“Yes. I—find it hard to believe,” Leslie confessed.
“Why?” the literal-minded Alma wanted to know.
“Well, I suppose any big and wonderful change is always rather difficult to accept in advance.”
“I can always believe in anything I want to believe in,” Alma asserted argumentatively. “Have you settled where you’re going for your honeymoon yet?” For she resented that there had been a certain amount of reticence over the discussion of this.
“I don’t know about the first part.” Leslie smiled. “But later we are going to Laintenon.”
“Where Great-Aunt Tabitha lived?”
“Yes.”
“I say! She had a fabulous sort of villa there, didn’t she? Will you stay there?”
“I doubt it. The place must be very big, and most of it would have been out of use for many years, it would be rather melancholy.”
To Reid, Leslie said,
“Alma’s just been asking where we are going to spend the first part of our honeymoon. I told her, quite truly, that. I don’t know. We can go to Laintenon after the first week or ten days, of course, but we still haven’t settled on the first part.”
“What about Paris?”
“Oh, no!” she cried sharply, remembering what Caroline had said about Paris, and how she had looked.
Reid regarded her thoughtfully, and she found herself blushing, and hoping wildly that he did not remember the occasion too.
There were few things that Reid forgot, however. He made no attempt to ask her why she objected so strongly to Paris. He merely said,
“Have you ever been to Italy?”
“No.”
“Would you like that?”
“Very much,” she said eagerly. Caroline had no associations with Italy, so far as she knew.
“Not one of the obvious places, like Rome or Florence. We might go to Verona, and we could hire a car and I’d take you round Lake Garda.” He was speaking thoughtfully, as though he already visualized the scene and liked it.
“That sounds lovely,” she said softly, anxious to make up for her slip over Paris. Besides, it did sound lovely.
“We could go to Venice for a day or two, if you liked.”
“Yes. I should—love that.”
“All right. I’ll see after the arrangements. We’ll fly to Milan and go on from there.”
“Reid—”
“Yes?” He had been turning away, but he looked back at her now, over his shoulder.
“You didn’t specially want to go to Paris, did you?”
“No, my sweet.” He smiled full at her, and she found it very reassuring. “I want to go some place that you would like equally well. It’s your honeymoon too, you know.”
“Oh—thank you. I’ve always wanted to go to Italy.”
That was true, and she hoped he would take it as sufficient reason for her almost violent refusal of Paris.
“Well, you’re going now,” he told her. “And I hope you’ll have every reason to enjoy it.”
She hoped so too—passionately. Hoped there would be no unforeseen crisis. Hoped that when people said a honeymoon could be more of an ordeal than an enjoyment, they were just being cynical.
Hoped that somehow—somehow—when she took this terrible glorious risk, she would find that she had gambled on her happiness and won.
During the last days before her wedding, Leslie achieved a sort of detachment. She was the one in the household who usually shouldered most of the real work in any arrangements made, and her own wedding was no exception.
“You’re so cool about everything—one would think it was someone else’s wedding,” Katherine said.
To which Leslie replied that she liked things done well, even at her own wedding.
“Leave her alone. She’s just so sure of her happiness that she doesn’t need to bother about anything else,” her mother declared indulgently.
“But she is bothering about everything else,” protested Katherine amusedly. “That’s just it. She attends to every detail, so calmly and efficiently.”
“Because she hasn’t any inner worries,” her mother explained. “That’s it, isn’t it, darling?”
Leslie said that was exactly what it was. And her mother looked peculiarly satisfied.
When her dress was sent home, the day before the wedding, she spread it out on the bed, and all the family—even her father—came to inspect it.
To be sure, he only said, “Very handsome, very handsome,” in a modest tone, as though he were personally responsible for it, and then walked off. But her mother and her two sisters hung over it, exclaiming and admiring.
Leslie stood a little way back in the room, answering their remarks at random, gazing fascinatedly at the dress and thinking,
“When I put that dress on tomorrow, I shall be going to the church to marry Reid. I couldn’t turn back now, if I wanted to. I’m absolutely committed. If I’ve made a terrible mistake, I can’t do anything about it now.”
“You do like it, don’t you?” Katherine looked up and across the room at her.
“I adore it!”
“Oh—you were so quiet, I wondered if you were disappointed. Though I couldn’t imagine how anyone could be.”
“I think it’s the loveliest wedding dress anyone ever had,” Leslie said deliberately.
Her mother gave a pleased laugh.
“You’d better tell Reid that, darling. He told me I was to spare no expense whatever in finding you the dress of your dreams.”
“He said that?” She flushed delightedly.
“He certainly did.”
“Oh” She laughed suddenly and felt indescribably happy. For surely no man thought or spoke on those lines, if his heart were completely set on another girl.
Why should she not hope and believe in her future happiness? Why should not Reid recover from his infatuation for Caroline, just as she herself had grown out of her youthful passion for Oliver?
Looking back afterwards, she was always glad to remember that nothing spoilt the tranquil joy of her own wedding.
