My Sister Celia

by Mary Burchell

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  HE’S going to hate me for this, Freda thought unhappily. People always dislike the bringer of bad tidings. He’ll always associate me in the future with humiliation and unhappiness. And yet how can I let him go on thinking all is well? He might tell half a dozen people this morning—and then have to contradict his own happy statements to-morrow.

  “What is it?” Laurence enquired, and he glanced at her in slightly puzzled amusement. “You don’t seem very favourably impressed by the news.”

  “It isn’t that.” She swallowed nervously. Then resolutely she stopped and faced him. “Larry, I’m sorry, but—someone has to tell you. Celia would have done so herself if she had seen you first, of course. As it is”—she bit her lip, hesitated again, and then went on doggedly, “I can’t let you go spreading the glad news—”

  “Why not?” he interrupted a little haughtily, and his eyebrows rose alarmingly.

  “Because there’s no glad news to spread,” she blurted out desperately. “The—the engagement’s off.”

  Even to her own ears the words sounded harsh and faintly aggressive. To him they must have sounded little less than impertinent.

  “What on earth are you talking about?” he asked coldly. “It really isn’t for you to decide whether my engagement is on or off, surely?”

  “Oh, no—of course not!” She sounded shocked. “Not on my own initiative, at least. But I happen to know what Celia has decided since last night and—”

  “Do you mean that you tried to talk her out of the idea of marrying me?”

  “Certainly not! It’s no business of mine whom she marries. Still less whom you marry. But—oh, there’s no nice way of saying this, Larry! Only—it isn’t you she wants. It’s Brian.”

  “I know,” he began, “but—” Then he stopped and looked a bit put out.

  “You know?’ Freda opened her eyes wide.

  “Well”—he shrugged—“let’s say I had accepted the fact that I was second-best, so far as Celia was concerned. I don’t think we need to go into the question of alternatives too closely. The fact was that Brian had made his choice—”

  “Oh, but he hadn’t! I mean—he made the wrong choice.”

  “Do you mind explaining that odd statement? said Larry drily, as Freda seemed to find some difficulty in going on.

  “Well, you see, although we got engaged last night, I found out almost immediately that we’d made a mistake—”

  “Both of you?” enquired Larry, still in that dry tone.

  “Both of us,” asserted Freda firmly. “We’d just been rather—carried away by a romantic summer evening and a—a bit of inspired flirting. It was nothing serious.”

  “Then do you mean”—Larry cleared his throat—“that you and Brian are no longer engaged?”

  She nodded.

  “Yes, that’s what I mean. And, since someone is going to have to tell you sometime, I can only add that at this moment Brian is probably getting engaged to Celia instead.”

  “I see.”

  She wished her words didn’t hang quite so crudely on the light summer air, and after a moment she hurried into further, slightly embarrassed speech.

  “You must please let Celia make her own explanations. This shouldn’t really have come from me. Only when you told me the news of your engagement, with such lighthearted abandon, I was afraid you might do the same with other people you met in the village. And then it would be dreadful having to take it all back again.”

  “Yes,” he agreed. “It would.”

  “I’m sorry about it all—” she began again. But he cut her short rather curtly.

  “You have nothing to be sorry about. In any case, you have your own troubles. I suppose you’re also feeling pretty flat at this moment.”

  “Only in one sense. I’m enormously relieved in another,” Freda confessed ingenuously, at which he actually smiled.

  “Are you? What are you relieved about?”

  “It’s so nice not to be engaged after all,” Freda explained with a deep sigh. “Brian is most awfully nice and I like him immensely. But that isn’t the same thing as wanting to marry someone, is it?”

  “No, Freda,” Laurence said slowly, “it isn’t.” Then taking her lightly and impulsively by the arm he added, “Do you have to go down to the village at this moment?”

  “Oh, no. I was just making myself scarce while Celia and Brian got things straightened out between them.”

  “Then come back to the house with me now. There are one or two things I would like to get straightened out too.”

  She turned with him immediately, in instinctive response to the pressure on her arm, but as they walked towards the house together, she said doubtfully,

  “Wouldn’t it be better for you to ask Celia about them?”

  “They have nothing to do with Celia.”

  “With whom, then?”

  “With you and me.”

  She was so surprised that for a moment she was silent. And he went on as though half to himself, “During the last few weeks I’ve been thinking myself rather a clever fellow, and now I’m not at all sure I haven’t just been an unmitigated ass.”

  “Oh, no!” she reassured him kindly. “That’s always how one feels when things go wrong. But you couldn’t possibly foresee what would happen with Celia.”

  “I’m not thinking of what happened with Celia. I’m thinking of what happened—what went wrong—between you and me.”

  “Between—us?” she said faintly.

  “Yes. But”—he frowned slightly and sighed impatiently—“perhaps it was inevitable. You disliked me almost from the first, Freda, didn’t you?”

  “No.” She spoke in quite a small voice, but he seemed to have no difficulty in hearing her.

  “No?” he repeated, with a touch of amusement. “You gave an awfully good imitation of doing so, then.”

