Tell Me My Fortune

by Mary Burchell

  “Leslie” He gathered a handful of pods and tossed them into her basket as a sort of token contribution. “There’s something I want to ask you. I take it that Oliver is more or less a friend of the family?”

  “Oh, yes. Certainly.”

  “So that it would be quite in keeping with the general situation if you were to ring him up and suggested he brought his fiancée over here to meet the others?”

  There was a moment’s pause. Then she said,

  “It would be quite a likely proceeding, yes. But why should I? Do you think it would serve any useful purpose?”

  “It would give the protagonists a chance to meet each other.”

  “Oh, Reid!”

  “Well, we’ve got to meet sometime, you know. Don’t you want to see what your rival—what Caroline is like?”

  She winced.

  “Not much. I’m a little afraid to see her.”

  “Hell! Why?” He evidently simply could not accept the idea of fearing to measure oneself against an adversary.

  “Oh, Reid, I wish I had half your confidence,” Leslie exclaimed, without actually answering his query.

  “Nonsense. You’re sweet as you are,” he told her. “But take a grip on your courage and arrange for Oliver to bring her over here. It’s probably your best and most painless way of meeting her, you know.”

  She knew reluctantly that he was right.

  “Very well. But when?”

  “The first moment possible, of course!”

  “This evening?”

  “This evening would be fine.”

  “All right. I’ll go and do it now.” And she set down her basket and ran into the house, before her courage and resolution could fail her.

  It was Oliver himself who answered her call, and he was obviously pleased at the idea of bringing Caroline to meet his old friends.

  “She’s staying here overnight,” he explained. “I’ll bring her to your place after dinner. Thanks, Leslie. It’s a splendid idea. You think of everything.”

  She forbore to say that someone else had thought of this. Merely remarked, “That’s all right, Oliver,” in what she grimly hoped was a sisterly tone, and replaced the receiver.

  As she did so, Morley wheeled himself out into the hall. He must have heard her last few words, because he said,

  “That was Oliver, was it?”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s engaged, Mother tells me.”

  “Yes. He is bringing her—bringing Caroline over—this evening, to meet us.”

  “Does he have to do that?” growled Morley.

  “Oh, Morley! We’re his oldest friends. I suggested he should bring her over.”

  “You did?” Morley looked at his sister, and his thin, rather haggard face softened. “No one can say you don’t take your fences well, Leslie.”

  She wondered if she should say that Reid had urged her to take this particular fence. But it would involve too much explaining of what was best left alone, and would lead into the very debatable subject of her own exact motives in asking Oliver and his new fiancée to Cranley Magna. She contented herself with patting Morley’s shoulder, smiling and saying,

  “I’m not the most courageous member of this family. But I hope I’m not a bad loser.”

  . He looked at her with anxious curiosity,

  “Was it a bad shock, Leslie?”

  “Say rather a nasty jar,” she retorted almost lightly.

  And she went back into the garden, marvelling to herself that she could conceal her inmost feelings from her brother, and yet reveal them to a comparative stranger.

  “It’s settled,” she told Reid in a matter-of-fact voice. “And don’t pick any more peas, please. We have enough for a siege as it is.”

  He laughed.

  “Sorry. I thought I’d better finish your job while you busied yourself about my affairs.”

  She looked at him reflectively.

  “Would you say that telephone call was a question your affairs or mine?”

  He grinned.

  “It’s all in the way you look at it, I guess. What do you say?”

  “I don’t know. I wish I did,” Leslie said, and took her peas away into the kitchen.

  Outwardly she might appear extremely calm and matter-of-fact, but inwardly she felt frightened and agitated. Not only was there the direct ordeal of meeting Oliver’s fiancée, and somehow making herself calmly accept the display of affection which he would presumably show for another girl, there was also the dreadful uncertainty in her own mind of what she meant to do.

  Did she intend to stand by and watch Reid try to take Caroline away from Oliver? Or, rather—since there was nothing, it seemed, that she could do to influence Reid one way or the other—did she intend to keep a close watch on the situation and profit by it if she could?

