When they finally left the place, she was smiling a little, so that Reid put his arm round her as they walked down the hill to the town again. It reminded her of the first magical evening in Verona, and she thought, “I am going to be just as happy here.”
She even wondered why she had been so foolish and so cowardly as to have doubted her happiness at any time, because everything seemed simple and then she looked up, and coming along the road towards them was Caroline, dressed in white, and swinging a beach-hat by the strings, for all the world as though she had walked out specially to meet them.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
FOR A few seconds, Leslie stared at the advancing figure. Then she said in a queer, matter-of-fact little voice, “Why, there’s—Caroline,” almost as though she had been expecting her. As perhaps, in a way, she had.
“Caroline!” exclaimed Reid. Then he said, “Hell!” And for the first time since she had known him, Leslie detected a note of something like alarm in his voice.
By that time, Caroline had come right up with them, and she took off her sun-glasses and exclaimed,
“Well, for heaven’s sake! Look who’s here. Where did you two spring from?”
And then she laughed. But she could afford to laugh, thought Leslie. It was not her life that was in ruins.
Then Leslie heard herself laugh too, and say something about ridiculous coincidences. So apparently she was doing quite well too. And Reid was joking and speaking in his usual half-flippant manner. Only his arm round Leslie’s waist was uncomfortably tight.
“You’re staying at your old place, I suppose?” Caroline looked at and spoke to Reid as someone who knew all his usual haunts and habits.
“Yes, of course. Madame Blanchard has gathered us both under her wing by this time. Where are you staying?”
“Oliver and I are renting the smallest villa ever We were lucky to get it at a few days’ notice, of course. It’s not fifty yards along the road. You must come back with me for a drink.”
Leslie would have given anything to say that unfortunately they were going on somewhere else But they were not going anywhere else, and if she said they were, Reid—and perhaps Caroline too—would know that she was running away.
So they turned back and fell into step beside Caroline, who was busy explaining what Leslie already knew from Katherine’s letter—that, as soon as Oliver’s replacement arrived, they had decided to have the second instalment of their honeymoon.
“But why Laintenon?” Reid asked dryly.
“I had a fancy for it,” Caroline retorted, and for a moment her strange, significant glance drifted over him, expressing something which Leslie felt she herself could not understand. “I knew how attractive it could be at this time of year, you see.”
“Yes, of course.”
Usually Reid’s voice was full and expressive. Now it sounded flat and without any overtones.
They turned in at the gate of a small, white villa, set in a pretty formal garden, and Caroline led the way round to the back of the house. Here, sprawling comfortably in a deck chair on the verandah, was Oliver, looking exactly as though he were at home in Cranleymere.
To see his familiar figure in these utterly unfamiliar surroundings seemed so much the last touch of fantasy that Leslie began to think she must be in some dreadful sort of dream.
But there was nothing dreamlike about the way Oliver sprang to his feet at the sight of them, and came forward exclaiming with obvious pleasure.
There were the same incredulous questions and the same half-joking answers as there had been with Caroline, and everyone made at least a very good appearance of being delighted to see everyone else.
And then Caroline said that she would bring drinks out on to the verandah, and suggested Leslie might like to come into the house and help her collect things.
They went indoors and, for the first time in their short acquaintance, Leslie realized, she and Caroline were alone together. Somehow the situation embarrassed her, though she hardly knew why. But evidently there was nothing in it to disturb Caroline.
She opened cupboards—still obviously unfamiliar to her—and searched for what she wanted, and all the time she kept up a desultory stream of conversation.
It was natural for her to refer to Leslie’s wedding, of course, but Leslie felt herself almost wince when Caroline remarked casually,
“In the end, Reid and you made nearly as much of a rush job of it as we did, didn’t you?”
“Not quite. We did fix our wedding date about a month ahead, which gave me a little time for preparation. Here’s the corkscrew, if that’s what you’re looking for.”
“Oh, thanks.” Caroline was arranging her tray with apparent carelessness but completely efficient result. “We settled things in a matter of days, in the end, you know.”
“Yes, I know,” Leslie said. “Why?”
The question—curt and almost rude though it might be—was out before Leslie could stop it.
But Caroline did not seem to mind. She laughed, with a sort of reminiscent amusement, and said,
“We had a row, as a matter of fact. And then a making-up. And—you know how these things are—suddenly we found ourselves arranging to get. married the first moment we could. It’s funny—quarrels sometimes clear the air, don’t they?”
“Sometimes,” Leslie agreed. “This isn’t your—first visit to Laintenon, is it?”
“Oh, no. I was here in the days when I was engaged to Reid,” explained Caroline, who had no inhibitions about past loves apparently.
“I see,” said Leslie, who had. And then they went out into the garden again.
Both men sprang to their feet. But it was Reid who came to take the tray from Caroline. And Leslie called herself mean and petty because she could not help noticing that his hands almost closed over Caroline’s as he did so.
Oliver, meanwhile, was setting a chair for her and asking her how she liked her first glimpse of France.
