At the thought of his going she was assailed by such cold despair that she felt literally sick.
“Or,” he said reflectively, “we could, quite simply, go on with this marriage.”
“You—you mean in actual fact?”
“I mean in actual fact.”
“But—” She turned away from him, in case he I should see from her face that, for her, the heavens had suddenly opened and the angels sung. “But you said—there would never be any girl but Caroline for you.”
“Sure.” The angels stopped singing, and the world went grey again. “Sure. And you said there would never be any man but Oliver for you. We were both right, of course. But the question is—what does any sensible person do when he can’t have the thing he has set his heart on?”
“He—he makes do with the second best,” she stammered, fascinated into saying what she supposed he wanted her to say.
“It sounds a bit ungracious, put into words,” he said with a laugh. “But it applies to both of us equally. We know an awful lot about each other, honey, so that we don’t have to pretend the least little bit. Look here—” He turned again and came towards her.
Don’t take me in your arms she thought wildly. Don’t take me in your arms, or I shall give myself away.
But he didn’t put his arms round her. He took both her hands lightly in his.
“It’s like this. We’ve both lost out on the thing that means most in the world to us, but we have a good deal in common, Leslie, besides that experience. After a rather bad start, I think we’ve always liked—possibly admired—each other. I know I admire most things about you. I can give you a pretty good married life, and I can make your family happy and free from anxiety. It’s not a bad basis, my dear.”
She stared at him wordlessly. And after a moment he said,
“There’s no need to hurry. Think it over But if you marry me, I promise that most of your problems will be over. If you don’t—God knows when or how they can be solved.”
“I know,” she said almost in a whisper. “I know—that’s true.”
But she was not really thinking about that. At least, not much.
She was thinking of her mother saying that she sometimes looked as though she were trembling on the verge of a great discovery. She had made that discovery now.
It was Reid she loved. The long pretence had become a reality. But only with her. Not with him.
CHAPTER NINE
LESLIE wondered afterwards how long she stood there, with her hands slack in Reid’s, while she tried to make up her mind on the most momentous question of her life.
If she married him, she knew now, she would be marrying the man she really loved. But he had, as far as a man can say such a thing, said that he did not love her. He liked her.
Did one ever find happiness in a marriage where one loved without return? Was there not, on the contrary, a very special and poignant suffering implicit in the very meaning of the phrase?
But if she did not marry him, he would go away.
Quite simply, that was the alternative. And she knew that she could not face it.
There would be problems and anxieties to face, if he went away. There would be explanations and possibly reproaches. But none of these really weighed with Leslie. She got no further than the fact that if he went away from her, she simply could not bear it. That was what mattered. If he went away from her, she did not want to face life any more.
“Do you want to think it over until to-morrow?” he asked at last, and the sound of his voice made her start.
“No,” she said a little hoarsely. “Oh, no.” For at the suggestion of delay she was suddenly overwhelmed by panic in case he should change his mind, or say that, after all, they must not act without more thought.
“I have made up my mind, Reid.”
“Sure?”
“Quite sure.” Her voice cleared, and she looked up and smiled at him. “I’ll marry you.”
“Darling, will you really?” He gave a half-incredulous little laugh, and kissed her upturned face. “I thought all that grave consideration couldn’t end in anything but a refusal.”
“I—I had to weigh up everything carefully.”
“Of course.”
She wished she had not said that then. It made her decision sound such a poor and passionless thing. In that moment she longed, from the bottom of her soul, for a breathless, reckless, glorious romance with Reid.
She felt her heart beat more quickly and her blood race in her veins at the thought of what it must be like to be the real object of his bold, generous, almost arrogant love.
But that was not for her. Only Caroline had been able to command that. She must be satisfied to be liked and admired.
In one last surge of panic, she almost drew back even then. But she steadied herself, and heard him say,
“When is it to be, my sweet? Alma has already lectured me on the grave responsibilities of a bridesmaid.”
“What, you too?” Leslie laughed, and she was pleased to hear that it sounded a perfectly natural and self-possessed laugh. “She was here not an hour ago, telling me that I should upset all her plans for the term if I didn’t make up my mind soon.”
“Well, we can put her out of her misery now. And your father too,” he added, as a good-humoured afterthought.
“Yes.” Leslie thought of her mother’s pathetically controlled anxiety, and her not very successful efforts to hide her longing for happier, safer times, when she didn’t have to think of money—or the lack of it—every hour of the day.
“I suppose we may as well make it soon, then.” She tried so hard to make her tone cool and judicial that she succeeded in making it flat and indifferent.
So much so that she must have piqued him, for he laughed a little angrily and, catching her in his arms, exclaimed,
“ ‘May as well’ is no term to use to your bridegroom, you cold little fish! This is going to be a marriage, you know. Not a business assignment.”
“Yes. I—I know.”
“And I’ll stake my male pride on your finding it a bit more interesting than you seem to think,” he added almost threateningly, although he was laughing. “When do you marry me, eh?” And, bending her back lightly against his arm, he gave her a long, hard kiss on her mouth.
