“I made it my business to find out,” he told her. “But I had to choose your present without consulting you. Do you like it?” and he indicated the shimmering silk.
“This—for me? For—for my birthday?”
He thought he had never seen anything more beautiful than the streak of colour which suddenly came into her cheeks. And, taking the lovely stole, he put it round her; a trifle more clumsily than the girl in the shop had arranged it, but the general effect was enchanting.
“For me?” she said again, in an incredulous whisper, and she stroked the exquisite folds with a hand that trembled slightly.
“It suits you. I knew it would,” he declared, with some satisfaction. “It looks like a rainbow.”
“Rainbow?” It was the first time he had seen her hesitate about an English word.
“I can’t remember the German word for it.” He frowned consideringly. “But rainbow is the name we give to the colours which appear in the sky when there is both rain and sunshine.”
“Rainbow,” she repeated slowly. “For both tears and happiness. Like today.” And suddenly she buried her face in her hands. But not, he thought, entirely for grief.
“No—you mustn’t cry any more,” he said. And, coming round, he sat on the sofa beside her, put his arm round her, and gathered both her and the beautiful shimmering silk against him.
“I’m not crying,” she said softly. “Underneath all the sorrow I’m happy—like the rainbow. Thank you, Herr David, for my birthday present. I’ll keep it as long as I live.”
He laughed at that and said, “I hope you’ll live a great deal longer than any silk will last.” But he was infinitely pleased with her reception of his present.
After a while he told her quietly of the arrangements he had made for her father’s funeral, and was glad to see that she listened without tears and was apparently very satisfied with what he had done. Then he asked her if she felt well enough to come downstairs for dinner or if she would prefer to have something quietly in her own room.
“I will do whatever you want me to do,” she said gravely.
“But I want you to choose,” he told her with a smile. “If you feel it is too much to see strangers tonight, you have only to say so.”
“Who are the—strangers?” she enquired, with a certain touch of youthful curiosity.
“There is my cousin, Bertram, the son of my aunt whom you’ve met. Then a friend of my aunt, called Mrs. Preston, and her daughter, Celia.”
“She is a girl—Celia?”
“Yes. A few years older than you.”
“And she is a great friend of yours?”
“Yes. You might describe her that way. I’ve known her a long while and we get on well together.”
“Do you love her?” enquired Anya, with devastating simplicity, and, to his annoyance, David found himself flushing slightly, as he replied lightly, “That’s too searching a question, Anya. We are not engaged, if that’s what you mean.”
“That wasn’t quite what I meant,” Anya said seriously. Then, after a few moments of silence, she added, “I will come down and meet your friends, if you think I should not be in the way.”
“You will certainly not be in the way,” he told her. “In fact, everyone will be very happy to meet you.”
And if, on reflection, he doubted the complete accuracy of this statement, at any rate he saw no reason either to correct or amplify it.
They were still sitting talking—though David no longer had his arm round her—when Lady Ranmere came in a few minutes later.
She looked very satisfied at Anya’s much brighter appearance, though she cast a glance of surprise on the lovely wrap she was still wearing.
“That is Anya’s birthday present,” David explained calmly. “She is eighteen today, and I don’t think we should let the day go past unmarked.”
“Why, no, certainly not,” agreed Lady Ranmere, fairly accurately pricing the handsome gift in her own mind. “I hope, my dear, there will be many much happier birthdays for you in the future, and that you’ll remember even this one as a day when you found some good friends.”
Anya thanked her with a shy smile, and David said, “Anya has decided to come down to dinner with us. I think that’s a good thing, if she feels like making the effort.”
“Yes, indeed,” Lady Ranmere approved. “Then perhaps you would like to see your own room now, my dear?”
“My own room?” Anya looked around her.
“Yes.” Lady Ranmere crossed to another door and opened it, displaying a small but pleasant bedroom. “I thought you would like to be here, near me, so that you wouldn’t feel too much alone.”
Anya got up from the sofa and came slowly across.
“Do you mean—a whole room to myself?”
“Why, yes.” Lady Ranmere was half touched, half amused, David saw. “Do you like it?”
“It is beautiful, like everything here,” Anya said gravely. And, entering the room, she walked round looking at everything, with the pleasure and interest of someone visiting a small museum.
The other two exchanged a smile, and Lady Ranmere said, “Did she have any luggage?”
“Yes. It’s here somewhere.” David glanced round and, seeing the shabby little case tied with rope standing by the door where he had left it, he went over and picked it up.
Possibly he swung it a trifle too energetically as he brought it into Anya’s room, or perhaps the rope was not very strong anyway. Certainly neither of the flimsy locks really fastened. At any rate, whatever the cause, even as he said, “Here you are,” and went to put the case near the window, the rope parted, the case opened, and there fell at David’s feet the small collection of miscellaneous articles which made up almost all Anya’s worldly possessions.