Again there was something completely unreal about the scene. By every association of childhood and girlhood, she was much nearer to Oliver than she was to Reid. And, knowing, as she did, the link between Reid and Caroline, she could not help finding it horribly natural that they should be laughing over the same tray of drinks, while she paired off with Oliver.
It was like some stage comedy in which two couples had got mixed, but would probably sort themselves out in the last act.
“But what will the ‘sorting out’ amount to in our case?” she thought unhappily. And she looked at Oliver, very charmingly playing host to her, and wondered what she had ever seen in him.
Naturally, he was intensely interested in everything she had to tell him about Morley, and usually Leslie would have asked nothing better than to talk of her beloved brother. But all the time she was dreadfully aware of Reid and Caroline, sitting side by side, laughing and talking, recalling shared experiences and exchanging common allusions.
She knew she was being absurd. They were. not saying a word which could not easily be heard by herself and Oliver, if they cared to suspend their own conversation and listen. It was impossible to suppose that they were indulging in any more than lively social chat. And yet, she could hardly keep her attention on her own talk with Oliver, and it was all she could do to look interested and natural.
Oliver did drop his voice once, but only to say, in the amused, teasing kind of way that is permissible between life-long friends,
“You solved the Aunt Tabitha problem very satisfactorily in the end, didn’t you?”
“The Oh—oh, yes. Reid has been wonderfully generous.”
“Someone taking my name in vain?” Reid looked up at that moment, and Leslie managed to smile at him quite naturally.
“I was only telling Oliver how generous you were over Great-Aunt Tabitha’s fortune.”
“What was that?” Caroline pricked up her ears.
“I like to hear about fortunes. The trouble is—they never come my way.”
There was an
odd little silence. Then Leslie said, with a composure which surprised herself.
“Didn’t Oliver ever tell you about my Great-Aunt Tabitha—and how we always expected her to leave her fortune to us, as a family?”
“No. Don’t tell me there was nothing in the end. I couldn’t bear it.” Caroline smiled her lazy smile.
“She left it to Reid instead.”
“Reid!” Caroline, who had been lounging in her chair, sat up suddenly. “Do you mean to say you had a fortune left to you, Reid, and never told me about it?”
“It was after your time, my sweet,” Reid said composedly.
“I wish he wouldn’t call her that,” thought Leslie angrily. “She isn’t his ‘sweet’ now.”
“But tell me now.” Caroline seemed extraordinarily interested. “Leslie’s relation went and left you her money?”
“Well, she was—very remotely—related to both of us, you see. She was the old lady at the Villa Rossignol.”
‘Wow!” Caroline seemed really impressed. “Oh! and I never bothered to make her like me when I was here—she might have left me something, if I had—”
“Don’t be such a shameless hussy,” Oliver put in affectionately.
And Leslie thought, “They’re both playing up to her now!
Aloud, however, she only said,
“I’m surprised you never happened to tell Caroline our family story, Oliver.”
“I thought she might set her cap at Reid and his fortune if I did,” Oliver replied promptly. “And see how right I was. She’s displaying a dreadfully mercenary streak at the moment, aren’t you, darling?”
Well, no one likes to think they’ve let a fortune slip,” Caroline objected. “Leslie will sympathize with me, won’t you, Leslie? She knows what it feels like to see a fortune vanish.”
“She doesn’t need to worry. She brought it back into the family again, by marrying my charming self,” Reid pointed out.
“So that was it!”
Leslie dug her nails into the palms of her hands to keep herself calm and smiling. She knew they were all chaffing each other, and that there wasn’t a word of serious meaning in the whole conversation. But oh, it was too near the hurtful truth! She felt she could hardly bear it.
And even as she told herself it was all just flippant nonsense, something deep down inside her protested that perhaps there was a grain of truth in it all.
Perhaps Caroline would have chosen differently, if she had known Reid was a very rich man.
But, in that case, why had Reid not told her? He had had opportunity enough. Or, if not, he could have made an opportunity. His silence was less understandable than Oliver’s, now she came to think of it. And perhaps he was bitterly regretting his silence by now.
She told herself that she must leave the subject alone. That all these delvings into the recent past were dangerous. She thought she had convinced herself of the wisdom of this. And yet, when at last they were on the way home, almost the first thing she said to Reid was,
“Don’t you think it was odd that Oliver hadn’t told her—told Caroline, I mean—all about Great-Aunt Tabitha’s leaving her fortune to you?”
“Not particularly.” He grinned and switched lightly at the tall grass by the roadside with a stick he was carrying. “No man actually advertises the attractions of his rivals.”
“He didn’t know you were a rival of his,” she said almost coldly.
“That’s true. But he might have thought that news of the inheritance would turn me into one,” countered Reid, still smiling.
She longed to be able to smile and joke about it with him. Or else she longed for him to be serious about it with her. She was not quite sure which.
What she did know was that, however unwise it might be, she had to ask that other question—about his own reactions.
“Reid,” she said, and she was glad that she kept her voice light and steady, “why didn’t you tell her yourself? It—it might have made a difference.”
