Ford put himself out to be charming to everyone. Which was just as well, because Angela’s aloof air did little to create any feeling of friendliness. On the other hand, of course, it provided ample opportunity for extending the discussions which later took place over half a dozen lunch tables, because it was obvious to all that “the sister isn’t any too pleased, my dear,” which added piquancy to the situation.
On the way to Oaklands, Angela and Jessica both sat in the back of the big car while the twins, after a lively discussion on the question of who should go in front, both managed to cram in beside Ford.
This left Jessica feeling rather unpleasantly isolated, but she managed to make polite conversation during the short ride. Or, at least, enough of it to prevent Ford from feeling there was a significant silence behind him.
When they arrived at the house, both the children hopped eagerly out of the car and stood regarding Oaklands with satisfaction.
“It’s even bigger and nicer than I thought,” Judy declared. And it was with difficulty that she was persuaded to come indoors before exploring the full delights of the grounds.
As they entered the wide, impressive hall, Jessica very clearly recalled coming there that first evening to interview her unknown landlord and, glancing at Ford, she thought that he too was remembering the same occasion, because he smiled at her as though they shared some amusing and rather pleasant recollection. And, curiously, that made her feel very much at home.
The children, though impressed with the grandeur of a house quite outside their previous experience, were not slow to voice their interest and approval. To most people their naïve expressions of pleasure and pride would have been quite inoffensive. But Jessica saw that they profoundly irritated Angela, and she was glad to leave the twins downstairs with Ford when her hostess took her upstairs.
Angela led the way to her own suite of rooms, with the remark:
“This is really my part of the house. I have my own sitting-room, as well as my bedroom and dressing-room. I like it that way, because Ford quite often has people who don’t specially interest me.”
As Jessica glanced round the beautifully furnished and decorated rooms, she could not help feeling that Angela might well hate parting with them. And, if her sister-in-law had been almost any other type, she would most eagerly have urged her to continue to regard this suite as hers.
But her common sense—as well as what Ford had said—told her that it would be asking for trouble to allow Angela to have a permanent footing in the household. So, feeling rather mean, she contented herself with remarking on the beauty of the rooms, and then turned to the mirror to comb her hair.
“You have very pretty hair.” remarked Angela, watching her. And Jessica reacted immediately to what she thought was the first sign of friendliness.
“Yes, it’s quite a decorative shade, if you’re careful what colours you wear,” she agreed. “I think your hair’s lovely, and you can wear nearly anything with that very dark shade.”
Angela accepted this without comment, and merely said:
“Is your hair really that colour?”
Jessica laughed.
“You don’t think I’d bother to dye it at my age, do you?”
“You might. Or, at least, have it touched up. I thought you might have heard that Ford has a predilection for red-heads,” she added, so casually that it was a moment before Jessica took in the full implication of that.
“Angela, what an awful way of putting it!”
Jessica still managed to keep her voice on a note of amused protest.
“Oh, I didn’t mean that he runs after any girl who has that shade of hair,” Angela conceded. “I just meant that when he does admire one, it seems he chooses someone with your coppery red colour.”
“I see.”
Jessica refused to turn round from the mirror, but she could see Angela reflected in it, and, at that moment, she pointed carelessly to a photograph on a side table and said:
“She had just the same shade of hair.”
It was impossible not to turn round then and regard the photograph, though at least one could achieve an expression of polite interest instead of distasteful apprehension.
“She’s very beautiful,” Jessica observed courteously, looking at the lovely, clear-cut profile of a girl who obviously belonged to Angela’s world rather than her own. “Who is she?”
“Your predecessor,” Angela said with an expression which would have been teasing on anyone else, but which on her was extraordinarily malicious.
“Do you mean Ford was engaged to her?” enquired Jessica coldly.
“Oh, no. She took someone else,” Angela explained. “She’s the girl I was telling you about.”
“I see,” Jessica said again, and managed not to show that she thought Angela quite hateful. But she could not help adding dryly: “Is that why you keep her photograph here?”
Angela laughed—perhaps because she was pleased to know she had got under Jessica’s skin.
“Oh, no. She’s a friend of mine. Paula Dryden and I were at the same finishing school together. She’s often been to our London house in my parents’ lifetime. She was very much one of our ‘set,’ and used to be staying with us sometimes when Ford came down from college for the vacation.”
Jessica was very nearly trapped into saying “I see” again. But she remembered, just in time, that it was the standard reply when one was completely nonplussed, and managed to change it into,
“Well, she’s certainly lovely enough to attract anyone.”
She knew perfectly well that Angela was deliberately creating an impression of a closed social ring, where impecunious girls who got rheumatic fever and couldn’t pay their rent had no right to intrude.
Angela probably guessed, with uncanny penetration, that Jessica felt anything but confidence in her role of Ford’s fiancée, and if she could be persuaded that she would always feel an outsider. . . .
“Are you ready?” Angela’s voice sounded cool and polite, and Jessica knew that the gloves were on once more.
