Tell Me My Fortune

by Mary Burchell

  Couples strolled arm in arm in the darker paths of the gardens, plump, motherly-looking peasant women sat on the benches and knitted and gossiped as though it were early afternoon. And everywhere the dark-eyed, golden-skinned “bambini” tumbled and played and laughed and cried and got in everyone’s way.

  “They ought to be in bed, surely!” Leslie exclaimed. “They’re just babies.”

  “They’ve done a good deal of sleeping during the heat of the day, I expect,” Reid said. “They enjoy the cool as much as anyone else now. And if it seems an odd way to bring up children, by our standards, they none of them seem any the worse for it.”

  That was true enough. Leslie thought she had never seen prettier, happier children. And presently, when she and Reid sat down at a table on the pavement and proceeded to have their supper, she divided her attention almost equally between her excellent meal and the charming, amusing children, who appeared to be kissed or slapped with equal impartiality by their fond parents.

  Gradually any sense of time slipped away. One had the absurd and pleasant feeling that one could go on like this all night. And when, after a while, they rose to go, Reid said,

  “You don’t want to go in yet, do you?”

  “Oh, no. I feel I should be missing something.”

  He laughed.

  “We’ll stroll some more.” No one seemed to think in terms of anything more hurried here. “And I’ll show you one or two places that we can glance at now and explore better by daylight.”

  As they walked along, he slipped his arm round her, partly to keep her near him when they came to crowded places, and partly because it seemed the natural way for couples to walk if they were young and happy.

  She looked up at him and laughed a little, responding to the pressure of his arm with an eagerness she would not probably have shown if they had been at home. in England.

  “Decided you aren’t frightened of me, after all?” he enquired, with an air of not unkindly teasing.

  “Frightened of you! I’ve never been frightened of you,” declared Leslie with truth.

  “Oh, yes. You were frightened of me yesterday evening. Kept on giving me nervous, wide-eyed looks, until I began to feel like the villain of the piece who’d threatened to ruin the old homestead if the heroine didn’t come to heel.”

  “Reid! I’ve never looked like that in my life.”

  “Then what was the trouble yesterday?”

  “Why, I—I—there wasn’t any.”

  He didn’t dispute that. He let them walk in silence for a few moments longer. Then he said, quite gently,

  “Do you feel this marriage is a little too much for you in some ways, honey?”

  “No, Reid.” She spoke softly, but without hesitation. “Not in any way at all.”

  “Not even if I tell you that no man would bring his wife to Verona, of all places, and not expect to make love to her?”

  “Not even then.” She was smiling, and some of the sweet confidence which had come to her during her wedding returned to her now.

  He laughed softly, and bent his head to kiss the side of her cheek—a proceeding which was watched with approval and no surprise whatever by a plump, elderly Italian who was passing.

  “Aren’t you going to tell me what was wrong yesterday?”

  “Just that I thought—when I saw that great suite—and you were rather matter-of-fact about everything—and I remembered about—Caroline—”

  “Why the hell do you want to quote Caroline at this moment?” he demanded, but not angrily.

  “I don’t! It was just that—Oh, I didn’t know how you regarded me, Reid. I got nervous, if you like. But only in case you had some idea that the marriage was truly just one of convenience, and—and—”

  “You’ve been reading too many modern novels, my sweet, all about people who behave any way but the normal one,” Reid assured her good-humouredly. “You don’t really think any man would marry anything as pretty and sweet as you are, and then decide to be brotherly, do you?”

  She laughed, even a little more than the occasion demanded. For, out of the past, there had risen the ridiculous memory of Oliver saying she was like a sister to him. It had hurt so unbearably at the time, and now it hurt no longer.

  And with that memory went the further recollection that she had drawn some sort of comparison even then, and told herself that in no circumstances whatever would Reid regard her as a sister.

  “It’s all right,” she said happily. “I expect I was silly and fanciful. It isn’t always easy to—to understand someone else’s reactions, even when you know them very well.”

  “And you consider that you know me very well?”

  “Pretty well.”

  “But you’re satisfied with the idea that you should know me better.” It was almost a statement, rather than a question.

  “Yes, Reid,” she said, and for a moment he tightened his arm round her.

  Then he paused to point out to her the beauties of some twelfth-century church they were passing, and they didn’t talk any more about their inmost feelings or reactions. They might have been any couple of interested tourists taking their first enchanted look at one of the old Italian cities.

  Except that there was a glow of happiness in her face not achieved by all tourists.

  They stayed in Verona for about ten days, visiting Venice and Padua, and hiring a car sometimes and driving out to Lake Garda when it became too hot to be comfortable on the plains.

  If the scene had been dull and humdrum and the weather disastrous, Leslie would still have thought it the most wonderful place in the world, and this the most wonderful holiday. For in her new-found happy intimacy with Reid she had discovered, it seemed to her, an entirely new meaning to life.

  She had always been of a reasonably happy nature, and her home background had been—in spite of Morley’s tragedy and her father’s weaknesses—a very contented one. But it seemed to her now that all the years before she had known Reid had a pleasantly negative quality. She had been happy, of course. As happy as she knew how to be then.