  Mentally she rejected the word “profit” as sounding too unscrupulous, and substituted the word “benefit.” But she still felt uneasily that she was adopting the role of schemer, rather than good loser. Only, if Caroline did turn to her first love, what sense would there be in Leslie not trying to console Oliver?

  “It’s all in the way one looks at it,” she assured herself, unconsciously using Reid’s own words. “Suppose I had been a good friend of Reid’s and had never seen Oliver, I should feel quite differently. If I knew Reid had lost his girl through no fault of his own, I should be only too eager for him to win her back. And even if, in the intervening months, she had got herself entangled with someone else, I should still hope that Reid would regain her. I should be sorry for the other man, but I don’t think I should rate his claim as high as Reid’s.”

  It sounded wonderful, put that way. If only she had had no stake in the game herself!

  “Am I being quite objective?” she asked herself anxiously. “And if I am, and if I really think Reid has the better claim to Caroline, am I prepared even to help him get her back?”

  But it was useless to pretend that she was still being objective when she reached that point in her reflections.

  “I’m not being honest now!” she told herself ruthlessly. “But I have agreed to set the stage as Reid wants it this evening. Was that quite honest?”

  Her common sense argued then that she had done nothing but arrange a perfectly harmless and ordinary family gathering. But her conscience would not let her—entirely alone, and by the time the evening came she was sure that her conduct had not been entirely disinterested.

  “It’s funny we’ve never seen this Caroline Frenton before,” remarked Alma. “You’d think Oliver would want to marry someone he knew, not a stranger.”

  “He probably feels he knows this girl now,” Morley pointed out patiently.

  “Oh, now—yes,” Alma agreed. “But I mean you’d expect him to have married someone he’d known for ages, like Leslie or Kate.”

  “Much obliged.” Katherine said. “I’m fond of Oliver, in a general, family way, but his Caroline may have him, for me.”

  Leslie smiled faintly, and even a little indulgently. But by no effort of will could she bring herself to second Katherine’s sentiments.

  “Oliver is our best friend, you know,” Alma was busily explaining to Reid. “He lived quite near, and we’ve always known him. He’s going to be a doctor, but he’s living in Pencaster now, and I suppose that’s where he met this Caroline.”

  “She is not, as you might suppose from my young sister’s remarks, a camp-follower,” Morley added. “She is apparently the niece of a perfectly reputable doctor in our nearest town.”

  “What did you say her name was?” Reid asked, so casually that Leslie could hardly suppress a smile of admiration.

  “Caroline Frenton.”

  “Oh, then I know her already.”

  “You do?” Alma registered inordinate astonishment. “But what an extraordinary thing! Do you hear that, everyone? Reid knows this girl Oliver’s going to marry.”

  There was a chorus of mild surprise, in which Leslie contrived t
o join convincingly. And Katherine added curiously,

  “What is she like?”

  “Dark, desirable, graceful, and with lots of oomph,” replied Reid, with unexpected comprehensiveness.

  There was a funny little silence, while they all registered this curiously vivid portrait of Caroline Frenton. Then Morley said reflectively,

  “She doesn’t sound Oliver’s cup of tea, somehow.”

  “She may not be,” Reid remarked amiably.

  “But he’s going to marry her,” Alma protested in a shocked tone. And Leslie found herself saying severely,

  “He sounded devoted to her when he told me about her.”

  But Reid merely smiled lazily and said, “Maybe, maybe.”

  And before Alma could voice any of the half-dozen questions which were obviously trembling on her lips, there were sounds of arrival in the hall, and a moment later Oliver came into the room in company with a girl whom they all recognized immediately under Reid’s description of “dark, desirable, graceful and with lots of oomph.”