“Yes. I’m ready,” she said. And they went downstairs together.
Over lunch, Jessica was glad of the chatter of the twins, even if it did irritate Angela, for at least it gave her an opportunity of remaining silent sometimes and relapsing into her own thoughts.
One knew, of course, that Angela was trying to make everything as difficult and alarming as possible. But, even allowing for that, the situation was full of unpleasant possibilities. If Ford really had been very much in love with one of his own set, it was not specially surprising that he chose to go outside that set for a “second-best”—to link his life with someone who knew nothing about the previous affair.
But, though she might answer very well, as a temporary novelty, how was the “outsider” going to measure up to Ford’s usual associates later on?
In a panic-stricken wave of revolt, Jessica thought, “Oh, I wish I needn’t marry anyone!” and she felt childishly like crying. Only, of course, one had to go on being pleasant and social, and, above all, to conceal from Angela the depths of one’s frightened misery.
Presently she recovered sufficiently to glance in Ford’s direction. He was answering some eager question of the twins, and his smile was rather indulgent, so that Jessica caught her breath in a little gasp of something like relief.
How was it, she wondered, that anyone so positive and dictatorial as Ford could also be so strangely reassuring at times?
And at that moment he turned his head and smiled at her, and she thought, “If Ford loved one very much, one would feel perfectly safe about nearly everything.”
Perhaps Angela intercepted the glance and thought it was time a new turn was given to the conversation, because she said abruptly,
“If you’ve all finished, would you like to come and see David Forrest’s portrait of me?”
“Oh, yes!” they all three exclaimed with some eagerness, because David had been a great favourite with the twin
s as well as with Jessica, though Judy privately thought he had shown lack of judgment in choosing to paint Angela.
Angela led the way into a light, rather austerely furnished room, where the portrait of her stood on an easel near the window, and they stood and regarded it with varying degrees of judicial attention.
It was Tom who finally said, “I say! I’d no idea David was so clever!” Which exactly expressed what Jessica had been thinking.
It was not only that the painting was technically very beautiful, nor even that David had caught Angela’s exact expression of aloofness and pride. It was as though he had very slightly lifted the veil from the inner Angela and, without in the least detracting from her beauty, had shown that inimical streak in her which made her wish her fellow creatures ill rather than well.
“It’s a wonderfully clever study,” Jessica said tentatively at last. And, to her astonishment, Angela replied:
“Yes. I’m delighted with it.”
It was, Jessica thought, the final tribute to David’s art that he had shown so much to the intelligent observer without disturbing the complacency of his model. To Angela there was nothing repellent about the portrait, any more than there was about herself.
“I’ve only one or two minor criticisms to make.” she was saying now. “I want that background lightened a little, and a shade more brilliance in the dress.”
“I suppose he will do that when he comes back in the autumn?” Jessica said.
“No.” Angela smiled slightly, as she regarded the portrait. “I’ve suggested that he comes and stays at Oaklands for a short visit and makes the alterations. I think there will be plenty of opportunity while that tiresome mother of his is doing what she calls ‘settling up.’”
“Do you mean David’s coming up here again to stay quite soon?” It was Judy who eagerly asked the question which Jessica wanted to put.
“Yes. I think so.” Angela glanced at her brother. “If we could persuade him to stay long enough, he might do that portrait of Jessica that he talked about.”
“What a wonderful idea!” Judy was hopping up and down on what she called her best leg.
Jessica wanted to say that it was not a wonderful idea at all—that it was a horribly clever and trouble-making idea, thought up by Angela with a very special purpose in view. But she knew she was already paler than she should be, and that any protest from her would draw surprised attention to her.
And Ford—for once not so clever as usual about reading his sister’s thoughts—said:
“Yes, it is a good idea. I’ll see what can be done about it.”
CHAPTER NINE
DURING the rest of the visit Angela made no further reference to David or his portrait. Indeed, she was rather surprisingly sociable and pleasant, and went up a good way in the innocent estimation of the twins.
To Jessica there was something faintly menacing about this change of front, however. There was a subtle suggestion that the victor could afford to be gracious, and she could not help wondering just what unscrupulous victory Angela believed herself to have achieved.
But it was useless to worry unduly about impressions or conjectures. And, in any case, there were other things to think about during this first real visit to Oaklands.
Ford, having sent the children off to explore the grounds on their own, took her over much of the house, consulting her wishes about various alterations to be made, and generally making her feel very much the future mistress of the place. He introduced her to Mrs. Curtis. the housekeeper—a rather severe, but obviously efficient woman—who, whatever she might have thought privately, accorded Jessica every courtesy due to an employer.
On the whole, Jessica gathered that she was approved—possibly because she showed some real knowledge about household management, and yet was willing to defer to Mrs. Curtis’s evident experience in the running of this particular house.
“Besides,” thought Jessica, with a secret flash of amusement, “in her place, I’d rather work for me than for Angela!”