“I didn’t want to be married for my money, my love. We all like to preserve the fond illusion that we are loved for ourselves alone,” he pointed out, still in the same half-laughing tone.
She didn’t laugh, however. She said, slowly and almost sombrely,
“And you were very anxious for Caroline to love you for yourself alone, weren’t you?”
He looked at her then, with a sharpened attention of which she was immediately aware. And when he spoke his voice was just a little dry.
“Look here, honey,” he said, “do you really think there’s any good purpose in raking up the past like that.”
“I didn’t rake it up,” she exclaimed bitterly. “It came to meet us, of its own accord. Oh, why did they have to choose here, of all the places in Europe? Why couldn’t they have gone anywhere else?”
“Yes, I guess it was a nasty back-hander of Fate,” he agreed. “But it might not be a bad thing, in the end, you know. There’s something to be said for facing out a situation and taking stock of it, instead of perpetually running away from it.”
“Oh, that’s taking things too far! I didn’t mind the thought of—of meeting them later on, in my own home circle. But here on our honeymoon—the only other people in the place whom we know! It’s—it’s too much.”
“Darling, I didn’t realize it was so unpleasant for you.” He put out his hand towards her but, for the, first time since she had said she would marry him, she flinched away angrily from the contact.
“No, don’t touch me, or—or pet me! I couldn’t bear it just now.”
“All right,” he said, in the most matter-of-fact tone possible, and they walked on in silence. A silence during which she was able to review her disastrous behaviour of the last ten minutes.
How could she have betrayed herself like that? How could she have lost her self-control so hopelessly?
She had behaved like a jealous, over-fond creature, instead of the cool, intelligent companion she had tried to be to him.
What was he thinking now? Was he appalled at the revelation that she minded enough to be jealous?
He was sauntering along beside her, a little serious, but otherwise much as he usually was. But what was he thinking, what was he thinking?
“Reid,” she said at last, “I’m awfully sorry. I don’t know why I spoke the way I did.”
‘“That’s all right, honey. There are no apologies called for,” he interrupted. “This is one of the times when the less one says, the better one feels about it afterwards. I know it isn’t easy for you, the way things have turned out.”
For a terrible moment, she thought he meant that he had guessed how she felt about him.
And then, with a relief which almost made her laugh hysterically, she realized what was in his mind. He thought she was upset at seeing Oliver again.
It was perfectly natural that he should, of course. He was not to know that neither Oliver nor any man other than himself meant anything to her now. He was sorry she had had to watch what he believed to be the love of her life enjoying his honeymoon with someone else.
“Oh, Reid,” she began. And then she saw that he was indeed right when he said that the less they talked about it, the better. “Th-thank you for being so understanding,” was all she ventured in the end. And he gave her a friendly smile and spoke of other things.
It was not until quite a long time afterwards that she wondered whether to have Oliver accepted as the reason for her distress were not almost worse than to have Reid suspect the truth.
She was saved, it was true, from the humiliation of having him know her real feelings. But, instead, Reid was confirmed in the belief that Oliver still remained as the man she loved.
“And I wanted so desperately for us to move gradually and naturally away from that!” she thought wretchedly. “I wanted him to feel that our marriage already meant enough to me for the situation to work out happily one day. Now—just as he is unsettled by his meeting Caroline again—I have given him the impression that the
links between ourselves are very thin and unimportant after all.”
She had even, in that final moment of nervous revulsion, implied that she quite hated any advance of his when Oliver was very much in her mind.
All the beauty and the happy confidence of their days in Verona seemed gone suddenly. They were very pleasant and friendly to each other—they even joked a little—but the inner sympathy and understanding was gone.
“If it ever existed,” thought Leslie. “If it ever existed. Perhaps I just imagined that too, and the only real thing is the way he looks at Caroline, and the memories he has of her here.”
During the next few days, she tried in every way she could to keep their relationship on an easy, almost conventional, basis. In this she was unexpectedly helped by the sentimental and chatty Madame Blanchard, who was so determined that she and Reid were a happy honeymoon couple that they were almost hypnotized into playing the part in detail.
Laintenon was too small a place for one not to run into anyone one knew from time to time. And it was only a few days before Leslie, out shopping one morning with Madame Blanchard, found herself face to face with Caroline in the small market-place.
They stopped, of course, and exchanged a few friendly words, though an atmosphere of mild hostility immediately wrapped Madame Blanchard around like a protective cloud. And when they had moved on again, she said to Leslie, in a hissing undertone,
“She is what you say ‘no good,’ that one.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that!” Leslie felt bound to protest—with some sincerity, as a matter of fact, because she was almost sure there was no real vice in Caroline. Only she could not help naturally attracting men. “She is here on her honeymoon too, you know.”
Madame Blanchard seemed unnaturally surprised. But transparently relieved too.
“She is married now? So much the better. Though with some it makes no difference,” she added rather darkly.
Leslie laughed. She could take Madame Blanchard’s suspicions so much more easily than Reid’s teasing.
“You’re a little prejudiced, Madame, because she was engaged to your favourite, and then threw him over,” she declared.
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