Worries there might have been beforehand. Problems there might be afterwards. But, during the service, and the small, intimate family reception which followed, she was quietly and completely happy.
“I don’t think I ever saw anyone look so happy as you did,” Katherine said to her, as she helped her sister change into her going-away suit of grey, edged with squirrel. “Once or twice, in the beginning, you know, I felt anxious about you. I thought maybe you were taking Reid for family reasons, in spite of all your protests. But when I saw the way you looked as you came down the aisle after the ceremony, I knew it was all right.”
“Oh, Kate! Was it so obvious?”
“You bet it was! And quite right too,” Katherine said, giving her a hug. “Have a wonderful time in Italy. But I’m sure you will. Reid’s the kind to give any girl a wonderful time. What a good thing Caroline What’s-her-name went and snaffled old Oliver, or you might have got yourself tied up with him.”
“I don’t think I should have. It simply had to be Reid,” Leslie, insisted. And in that moment she was actually grateful to Caroline for having taken Oliver off her hands.
Such are the beautiful, arrogant heights to which happiness can lift us.
It was over at last. They had run the gauntlet of parental blessing (her father), a few sentimental but happy tears (her mother), and an ill-directed shower of confetti (Alma), And they were in the car on the way to London, where they were to spend the night, and take the early morning plane to Milan the next day.
They drove through the bright, early autumn afternoon, past orchards where apples and pears hung heavy on the trees, and fields where the dark golden corn was being stacked. And Leslie thought the world had never been more beautiful, and that it was not humanly possible to be more happy than she.
“How did you enjoy your wedding, my sweet?” Reid asked at last, and she was aware that they must have been silent for a lon
g time.
“I loved it.”
He laughed.
“Girls always like weddings, I understand. Even other people’s.”
“Maybe. But one’s own is always something special.”
“Why, yes, I suppose it is. Even—” He stopped, because a big car was racing towards them, and he had to take the bend carefully.
“Rash idiot,” he remarked to Leslie, when they were past.
“Yes. But—what were you saying, Reid?”
“Something in general praise of weddings, wasn’t I? Good heavens, just look at that orchard. Heaviest crop we’ve seen so far.”
She stared at the orchard, and hated its mellow beauty. But she managed to say something appropriate. And—much harder—she managed not to yield to the temptation of forcing him back on to the subject they had so abruptly left.
What was the qualification he had been going to make, with such careless matter-of-factness, about their own wedding? Until they reached London, and the hotel where they were to stay, the question tormented her.
In the luxury hotel where Reid had assumed she would like to stay, a very beautiful suite had been reserved. And so obviously pleased was he to be providing her with the very best of everything on her honeymoon that she had to conceal from him, at all costs, her dismay at discovering how very palatial and un-intimate the suite was.
There were two bedrooms and a sitting-room—which seemed excessive for one night, Leslie could not help thinking. And, for the first time, the dreadful idea came to her that perhaps he still regarded their marriage as a friendly compromise rather than an actual fact.
Was this his tactful way of indicating that the wedding need not radically change the relationship between them for the time being?
She told herself that she was being fanciful. And then that—even if she had guessed right—she must be patient. The family necessity had forced them into a seeming intimacy for which he might think neither of them was ready.
“But, if he thinks that, how am I to make him see otherwise?” she thought desperately. “And, if I can’t make him see it, how am I to bear it?”
They had arrived too late for dinner. But they had supper together in the brilliant, beautiful restaurant, and danced for a while afterwards to a superb band. But, all the while, this new and terrible problem hovered in the back of her consciousness and, try as she would, she could not be at ease with him.
“Well, we’re due at the air office at a fiendishly early hour in the morning,” he said at last. “It’s about time we turned in, isn’t it, and got what sleep we can?”
“I expect so.”
“Would you like a drink before you go up?”
“No, thank you.”
She wondered if she sounded as cold and casual to him as she did to herself. She thought perhaps she must have, because he gave her an amused, rather quizzical glance as he patted her shoulder, and said,
“All right. I think I will. Good night, my sweet. Sleep well. I’ll see you tomorrow morning about six.”
“Good night,” she said, and went calmly towards the lift. And no one—least of all Reid—could have guessed that her heart was dead within her.
CHAPTER TEN
“NO SMOKING! Fasten Safety Belts!” ordered the electric sign at the front of the aeroplane cabin. And Leslie, occupied though she was with her own private problem, could not suppress an instinctive thrill of excitement at this indication that her first flight was about to begin.
“All right?” Reid, in the seat beside her, smiled at her as the plane bowled forward over the field, bumping over the unevenness of the ground with a slow clumsiness which completely concealed the grace and speed which would distinguish it as soon as it was in the air.
“Yes, of course.” She smiled back at him. For was not their relationship one of pleasant friendliness? “I’m terribly excited, that’s all.”
He laughed indulgently and patted her hand, reminding her yet again of the time he had done that when first they met.
How angry she had been with him, that afternoon when he first asked her the way to Cranley Magna.