“Reid!” She struggled free.
“Don’t you like it?”
“I—” She liked it so desperately that she was afraid she could not hide how much. “Of course, but—I can’t very well answer your question if you go on kissing me like that.”
“It has been done.” He was suddenly in a remarkably good humour. “But we’ll take one thing at a time if you like. When are you going to marry me?”
“Next—next month.”
She had nearly said “next week,” because when he held her and kissed her as he had just now, it was almost impossible not to say exactly what was in her mind. But she retained enough self-control to produce a reasonable answer. An answer which would show that she was ready to play her part, and yet not betray the wild eagerness and rapture which shook her at the very thought of being married to him.
“Next month.” He repeated her answer thoughtfully. “Fine. Early next month?”
But she smiled at him, to show that she liked also.
It was perfectly safe to like. Only one must not love They told the rest of the family later that evening .and received approving congratulations all round. Indeed, to Leslie, in her secret, frightened joy, it seemed that these were the only congratulations that mattered. The earlier ones, when she had first become engaged, had not meant anything. This was the real thing now. More real than even Reid guessed.
“It wasn’t anything I said, was it, darling?” her mother asked anxiously when she got Leslie alone.
“I mean—you aren’t hurrying things on more than you want just because I poured out my worries to you?”
“No, Mother. It’s all right.” Leslie was very calm and tranquil about that. “The idea of an early wedding was
—was Reid’s. And I found I liked it very much indeed.”
“I’m so glad! I’m so terribly glad for you—and so relieved for your father,” she added naively.
Leslie smiled.
“Yes. He looked as though it were his own wedding, when we started to tell him of our decision.”
‘Well, I can tell you why now, dear. Why he and I are so specially relieved and delighted. We heard from the nursing home today—from Sir James. He does think there is a very reasonable chance that Morley may even walk again, if we can afford to let him go in for a long and expensive course of almost experimental treatment.”
“Mother! How marvellous! Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“Because—I’m ashamed to say it—our acceptance did depend on Reid giving his full financial support.”
“But he’d promised that anyway!” Leslie cried impatiently.
“Yes, I know. But I don’t need to explain your father’s attitude all over again.”
“No, indeed!” Leslie laughed protestingly.
“Well, since you know his rather unreasonable views so well, you can see that what the situation amounted to was that the beginning of Morley’s treatment more or less depended on the date of your wedding. I didn’t want you to know that, Leslie, until you had decided your own future on personal considerations: We owed that to you, my dear. But I can’t tell you how glad I am that you have finally decided for an early marriage.”
“I’m glad too,” Leslie said soberly. “For Morley’s sake as well as my own.”
“There’ll be a lot to arrange in a very short time, of course.” But her mother sounded pleased, rather than harassed, by the prospect, Leslie noticed, and she guessed that wedding preparations were very dear to her mother’s ingenuous and rather extravagant heart.
“We want things rather quiet, you know,” she said, but she smiled indulgently at her mother.
“Of course, dear, of course.”
But a look of enjoyable vagueness was beginning to come into Mrs. Greeve’s beautiful dark eyes, and Leslie thought,
“She’s beginning to think in dozens! I’ll have to keep a curb on her. If Reid is going to pay out all that money for Morley, I’m not going to have him saddled with the expense of an extravagant trousseau for me.”
Reid, however, had different views. Or so it turned out when she broached the subject to him and warned him to be firm on the question.
“Why shouldn’t you have a swell trousseau?” he wanted to know. “Don’t you like pretty clothes just as much as the next girl?”
“Of course. But that isn’t the point.”
“It’s quite a good point, so far as I am concerned.”
“But, Reid, in the circumstances, it’s faintly dishonest. They will try to spend a lot of your money on what is, after all, our obligation. I don’t mind exploiting you, or anyone else, for the sake of Morley’s health. But I don’t want an extravagant outfit at your expense.”
He grinned at her.
“Don’t you? I rather like the idea, personally.”
“It’s—it’s not strictly necessary.” She looked faintly put out.
“It doesn’t have to be,” he assured her. “I hope you don’t regard me as the sort of man who sees his bride only in terms of strict necessity.”
She laughed reluctantly.
“Sweetheart,” he said, you haven’t had much fun out of your marriage affairs up to now. Relax and enjoy yourself for the next month. Regard your parents as the inheritors of at least half of the Tabitha fortune, and shop accordingly. The bills will be paid, I promise you, and it doesn’t much matter through whose banking account they pass. It’s the same money. And if we stop to work out each time whose money it really is, we’re none of us going to enjoy any of it.”
There was a good deal of common sense in this—as in most of Reid’s flippant utterances—and in the end Leslie accepted his advice.
Her mother—completely reassured by this new mood—accompanied her to London on a whirlwind shopping tour, and there, of course, they took every opportunity to see Morley.