  But as Reid’s wife she had discovered a source and spring of such radiant, positive happiness that she sometimes wondered how she had been able to bear life before she knew him.

  She made no attempt to discuss it with him. To do so would have been to betray more to him than she felt she safely could as yet. But she could not know him as well as she did now without realizing that he too was happy.

  How far it went with him, she could not tell. His relationship with her might well supply no more than the “negative content” she had known herself before she met him. It was possible that for him the heights could only be touched with Caroline.

  So far as Leslie was concerned, they could have stayed there for weeks. But one morning, when they were idling happily over their breakfast of coffee and rolls, creamy butter and cherry jam, their post was brought to them, and Reid’s included a letter which had been forwarded on from France.

  “I think we’ll have to push on to Laintenon soon, my sweet,” he said, frowning a little over the letter. “There are quite a number of things to settle still. This letter is from Aunt Tabitha’s lawyers, to remind me that, when I dashed off to England, I left a good deal undone.”

  “Well” She looked up, smiling, from an originally spelt bulletin of Alma’s. “Whenever you say. However long I stay, I shan’t really want to leave here. But no honeymoon can go on for ever.”

  “The honeymoon doesn’t have to stop, just because we shift the scene,” he reminded her.

  “No? Maybe not.”

  But she privately thought that neither Laintenon, nor any other place, would ever hold for her the charm and magic of this city where she had first come to know Reid as her husband.

  “I’ll go and enquire about train times.” Reid got up. “Don t hurry. Stay and finish your breakfast—and your post.”

  “There’s an incredible epistle from Alma which you’ll enjoy later. I never knew anyone mor
e naturally resistant to education. Her spelling’s a disgrace,” Leslie remarked indulgently. “But I see there’s a letter from Kate too. That should have all the local gossip.”

  When Reid had gone, she poured herself out another cup of coffee, and prepared to enjoy Katherine’s letter at her leisure.

  Katherine, for all-her slightly languid beauty, was a clear-headed young woman, and always gave her news crisply and in what Leslie mentally called the right order of importance. Her letters were almost invariably a pleasure, because she told one exactly what one most wanted to know.

  This one was no exception. In two pages, she had given Leslie a satisfactory account of the family’s affairs, and left her with the pleasant impression that life at Cranley Magna was easier and less problematical than it had been for many a long day.

  In addition, she was able to report that Morley made continuously satisfactory progress, and that, within a week or so, the great effort was to be made to put him literally on his feet again.

  Even to read about it brought such a lump into Leslie’s throat that, for a moment, she laid down the page and looked away across the sunny piazza with tears in her eyes.

  Dear Morley! who had been so patient and so uncomplaining. If he really regained the use of his legs, she thought she would never be able to ask more of heaven again. That—and to have Reid too! It was almost too much.

  She picked up the last sheet of the letter, and in this Katherine had arrived at the general local gossip, as distinct from family news.

  I met Mrs. Bendick the other day (she wrote).

  Our Mrs. B., I mean—not Oliver’s glamorous lady. She told me that they didn’t have more than about four days’ honeymoon (I was glad to be able to report that you did much better) because Oliver hadn’t any more holiday due to him at that time. However, he has had his release now, and they’re off somewhere else, to make up for the short time they had in the beginning. Mrs. B. wagged her head and tut-tutted a bit about her new daughter-in-law. I think she considers C. rather a bird of paradise for any man to keep happily cooped up in an ordinary domestic pen. And I must say I agree with her.

  Still, we won’t look for trouble. Oliver’s very steadiness may appeal to her, though personally I should have thought Reid was more her type. Not that I wish to suggest your Reid lacks steadiness. But he’s what the Victorians used to call “dashing” as well. And, unless I’m much mistaken, Caroline likes a little dash about her men.

  Again Leslie put down the letter. But not with sympathetic tears in her eyes this time. She looked away across the piazza again, it was true, but now there was a thoughtful look in her eyes and they were a little narrowed. Like the eyes of someone who strives to see something just out of range.

  Kate was smart, of course. She would see unerringly that Reid was more Caroline’s type of man than Oliver was.

  And yet—Caroline had chosen Oliver.

  If only one could be sure that she had chosen him coolly and with judgment. If one could be certain that there had been no element of pique, or disappointment, in her choice.

  “But I shall never know that now,” thought Leslie. “And I shall be a fool if I let my thoughts dwell on that. She wondered if Reid sometimes went over and over the past in his own mind. He must, she supposed. And if he wondered uneasily whether Caroline had made her choice out of little more than pique, the reflection must cause him even more disquiet than it did her.

  It was at that moment that Leslie took a very firm decision for the future.

  When she and Reid finally settled in England they would not, she determined, make their home anywhere near Cranley Magna or, still less, Pencaster.

  She would be terribly sorry not to be near the family, of course, and she knew that they probably expected that her future home would be at any rate within easy reach of them. She hated to have to admit so much fear of any woman—Caroline or anyone else—but there were risks which one should not take. Better to face the fact, and act accordingly, rather than ignore a known danger and pretend that’ bravado and pride could take one past it.