She remembered exactly the feel of his long, strong brown hand on hers then, and how she had resented the familiarity.
Now she loved to have him touch her. She loved everything about him, if only—
“We’re off,” he said. And she realized that they had left the ground without her even noticing the fact.
It was a perfectly smooth flight, almost monotonous in its early uneventfulness, until they began to cross the Alps.
Leslie thought that never in her life had she seen anything so beautiful as the scene spread below her.
The blues and purples of the mountain shadows, with the jewel-like gleam of a lake here and there. The great snowy peaks, gilded by the midday sunshine, rising on every hand. The green of thick vegetation in the valleys, when they came low enough to pick that out. And even an occasional stream and waterfall.
It was like some immense and beautiful toy, viewed from this height, and to look down upon it gave one an almost godlike sense of detachment and wonder.
“Oh, Reid! I’m so glad we came!” she exclaimed.
And he laughed and said, “I’m glad too. It’s wonderful, isn’t it?”
She wanted to ask if he had ever looked down on this scene, or any similar one, with Caroline. But she knew that even so prosaic a honeymoon as he evidently intended theirs to be could be ruined by a few foolish questions or comments. Caroline was definitely a subject to be left alone.
They arrived in Milan in time for lunch. But, as they had decided to go on to Verona the same day, there was time for little more than a stroll through the Galleria, a glance at the Scala and a breathless few minutes before the beauty of the Cathedral.
Then they were on their way again, this time by train.
It was Leslie’s first journey abroad, and she was fascinated by every detail. Just to have people round her talking a beautiful and unfamiliar language was exciting. And, since Reid appeared to know enough Italian to deal with most emergencies, she was able to enjoy the novelty of it all without any of the minor anxieties which usually beset an inexperienced traveller.
It was early evening by the time they reached Verona, but there was still enough light for Reid to point out the main features as they drove to their hotel.
Sharply etched against the evening sky, and dominating the town, rose the great broken arches of the Roman amphitheatre, and Reid promised her that they would explore this on the following day.
“We’re too late for the season of open-air opera that they do here in the summer,” he said. “But you’ll still have plenty of more informal music in the open-air cafes around the centre of the town.”
“It’s fascinating!” She was glancing eagerly from side to side at the curious, almost mediaeval streets through which they were passing. And when they drew up at their hotel, she thought the place looked more like a rather broken-down palace than any hotel she had ever been in.
There was nothing in the nature of palatial suites in this hotel. No private sitting-room. But they were shown into a couple of pleasant rooms, with a communicating door. And when the porter pulled up the green slatted sun-blinds, Leslie looked out into a romantic-looking courtyard, where vines were growing, and a beautiful, brown-skinned youth was twanging some stringed instrument and singing “O Sole Mio.”
It was all very picturesque and intriguing.
“How do you like it?”
They had been left alone now, and Reid had come in from his room to look round hers and see that she had everything she wanted.
“It’s enchanting. Do you think the boy out there is a special stage ‘effect’? Or did he just happen to be there?”
“Oh, just happened, I expect.” Reid went to the window and leant out to exchange a few laughing words with the boy, who almost immediately broke into the poignantly gay strains of “Marechiare.”
“It’s delightful at first,” Re
id said. “They’re a bit inclined to keep it up to all hours, but that’s all part of the life here. Nearly everyone goes to sleep in the middle of the day because it’s so hot, and that means that they stay up late into the night. Even the children. You’ll see, when we go out to get something to eat.”
“Aren’t we dining at the hotel, then?”
“No, no. It’s more fun out of doors.”
She agreed that it would be.
“Give me twenty minutes to wash and change, and I’ll be ready for anything,” she promised. “I must get into something cooler.”
“But take a coat,” he warned, as he went back into his own room. “It gets cold very suddenly.”
As she changed, she hummed a soft accompaniment to the song outside and felt her spirits lighten. The faintly fantastic atmosphere here, so unlike anything she had ever known before, seemed to whisper to her that anything could happen, after all.
The warm night air, the music and something else quite indefinable seemed to combine to create a sense of drama and romance, and, like everyone else who has ever known the beauty of Romeo and Juliet’s city, Leslie fell a victim then and there to the purple twilight of Verona and the spell which it casts.
“There’s something about this place, Reid!” she declared, when she joined him later, cool and enchanting in a flowered silk dress, patterned in vivid blues and greens against a white background, which seemed to accentuate her fairness and make her look very young.
“That’s what Romeo thought, I guess,” Reid agreed, smiling his approval as he took her coat from her and tossed it over his arm.
“Do we take a taxi?”
“No. We walk. Everyone walks here, in the centre of the town. Lots of the streets haven’t even got a separate pavement and road.”
So they strolled through the chattering, laughing, flirting crowds who thronged the streets, until they came to the great Piazza Bra, where, sure enough, a band was playing, and under the artificial lights the trees and plants in the gardens looked like something on a stage.
Tell Me My Fortune Page 13