To both of them it was obvious that he was already a different person. Hopeful, even confident, he greeted them like a man who expected everything to go well. Except for an occasional characteristically dry remark, there was no trace of that good-humoured but cynical melancholy which had distinguished him for so many years, and Leslie and her mother could hardly hide their joy at the change.
Afraid even then to raise too many hopes, they both at first avoided speaking much of the future.
But Morley, to their surprise, showed no such reserve.
“I’m sorry I can’t be at your wedding, Leslie dear,” he said. “But I promise to be in circulation before the first christening, and if you’ll make me godfather to the Reid heir, I’ll undertake to carry out my duties as actively as the best.”
She laughed rather tenderly at that, and the tenderness was not all for Morley.
“It’s a bargain,” she promised.
“How does Father get on with his prospective son-in-law now?” Morley asked with candour.
“Very well,” Leslie assured him.
“Even to the extent of agreeing to accept half his fortune?”
That was the old Morley, and his mother murmured a not very convincing protest.
“Oh, yes. I think they are thrashing that out with Father’s lawyers while we are away. And you needn’t be deprecating about it, Mother,” Leslie said. “Reid’s perfectly right in saying that Father had a moral claim on part of the fortune. The only difficulty was in devising the exact circumstances in which Father would agree to see it in that way.”
It was Morley who laughed indulgently that time.
“Well, I hope someone has managed to convey to Reid how grateful I am,” he said more soberly. “Whatever moral rights there may be about the division of this inheritance, Reid would have been perfectly within his rights to hold on to the lot. And I’m well aware that, actually or figuratively, he has financed the miracle that’s going to put me on my feet again.”
His sister glanced at him affectionately.
“It’s all right, Morley. I conveyed all that to him.”
“Ye-es.” Her brother looked at her with a certain amount of amused indulgence. “I suppose you certainly chose the best way possible of expressing the family gratitude. Happy, Leslie?”
“Divinely happy.”
“It’s queer—I thought I knew you so well. I was certain you were very much in love with Oliver.”
“So was I. Certain, I mean.”
“And it was a mistake?”
“Not in the sense that I misread my feelings at the time. I was very romantic about him. Particularly when I was a good deal younger.” Both her mother and brother smiled indulgently at that. “But I suppose it was the old story of being in love with love—and the most attractive man I knew well at that time. After Reid came, there—wasn’t anyone else.”
“A good thing it was Oliver that Caroline fancied, then, and not Reid,” observed Morley with candour.
“Thanks a lot! You mean you wouldn’t back me in any competition?”
“Not against Caroline, my love,” her brother insisted teasingly. “She’s a natural winner in any feminine competition. In the slightly demode expression—which has not, however, been successfully replaced—she’s got what it takes.”
“And I haven’t?”
He was surprised as well as amused, she saw, by the sharpness with which she said that.
“We-ell, it isn’t a quality which brothers usually detect in their own sisters, you know. Only in other people’s sisters.”
“He’s teasing you, Leslie dear,” her mother put in peaceably. “You know perfectly well that Morley thinks the world of you.”
“Say, rather, that Reid thinks the world of her, Mamma,” Morley corrected, with a smile. “At the moment, his is the only opinion which interests Leslie—and quite rightly so.”
“Well, h
e does think the world of her. Otherwise, why would he do all he has done?”
“You see, Leslie?” Morley smiled at her, still teasing, but with a great deal of affection too. “And remember that he had known the fatal Caroline once—still he chose you.”
“But suppose—” began Leslie. Then she stopped. Not only because of the amused lift of her brother’s eyebrows, but because she realized with dismay that she had almost stumbled into the fatal mistake of demanding reassurance.
She changed the subject—laughed off the conversation as though she found it no more than the light-hearted teasing which Morley had meant it to ,be. But she was disturbed, and took herself to task afterwards.
“That’s the danger in any marriage where one feels insecure,” she thought remorsefully. “I must accept, and be thankful for, what I have. Not try to find reassurance of what doesn’t really exist in any careless word that someone likes to utter.”
She was glad she had identified this danger so early, and she imagined she was safely armed against it, now that she recognized it. Just as she was pretty sure, while she was in London and regarding Reid from a distance, that she could learn to achieve a nice balance in her relationship with him.
There was no reason why she should not show an easy, pleasant affection to him. That he would expect. All she must guard against was any display of the inner, breathless rapture which alternately enchanted and tormented her.
It should not be too difficult, she told herself.
But when she saw him again for the first time, after nearly a week’s absence, it was all she could do not to throw herself into his arms and cling to him.
In her effort to appear self-contained, she threatened to turn their reunion into a very tame affair. But, fortunately, Reid had a natural talent for love-making—whether flirtatious or serious—and he greeted her in a manner that must not only have satisfied any member of the family who was by, but which reminded her of his gay boast that she should find their marriage rather more interesting than she seemed to expect.
Alma, who was a weekly boarder at a school in Pencaster, was at home on this occasion, as it was a Saturday, and when she said to Leslie, “Only two more weekends until your wedding,” it seemed to give an exciting reality to the whole thing which, until now, it had lacked.
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