  In the first flurry of introductions, Leslie found, to her. unutterable relief, that she was able to display complete self-control and a nice, impersonal pleasantness. But after a few moments, she found that her desire to sink into the background had been gratified beyond anything she had intended. In some curious way, she was overwhelmed by the personality of Caroline Frenton, and she had the peculiar, and most unwelcome, impression that her own colouring faded to something neutral and subdued beside the vivid drama of the other girl’s looks.

  Caroline was one of those people who naturally, and without either insistence or conceit, took the centre of the stage. No wonder Oliver had fallen for her! No wonder Reid hoped to win her back!

  Leslie, in a fascinated, helpless way, found herself irresistibly assuming the identity of the sisterly, rather uninteresting friend who wished Oliver well without being of any particular importance in the scheme of things. She struggled against it. In that moment, she would have been gay and fast and a little outrageous, if she had known how to be. But Caroline held everyone’s attention. And not until she fetched up before Reid, with a startled exclamation, did the spell of her enchanting invulnerability seem, momentarily, broken.

  “Why, Reid? Where did you spring from?”

  “France, darling. On a visit to my charming relations.”

  Immediately there was an outburst of explanations, in which Alma firmly took a leading part. Caroline contented herself with giving Reid a slow, pulse-disturbing smile, while she said to Oliver,

  “He is one of my old flames, darling. But there’s no need to call for pistols for two.”

  “I don’t intend to.” Oliver gave her an answering smile, which Katherine afterwards described as “besotted,” and then turned on Reid an absent, indulgent glance of compassion which said as plainly as words that he was sorry for the poor fellow who was a back-number, but had no intention of losing any sleep over him.

  Oliver was talking energetically to Morley. But Caroline, who seemed able, in spite of her slightly lazy manner, to keep track of most that was going on around her, smilingly terminated her conversation with her host and drifted over to a seat nearer Leslie.

  “Oliver has told me so much about you,” she said, in a perfectly friendly tone. “I feel I know you better than the others, somehow.”

  “She’s the easiest one to know. Aren’t you, my sweet?” Reid said. And Leslie knew from his tone that he was looking down at her with an air which must be bordering on affectionate.

  “Well, I wouldn’t know about that.” Leslie’s voice was beautifully controlled, but her pulses leapt excitedly, for into the other girl’s lazy, smiling eyes had come an entirely different expression. She was looking above Leslie’s head at Reid now, and there was deliberate challenge in her face.

  “And how do you spend your time, in this rural retreat?” she asked him, in an easy, mocking tone employed only between people who know each other very, very well.

  “In the pleasantest way possible. Getting to know my cousins better,” Reid assured her. “Especially this one.” And to Leslie’s amazement, amusement—and a little bit to her indignation too—she felt him drop a light, but unmistakable kiss on the top of her head.

  For the life of her, she could not keep herself from glancing at the other girl, to see the effect on her, and she was a good deal startled to see Caroline’s fine nostrils flare with some sudden emotion, and the line of her white teeth show for an instant on her lower lip.

  Faintly embarrassed, Leslie looked quickly away again, and as she did so she encountered Oliver’s astonished and angry gaze.

  She gave a slight, audible gasp as, with a sort of breathless, icy exhilaration, she recognized something of the feelings which had prompted that expression.

  For the first time for days, Oliver had emerged from his happy bewilderment. And the shock which had accomplished that miracle was the disagreeable discovery that someone else apparently considered he had a right to be affectionately possessive towards a girl he had taken happily for granted all his life.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  LIKE all family parties where most of the people know each other well, this one kept on forming into little groups, disintegrating and regrouping, in a very informal way. And it was not long before Oliver detached himself quite naturally from his conversation with Morley and drifted casually into the group comprising Caroline, Leslie and Reid.

  At first, Leslie thought he was seeking to rejoin his beloved, from whom he doubtless felt he had been separated long enough. But, after, a minute or two, it dawned upon her that it was to her he wished to talk.

  Caroline and Reid were getting on splendidly, in an exchange of gay and rapid cross-talk which kept things balanced on that curious knife-edge between intimacy and remoteness, only to be maintained when the protagonists are both amusing and quick-witted.

