in dressing-gowns. Now she wondered if she and Celia would ever be on those terms again.

  Having said a brief and unromantic good night to Brian, she quietly let herself into the cottage. If Celia were asleep—or even pretending to be asleep—she must respect the fact. Either she was truly worn out or hiding her unhappiness behind a barrier of pretence. Whichever it was, the last person she would want would be Freda.

  Still moving very quietly, Freda set about putting the table ready for breakfast next morning, wondering, as she did so, how on earth they were going to face each other across that same table and make normal conversation.

  “It’s all spoiled,” thought Freda, and surreptitiously she licked away a salt tear which trickled down towards the comer of her mouth.

  It was all very well for Brian to say he must decide when Celia should be told the true state of affairs. That didn’t take into account the embarrassment and unhappiness of the next few days. And this was Freda’s holiday! The lovely, lovely time she had anticipated, in her own house, with her own sister for company.

  “If Celia doesn’t hate me by the end of all this, I’ll be lucky,” she muttered angrily as, having finished her preparations, she softly mounted the stairs to her bedroom.

  The stairs gave companionable little creaks, in the manner of old stairs, but Celia did not call out or make any other sign of her presence. And, although her door was ajar, something forced Freda to go past it without any attempt at speech.

  “She’s asleep,” she told herself. But the conviction grew upon her that Celia was not asleep at all. She was probably lying there, tense, in the darkness, hoping that Freda would soon shut her door, so that she could cry in peace.

  “But she didn’t shut her own door,” thought Freda suddenly. “Did she leave it open in the hope that I would say something? Is she waiting for me to say something—anything—tha
t will give her some comfort? And what can I say, anyway?”

  She was undressed by now, and she stood there in her nightdress, unable to go to bed and yet unable to think what to do next.

  Brian had said she was not to tell Celia the truth yet—and Brian probably understood Celia better than anyone. And yet—

  “She’s my sister,” thought Freda fiercely. “I’m not going to take instructions about her from anyone. Not even from Brian. I’m going to see what she has to say to me. I’m going to judge for myself how she feels. And if I think she should be told—”

  Without finishing the sentence, even in her own thoughts, Freda flung on her dressing-gown and crossed the tiny landing.

  “Celia,” she said softly outside the half-open door.

  But there was no reply.

  She stood there, undecided, listening, and the silence was so intense that she thought she should be able to hear Celia’s breathing. Certainly, if she were deeply asleep...

  On impulse, Freda pushed the door fully open and looked in. Then, as the brilliant moonlight picked out every detail for her, she uttered a gasp.

  The room was empty. There was no one in Celia’s bed.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  In THE first shocked moment of discovery, it seemed to Freda that only something tragic could explain Celia’s absence.

  “What has she done with herself?” she said aloud, with a gasp of fear. “Celia! Oh, why did I ever agree to this silly and dangerous pretence?”

  She walked distractedly about the little room, rubbing her hands nervously together, talking to herself since there was no one else to talk to.

  “The bedclothes haven’t even been turned back. Then she hasn’t been home at all. She must still be out with Larry. And that must mean—”

  Well, what did it mean? Could there have been an accident?

  But no, she assured herself, as she began to grow calmer—if there had been any accident on the short way home, she and Brian could not have failed to come upon some signs of it. Then, for some inexplicable reason of their own, Celia and Larry must be motoring round the countryside.

  And, even as she came to this conclusion, Freda heard sounds of a car coming along the road and stopping outside the cottage.

  Feeling in some way a guilty intruder, she ran back to her own room, where she stood, undecided, trying to make up her mind whether to pretend in her turn, that she was asleep in bed, or whether to go down boldly and court discussion with Celia.

  Then the memory of her terror when she first stood beside Celia’s empty bed decided her. She had had enough of masquerading. The anguish of supposing that her play-acting might have brought disaster to Celia was still fresh upon her. Whether Brian liked it or not, she was going to have done with pretending.

  While she had been coming to this decision, Celia and Laurence had evidently said their good nights, for she now heard the front door of the cottage open, and only Celia’s footsteps came in.

  “Celia!” She called out in as natural a voice as she could manage. “I’m in, so don’t think there’s a burglar upstairs.”

  She came to the head of the staircase and looked down into the half-lit room below. Celia looked up, and for a moment Freda thought she saw consternation on her sister’s face. Then Celia’s characteristic smile flashed out and she said, in almost her normal tone,

  “Hello! I didn’t expect you and Brian to break things up yet.”

  “N-no? Well, I was suddenly tired. I suppose it was our early start this morning. You said you were tired too. I thought until a few minutes ago that you were fast asleep in bed.”

  She came slowly down the stairs now, until she stood only a few steps above Celia.

  “Once I got into the open air again, I felt better,” Celia explained lightly.

  “Then have you just been—driving around?” Freda asked a little diffidently.

  “Yes. At least—no. Not only that. It seemed such a wonderful moonlight night that our first idea was just to go for a short run. Then”—Celia laughed a trifle self-consciously—“I don’t know whether there’s something catching about engagements, Freda, or whether it was the force of example. But—” She paused, and the most dreadful premonitory chill slid down Freda’s spine.