Not until they returned home that night—after a visit which had, on the whole, been less of an ordeal than Jessica had expected—did the subject of David come up again. And then Judy said innocently:
“It’ll be nice having David back here again, won’t it?”
“Very nice,” Jessica agreed.
“I wish he could come and stay here, instead of at Oaklands. I’m sure he’d like it better,” Judy declared.
“But Angela has already invited him to Oaklands,” Jessica pointed out, thinking it unnecessary to go any further into the impossibility of David staying at The Mead now.
“Still, he’ll be coming over here a good deal, if he’s doing your portrait.” Judy consoled herself with this reflection. “I bet he’ll come as often as he can.”
“He may not stay long enough to do my portrait this time,” Jessica said. “If he only has time for a short visit, he—he’d much better leave it over until he comes again.”
“But you’ll be getting married almost at once and there’ll be lots of fuss and things to do,” Judy objected. “Though, of course,” she added, as an entirely new and brilliant thought struck her, “he could paint you in your wedding dress then. That’d be marvellous!”
Jessica felt she could think of few things less agreeable than the idea of David painting her in her wedding dress—in the circumstances. But, with admirable self-control, she merely said David might consider that altogether too formal, and wasn’t it time Judy went to bed?
It was. And even Judy had to admit the fact.
So the twins kissed her good night and went away, and Jessica was left to reflect at leisure on the events of the day.
She thought a great deal about the difficulties that would arise if David came back, feeling as he did, and saw her daily. And she thought as little as possible about Paula Dryden, with whom Ford had been so much in love.
Not, of course, that she was jealous of Paula. Why should she be? Not even that she felt possessive about Ford. It was just that she didn’t want to think of him very much in love with someone else. Her mind instinctively turned away from the idea that, in mind and spirit, he had belonged much more to a girl from Angela’s world than he would ever belong to her. It was quite understandable, and there was no need to explain it further to herself.
During the following week Ford had to go way on business. And, in the sense that life immediately reverted to the blessed normality of the days before she had known either Ford or David, Jessica had to admit that there was an element of relief in having him absent.
Sometimes, if she took care not to glance at the ring on her left hand or to go near her father’s study, she could have imagined she was back in the old days when, as it seemed to her now, she was both heart-free and carefree, and had no greater worry in the world than the ordinary domestic worries attendant on keeping house for a couple of unexacting children and an absent-minded parent.
“It’s pure escapism to go on pretending about the past being present,” Jessica told herself. But occasionally, when the children were at school and she could sit in the sunny garden sewing, while Linda hummed tunelessly over her work in the kitchen, she allowed herself to dream lazily of the blessedly uneventful past, and pretend that some unspecified miracle might bring those days back again.
It was after one of these pleasant reveries that she awoke one afternoon from a half-doze, to see David coming across the lawn towards her. And—more because he recalled her so sharply to present problems than because she had not heard any sound of a car— she exclaimed with quite disproportionate surprise,
“Why, David! How on earth did you get here?”
“Didn’t you know I was coming?” He was amused and, she thought, quite aware that she had been half asleep. “Angela kindly invited me to stay at Oaklands, and I arrived last night. The rest of the journey I accomplished on my own two feet. How are you, my dear?”
“Oh, I’m fine now, thank you.” Jessica had recovered hersel
f. “Sit down and I’ll get Linda to bring tea out here.”
But Linda—who had always approved of “that nice young Mr. Forrest”—was already signalling in a somewhat unorthodox way to indicate that she would bring tea out on to the lawn.
“She has already risen to the occasion,” said David, who had stayed quite long enough at The Mead to learn Linda’s simple sign language. “Stay where you are, Jess. You still look as though you could do with all the rest and leisure you can manage.”
Jessica smiled. David always made one feel so well looked after. That was partly Mrs. Forrest’s training, she knew. But it was also due to David’s endearing thoughtfulness.
“Tell me all the news,” she begged. “How is your mother, to begin with?”
(What she really wanted to know, of course, was how far Angela was concerning herself in their affairs. But this could only be discovered indirectly.)
David thrust his hands into his pockets, stretched out his long legs and grinned.
“Mother’s having a wonderful time,” he asserted. “She says she simply doesn’t know which way to turn, which is her idea of heaven. And, to my certain belief, she has already reduced one strong, manly house agent to tears.”
Jessica laughed,
“Dear David, how absurd you are! But I wonder your mother was able to spare you if there is so much to do.”
“You don’t understand my mamma at all, if you can say that,” David assured her gravely. “She positively likes struggling with difficulties single-handed. You see, she is what is known as a wonderful woman, and it pleases her no end to have opportunities of proving to herself and others that she still remains a wonderful woman. When anyone says, ‘Dear Mrs. Forrest, I don’t know how you do all you do,’ that person is Mother’s friend for life.”
“So she didn’t mind your coming up here again without her?”
“No more than she always minds my slipping her apron-strings for a little while,” David said with smiling frankness.
The Brave In Heart Page 14