  “Come and tell me how your parents are reacting to the new position, now they are getting used to it,” Oliver said to Leslie, and, skilfully extricating her from the position of conversational buffer-state in which she had found herself, he drew her over to one of the deep window-seats, and sat down there with her.

  As soon as they were established, however, in a reasonable degree of privacy, he seemed to forget his kind interest in her parents’ welfare, because, without pressing the enquiry further, he looked across the room at Reid and said,

  “So that’s the fellow who has cut you all out with Great-Aunt Tabitha.”

  “Oh, that isn’t quite how we feel about him, you know,” Leslie protested, forgetting that this was exactly how they had felt about him twenty-four hours ago. “He is really very nice, and seems anxious to act in a most generous way.”

  Oliver was unimpressed.

  “And what form does his generosity take?” he enquired, with a slight note of irony in his voice.

  “He thinks Father should regard himself as morally entitled to some of the money at any rate, and he appears ready to go to a great deal of trouble to convince him of the fact.”

  “All of which entails his staying on at Cranley Magna for some time, I suppose.”

  “Naturally.”

  There was a rather pregnant silence. Then, without any finesse at all, Oliver said,

  “I can’t say I like his manner towards you.”

  “Why, Oliver” Leslie was divided between amusement and a certain tenderness for him in his new found concern on her behalf. “He is very nice to me, I assure you.”

  Oliver frowned.

  “Leslie, you mustn’t take it amiss if I say that you girls are almost too sweet and naive to keep certain types in their place. I mean, it’s all very well for Morley and me to treat you with brotherly intimacy and well, affection. But, hang it! that bounder’s only known you since yesterday. What did he think he was doing, kissing your hair?”

  Leslie bit her lip very hard. Mostly to keep herself from saying exactly what Reid had thought he was doing, kissing her hair. A
nd a very successful manoeuvre it appeared to have been too.

  “He doesn’t mean anything serious, Oliver. He’s very free and easy in his manner, I know, because—”

  “Much too free and easy.”

  “He regards himself as more or less of a relation.”

  “Nonsense.” Oliver seemed more annoyed than soothed by this view. “Does he regard himself as more or less of a relation of Caroline’s too?”

  A little startled by the change of attack, Leslie glanced quickly across to where Caroline and Reid were still sparring enjoyably.

  “Well—” she began, seeking for words to reassure Oliver, without actually descending to an untruth.

  But she had no need to worry, for he went on immediately,

  “Not that Caroline isn’t well able to look after herself.” He smiled reminiscently, and something of his good-humour returned. “I don’t worry about her. She can take the measure of anyone, and she has handled him well before.”

  “Yes,” murmured Leslie, overwhelmed with astonishment that Caroline should awake no protective feel in Oliver, while she herself, for the first time in joint existence, seemed to strike him as someone in need of support and advice.

  “It’s you I’m worried about,” Oliver went on, with a degree of earnestness which might, perhaps, have been called brotherly but certainly transcended anything Morley would have presumed to display on her behalf.

  “You really don’t need to worry, Oliver!” Leslie was beginning to grow restive in her role of foolish, unprotected innocent. “Believe me, I am perfectly capable of managing Reid Carthay—or anyone else, come to that.”

  As she said the words, she knew they were strictly not true. Managing Reid Carthay—though in a sense other than that in Oliver’s mind—had proved beyond her once or twice already.

  “Well, my dear, of course I don’t want to interfere,” said Oliver, who quite obviously did. “But, as you know, I’ve a good deal of brotherly—” He stopped, as though suddenly discovering something which surprised him. “Well, no, ‘brotherly’ isn’t quite the word, I suppose. But, anyway, I’ve always regarded you girls as very much my concern, and particularly you, Leslie. You must forgive me if I was taking a bit too much on myself. But what I wanted to say was that you’d better keep this so-called cousin at a distance, and if you have any sort of trouble with him, just let me know.”