  “Wh-what do you mean?” she said, moistening suddenly dry lips with the tip of a nervous tongue.

  “Can’t you guess?” Again that little, not entirely natural laugh, though Celia’s eyes looked bright and clear. “Larry and I started talking about your engagement and suddenly we found we were talking about ourselves instead. And—well, Freda, the obvious happened. We thought we’d make it a double engagement. And so—we’re engaged too.” For a moment Freda thought the cottage clock on the wall had stopped. At any rate, she didn’t hear its loud, companionable tick for several seconds. What she did hear was her own voice saying, in a thin unconvincing sort of tone,

  “How wonderful.”

  “Yes—isn’t it?”

  Slowly Freda came down the last few steps and, putting her arms round her sister, she kissed her. “Darling,” she said, “are you very happy?”

  “Yes, of course. Aren’t you?”

  “No,” said Freda, without any possibility of stopping herself. And then she burst into tears.

  “Freda!” Celia cried out in amazement. “What on earth is the matter?”

  “Everything,” sobbed Freda. And wrenching herself away from Celia’s eager, detaining hands, she went and sat down in one of the comfortable armchairs they had chosen together and, burying her face in her hands, she cried and cried.

  “But I don’t understand!” Celia followed and stood over her, distracted and anxious. “What’s wrong, darling? You’re just engaged. You should be madly happy. Brian’s the dearest man on earth—and you’re going to marry him.”

  “I’m not,” gasped Freda, with all the force of her angry conviction.

  “But”—Celia’s voice trailed away incredulously. Then she found it again, to ask almost apologetically, “Do you mean that you’ve—quarrelled or something?”

  “Oh, no. Nothing like that.”

  “Then I simply don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Celia helplessly.

  “No, no—how could you? I’ll try to explain.” Freda checked her sobs, clasped her hands together, and tried to imagine what she was to say.

  One thing was certain. She must not betray Brian, or breathe any word of his ill-starred planning. But, at the same time, she could not go on with this horrible mockery of an engagement.

  “It’s all my fault,” she began, in a low voice.

  “I’m sure it isn’t,” declared Celia loyally.

  “I ought to have known my mind better.” Freda tried to infuse a sort of embarrassed remorse into her tone. “But it—it was all so unexpected. I like Brian most awfully—I wouldn’t hurt him for the world. And somehow, in the garden—with the moon and everything—”

  “The moon wasn’t up then,” Celia pointed out, practically.

  “Well, it all seemed so romantic, anyway. I’d never had anyone make love to me before. I suppose I was—thrilled and rather carried off my feet. Then he asked me to marry—to be engaged to—him. It was all so wonderful and charming—and flattering. I couldn’t imagine there was any answer but ‘Yes’.” There were a few odd moments of silence. Then Celia said, in a stifled sort of voice,

  “When did you know it should have been ‘No’?”

  “Oh, almost immediately! But by then we had come indoors and told you and Laurence, and you were making such a fuss and sounded so pleased—”

  “Did I seem pleased?” Celia spoke in a small, strange voice.

  “Oh, yes.” Freda drew a careful breath. “Weren’t you?”

  “No,” said Celia flatly. “I could have died with misery and horror.”

  “Celia! Why?” A sort of shocked delight made that sound almost an octave higher than Freda had intended.

  “Because I wanted Brian.”

 
; Again there was a pregnant silence. Then Freda said gently,

  “But you could have had him, dear, almost any time during the last few years.”

  “I know. Do you think that made it any easier for me in that ghastly moment of self-revelation?” Celia pushed back her hair with a distracted gesture. “I’d never really imagined life without Brian. It would be like imagining life without the sun—or water—or anything else which is taken for granted but absolutely vital to one’s existence.”

  “Yes—I see. You took him for granted, as you say. There were no delicious and romantic surprises about Brian. He was devotedly yours—and always there.”

  “Why, yes. How well you put it. How did you know?”

  “They’re your own words, Celia dear,” Freda smiled faintly. “You used them when we discussed him, once before.”

  “Did I?” Celia looked a little amused herself then. But almost immediately her expression became grave again. “I can’t describe the shock when I found he was not devotedly mine—that he wouldn’t always be there!” She actually closed her eyes for a second and swallowed, as though she literally tasted the bitterness of that moment again.

  “Well”—it was Freda’s turn to smile slightly, though the tears were still wet on her cheeks—“at least he administered a surprise at last, even if it was not a delicious or romantic one. You mean that you just knew in that moment that—it was Brian for you?”

  “Yes. Though it seems almost indecent to say that to you when you’ve just got engaged to him.”

  “But I’m in the process of getting disengaged as soon as I can,” Freda stated quickly. “And you will have the job of consoling him, Celia,” she added, with sudden inspiration.

  “You—think so?” Celia smiled slowly.

  “Yes. I’m sure of it.”

  “But if he asked you to marry him, in that impetuous way, he must be very much in love with you, Freda.”

  “Oh, no!” Freda spoke with almost too much cheerful confidence about that. “I was never anything but second-best. He just got tired of waiting and waiting for you. He thought you were genuinely in love with Larry—Oh!” Suddenly Freda broke off, as she remembered another vital point. “You’re engaged to Larry, of course, aren’t you?”