  Reid—and Oliver too—were, she was sure, the stuff of which faithful husbands are made. And, little though she wished to pay tributes to Caroline, she had no reason to think the girl was a wilful troublemaker.

  But the whole situation was alive with danger. And when emotional gunpowder was lying around, only a fool struck matches.

  By the time Reid came back, with the news that they could set off on their journey to Laintenon on the morrow, she had finished her coffee, read Katherine’s letter and put.it away in her handbag, and was ready to divert Reid with Alma’s illiterate epistle.

  ‘Had Kate any news?” he asked, looking up once, with a laugh, from Alma’s letter.

  “Just general family gossip, and a cautiously expressed hope that Morley might try to walk sometime next week.”

  “Good work! Don’t get excited in advance, sweetheart, in case there’s a disappointment. But, if it’s a success, we’ll have a long-distance call from Laintenon, and you can talk to Kate and hear all about it.”

  She smiled at him. He thought of everything.

  But she hoped he would not think of ensuring that they settled near her family in case she became homesick.

  The next day they left Italy, and it was not until the early afternoon of the following day that they arrived at Laintenon. Laintenon was about ten miles in from the coast, and so exactly like what Leslie had always supposed a French country town would be that she could have laughed aloud with amusement and delight.

  It was a little bigger than she expected and, because of some rather famous health springs in the district, there were still a good many tourists, even though it was strictly out of the season.

  For them, however, there was no question of difficulties of accommodation, even apart from Great-Aunt Tabitha’s deserted villa. Reid drove straight to the tall, narrow house where he had lodged during the months he had lived in Laintenon, and was welcomed as a long-lost son by his voluble and sentimental landlady.

  Leaving her to unpack, Reid went off immediately to see the lawyers and, with the aid of a good many gestures and a certain amount of schoolgirl French, Leslie managed to have a nice informative chat with Madame Blanchard.

  Reid, she gathered, was all that was good, noble and generous, a reputation which he appeared to have established for himself during the year or so he lived there.

  No one, it seemed, was better pleased than Madame Blanchard when “chère Monsieur Carte” (which was her version of Reid’s name) had inherited a great fortune from the mysterious old lady who lived in the Villa Rossignol. No—she didn’t know why it was called that. There had never been any nightingales there in her time. But perhaps when the old lady first came there as a bride there might have been. That would be seventy years ago or more.

  The old lady had not been seen in the town for at least fifteen years before her death, but everyone said the villa was very handsome inside, and the grounds were beautiful, though out of condition now.

  No doubt “Monsieur Carte” would be taking his bride to see the place. He had been very good to the old lady. Everyone agreed about that, and no one—if Madame Blanchard were to be believed—grudged him what she called his splendid inheritance.

  Being naturally curious, she tried very hard (though with great politeness) to find out from Leslie how much the splendid inheritance had amounted to. But as Leslie really did not know, she was able to withhold this piece of information.

  By the time Reid returned, Leslie and Madame Blanchard were firm friends.

  “After we’ve had something to eat, we’ll go up and have a look at the villa, if you like,” Reid offered. “A good deal of the stuff won’t be much good to us, and will hardly have even a sentimental value for anyone in your family. But you had better have a look at everything. A few of the things are very beautiful, as well as valuable.”

  Leslie was only too eager to accept the suggestion and, after an early dinner,
they walked out in the cool of the evening to the Villa Rossignol, which stood about half a mile outside the town, almost hidden in a beautiful grove of cypress trees.

  To Leslie, there was something melancholy, as well as intensely interesting, in this visit to the home of the legendary figure who had stood for so much in their family life.

  The place must have been magnificent once, with the heavy magnificence of a past age. But now it was all so silent and dusty and lifeless. No one lived there any longer, except the elderly caretaker and his wife. And for years and years before that only an old lady, who had long outlived all her contemporaries, and a couple of ancient servants.

  “It’s hard to believe that she came here once as a happy, youthful bride, isn’t it?” Leslie said, when they had seen all they wanted to see of the house itself, and were strolling through the vast, tangled “gardens.

  “I suppose it is.” Reid held aside a great bunch of some sweet-smelling shrub so that Leslie could pass. “But she was quite happy, you know, even towards the end when she was getting tired and very old.”

  “Was she, Reid? You made her happy, didn’t you?”

  He smiled.

  “I had something to do with it. She was a lively old lady, and used to say that she could still enjoy active life at second-hand. She used to like me to come up to the villa and talk to her—tell her stories of what I had done in the years before I came to Laintenon. I knocked about the world a good bit, you know, and she enjoyed a good story better than almost anyone I ever knew. I wish she could have seen you,” he added suddenly. “She’d have liked you.”

  “Would she?” Leslie was indescribably gratified. “How do you know?”

  “She used to say she knew the sort of girl I ought to marry. And she used to describe something very like you.”

  “She didn’t like Caroline,” thought Leslie, with inner conviction. “I suppose he brought her here once or twice, during their engaged days.”

  Ridiculously, she felt a sudden kinship with old Great-Aunt Tabitha, which had nothing whatever to do with their very flimsy relationship in fact. And she was very glad she had come to the villa and seen it for herself.