  “I’m sorry.” Without knowing it, she drew a little closer to him. “I was cross when you wanted to take my cottage away from me, and I could have hit you when you said disparaging things about it—”

  “I think you’ve made a lovely thing of it now,” he interjected humbly.

  “Do you?” She smiled slightly. “Well, that was with quite a lot of help from you. But you mustn’t think I disliked you, Larry. I was terribly relieved to see you that evening I first met Celia. You were the only familiar figure there. And then you rose to the occasion beautifully when I pretended you had arranged to take me home. And after that you— you were so kind and co-operative about the cottage after all. No, of course I don’t—I didn’t dislike you.”

  “What did you feel about me, then?”

  “What—?” The simplicity and the completeness of the question bereft her of any answer. She even stopped in her tracks, so that he had to stop too. But because he was evidently expecting an answer, she managed to force a little laugh finally and to say lightly,

  “Why on earth do you want to know that?”

  “Because it’s the most important question and answer in the world to me,” he said quietly. And Freda, who had made to go on, stopped again so abruptly that she almost dropped back against him.

  “You don’t—mean that, do you?” She turned her head and looked up at him, with such patent and touching eagerness, that he bent his head quickly and kissed her.

  “Of course I do, my darling. And don’t look like that, or I’ll just have to start kicking myself for all the fool things I’ve done and said during the past weeks. Does that little ghost of a smile mean that I may kiss you again?”

  She nodded slowly, but she said in a whisper, “I don’t understand it. I love it—but I don’t understand.”

  He laughed at that and gave her a long kiss which left her breathless.

  “Now what don’t you understand?” he wanted to know.

  She would have liked to say that understanding didn’t matter and that just to have him go on kissing her was all that she cared about. But the tiny breath of commo
n sense which still blew through her bewildered mind prompted her to reply instead, with some spirit,

  “What I can’t understand is why you got engaged to Celia last night, if you really wanted to kiss me like this.”

  “Why did you get engaged to Brian,” he accused her, in return, “if you really wanted me to kiss you like this?”

  “Oh—that’s so complicated—and so difficult to explain.”

  “My position’s a bit like that too,” he admitted.

  “When did you stop being keen on Celia and— and think you liked me?” she wanted to know.

  “I was never keen on Celia. I think she’s enchanting and I like her immensely, to quote your own words about Brian. But that isn’t the same thing as being keen on someone. I loved you from the first moment you looked over the fence and more or less sent me away with a flea in my ear.”

  “Oh, Larry, you didn’t! You—you couldn’t.” She was divided between rapture and protest. “Why should you?”

  “I don’t know.” He kissed the tip of her ear. “Maybe it was the shade of my great-aunt prompting me. Remember? She always thought you’d be the right wife for me.”

  “Larry”—her voice shook a little—“please don’t joke about it.”

  “I’m not joking, love. I was never more serious about anything in my life. I think my far-seeing great-aunt was absolutely inspired when she said you were the right wife for me. I’m just—even now—half scared to put it to the test.”

  “Do you mean,” Freda said slowly, as though she hardly dared to believe the meaning of his words even now, “that you want to marry me?”

  “I mean that if you won’t marry me, I’ll just be a sour and star-crossed old bachelor for the rest of my days. And, as times goes on, everyone will say, ‘Isn’t it a pity that horrid old man up at Crowmain Court never married? Just a wasted life’.”

  “Oh, Larry!” she laughed protestingly. “Don’t be silly. As though anyone would say that about you! And as though—as though I’d let them, anyway.” She put up her hand a little timidly and touched his cheek. “I don’t understand in the least how all this has come about, and I’m terribly afraid I’ll wake up suddenly and find I’m in bed in my cottage and that I’ve dreamt it all. But, while I’m still dreaming, I’ll tell you that I love you—that I’ve loved you for ages—and that though I would willingly give my darling Celia almost anything in the world, I couldn’t bear the thought that it was you she wanted.”

  “She didn’t, you know,” he said, and kissed her several times, just to reassure her that she was awake.

  “No, no—of course, I know. But could you start explaining, please?”

  “It’s all going to sound dreadfully silly and rather unworthy,” he confessed as, with his arm round her, they started to stroll towards the house once more.

  “I don’t mind, so long as it ends with your loving me now,” she told him.

  “It begins and ends with my loving you now and always,” he declared, and at that she pressed his arm more closely against her side. “It also begins with my thinking you disliked me—that I’d blotted my copybook so badly that I’d got to do something really ingenious to make you see me in a different light.”

  “I thought you realized that I had begun to see you in a different light.”

  “Begun—yes. But in a very tentative and minor sort of way. I suppose, like all men in love, I was too impatient, Freda. I thought—forgive me for being such an egregious ass—that if I played around a bit with Celia, you might—you might—”

  “You mean you were trying to make me jealous?” she said severely.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “And what about poor Celia? What about the fact that you were giving her ideas? It was a disgraceful way to behave to her.”

  “Oh, she knew. She agreed to it.”

  “She agreed to it? You mean to say you—you cooked the whole thing up between you? You ought to be ashamed of yourselves,” declared Freda.

  “We are. And we were very properly punished,” Larry confessed humbly. “But, at the same time,” he added, with a shrewd and amused glance at her, “I’d like to know just what you and Brian cooked up between you in the garden last night.”

  “Oh—” She clapped her hand to her mouth with an almost comical air of guilty recollection. Then she laughed ruefully and said, “How did you guess?”

  “I don’t know. Just a sort of—similarity of pattern, I suppose.”

  “You won’t ever tell Celia, will you?” she begged earnestly.

  “He’s probably telling her himself at this moment,” Larry said philosophically. “Confessions are in the air. Anyway, my only concern is with my own foolish actions. Not his.”

  “He thought it was such a good idea,” mused Freda thoughtfully.

  “So did I. Which is your cue for saying how foolish men can be,” he told her with a smile.

  “Celia and I were pretty silly, too—though I suppose with the best intentions.” Freda sighed slightly. “I can’t believe, even now, that her liking for you was just a pose.”

  “Oh, it wasn’t entirely. At least, I hope not. That’s what made it so easy—and so difficult—for us all. We all liked each other enormously, only—as you said at the beginning of this conversation—that isn’t the same thing as wanting to marry someone.” She smiled.

  “All right. Go on. We’d just reached the bit where you and Celia started a promising flirtation, in the hope of making me jealous.”

  “It sounds frightful, put like that.”

  “It is frightful,” she said. But she reached up and kissed him, to soften the severity of her words.

  “There’s really not much more to explain. Although I see now it was a silly and dangerous idea, I suppose it might have worked if Brian hadn’t reared up and got jealous and spoiled everything.”

  “He had a perfect right to get jealous and—and lay his own plans,” Freda declared warmly. “They were no sillier than yours.”

  “I suppose you’re right. But why did you fall in with them?” he enquired curiously.

  “I thought—he convinced me—that Celia’s real happiness lay with him. But she’d played around happily with so many men, and never realized how much Brian meant in her daily life. We both thought she was getting too serious with you—and for that mistake you have only yourselves to blame,” she added, on a note of loving severity.

  “I know,” he admitted contritely. “But then you mean you were prompted solely by your affection for Celia and the thought of her ultimate happiness?”

  “Yes, of course. What else?”

  “For a moment I ventured to hope you were not entirely indifferent to the fact that, with Celia married to Brian, I would be unattached. But no doubt that’s just the last remnant of my chastened vanity asserting itself.”

  “It’s nothing of the sort. It was a very natural hope to have in the circumstances,” Freda said quietly. “Only I just didn’t dare to believe that anything so wonderful as that could happen.”

  “Oh, you sweet, undemanding little darling! I don’t believe you have the slightest idea how adorable and desirable you are,” he declared. And, as they had reached the terrace now, he stopped there and took her in his arms, to the infinite delight and approval of Ada, who was making a quite unnecessarily long business of rearranging the curtains in the drawing-room.

  “Just as it was meant to be,” she murmured on a note of complete satisfaction, and presently she went away to tell Mrs. Maude that the tea-leaves had not lied.

  Quite unaware of any benevolent observation, Freda and Larry went into the drawing-room, through the open french windows. And, sitting very close together on one of Miss Clumber’s rather over life-sized sofas, they retraced once more, in happy detail, the events which had at last led up to this satisfactory conclusion.

  “You still haven’t explained the last bit,” Freda said presently, leaning her head contentedly against his shoulder. “Why, for heaven’s sake, did you and C
elia finally arrange an engagement between yourselves? Was that a bit of masquerading too?”

  “Oh, no. It was an attempt to salvage something from the wreck. We talked it over, admitted that all our planning had been based on false premises—or so we believed at that moment—and somehow came to the conclusion that, if we admitted that neither was more than a good second-best to the other, we had quite a chance of finding a modified form of happiness together. In some ways,” he added reflectively, “that was the silliest conclusion of the lot.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Freda murmured. “At least it precipitated the scene which started us all telling each other the truth.”

  “True,” he agreed. And for that wise observation he had to kiss her again. He was still doing so when a couple of shadows fell across them, and Celia and Brian stood in the doorway, looking at first a trifle sheepish and then—as well they might—considerably astonished.

  It was Brian who recovered first and said,

  “We’ve come to do a certain amount of difficult explaining. But it seems you’ll have a few things to explain to us too.”

  “Freda darling, how marvellous!” cried Celia, characteristically cutting through any mere tangle of question and answer and explanation. “Does this mean that you and Larry—that Larry and you—?”

  “It does,” said Larry gravely. “Sit down and let’s all sort out the complications of the last few weeks.”

  ‘There’s nothing to sort out, if you and Freda love each other,” Celia declared, hugging and kissing her sister. “Brian and I are going to get married anyway—and now I suppose you are too.”

  There was a moment’s silence. Then both the men laughed.

  “Does it really arrange itself as simply as that?” Larry looked incredulous and amused.

  “I think it does,” Brian said. “Celia always had a genius for going straight to the heart of the matter.” And he glanced fondly at his beloved.

  At this precise moment, as though summoned by an unheard bell, Ada entered the room, carrying a tray of agreeably assorted bottles and glasses.

  “I thought, sir,” she said, with ill-concealed satisfaction, “that there might be some toasts to be drunk.”