“I say, I’m frightfully sorry!” He knelt down and began to gather the things together rather clumsily.
“It doesn’t matter.” She smiled and came to help him, kneeling down opposite him to pick up the few poor bits of clothing, a book or two, several photographs—among which David recognized one of Beran, much younger, with a woman not unlike Anya herself—and a small box which evidently, from the way she handled it, contained her few personal treasures.
“That’s everything, I think.” He glanced round. “No, here’s one more picture.” And he reached for a framed photograph which had fallen further away than the others.
As he handed it to her, he glanced at it idly. And suddenly is seemed to him that someone had dealt him a blow over the heart. For, laughing up at him, were two young men, screwing up their eyes a little against what was obviously bright sunlight. And one of them was, without question, the boy whose photograph Mrs. Preston always wore—perpetual reminder of the son who had vanished more than twenty years ago.
CHAPTER FOUR
“Who are these two young men?” David asked hoarsely as he held out the photograph to her.
Anya glanced at it and smiled slightly.
“Friends of my mother a very long time ago. Even before she knew my father, I think.” She took the photograph in her hand and looked at it reminiscently. “She told me once that she was very fond of one of them,” she added slowly.
“Which one?” David tried hard to make that sound casual, but he was aware that his tone sharpened.
Anya shook her head and her smile deepened.
“She wouldn’t tell me. When I asked her, she laughed and said it was better for me not to know—that one should never define one’s early loves too clearly.”
David bit his lip. But he had to try again.
“Did you ever meet either of them—when you were a child, for instance?”
“Oh, no.” She shook her head again. “When I asked my mother to tell me more about the one she was fond of, she looked sad and said he had died many years ago. Before I was born.”
“And yet she kept the photograph, when so much else had to be left behind.”
“Perhaps—” Anya smiled in that enigmatic way—�
�it represented her youth and the days when she was happy.”
“Did your father ever comment on it?”
“I don’t think he ever saw it. But not long before my mother died, she gave it to me and told me to keep it always.”
“Wasn’t that a—a rather odd request, considering that they were both strangers to you?”
“I don’t know.” She smiled again at David, gently, as though he were a child who needed to have a great deal explained to him. “When one has very little, one cannot bear to destroy the few things one has loved. She knew I would keep it safe because she had treasured it. Why should she hurt herself by destroying it?”
And, turning back to the case, Anya put away the photograph among her other things.
David rose slowly to his feet. The tremendous discovery loomed between them, dwarfing everything else, it seemed to him. And yet he could not, for the life of him, think of anything further to ask her.
He murmured something about her joining his aunt when she was ready, and went out into the sitting-room again, closing the door of Anya’s room behind him.
“Aunt Mary—”
“Why, David, what is it?” Startled by his voice and manner, Lady Ranmere looked up.
“It’s the most incredible thing—” he came across to her and dropped his voice, so that no possible echo of it could reach the girl in the other room—“she’s got a photograph among her things in there. It’s of two young men, and one of them is Teresa Preston’s son.”
“Teresa Preston’s—you mean Martin?” Lady Ranmere sat down on the sofa and stared at her nephew. “It’s not possible! How can you be sure?”
“I can’t be otherwise. Less than an hour ago I was looking with particular attention at that photograph Mrs. Preston wears. It could have been cut from another copy of the one Anya has in there. The face is identical.”
“But did you ask the girl anything about it?”
“Of course. I asked, as casually as I could, who the two men were. She said they were friends of her mother years ago, and that she had owned to being very fond of one of them. She wouldn’t say which one.”
“Why not?” Lady Ranmere looked exasperated.
“She put Anya off with some laughing generality about not owning to one’s early loves. But I suppose the truth was that she didn’t want to say too much. If one of them were Anya’s father—”
“Is that what you really think?”
“At least it is very probable, isn’t it? in view of what Bertram told me.”
Lady Ranmere was silent for a moment. Then she said slowly, “She might be no connection at all. On the other hand—she could be Teresa Preston’s grandchild.”
“Exactly. The point is, what are we going to do about it?”
Again Lady Ranmere hesitated. Then she said, with some firmness, “Nothing for the moment.”
“Nothing? But you can’t just ignore a discovery of this sort!”
“No. But you can postpone action until you find the right moment,” retorted his aunt. “Teresa is going to be fearfully emotional about this, you know.”
“She will have some reason to be,” replied David dryly.
“Yes, yes, I daresay.” Lady Ranmere was not herself an emotional type. “But it’s never wise to make decisions when one is deeply disturbed.
David said nothing, but he looked dissatisfied.
“In any case,” his aunt went on, “that girl is in no state to be questioned this evening. Still less is she in a state to cope with a family scene. Let us have a quiet dinner, and consider tomorrow, or perhaps even later, how we should present this discovery to Teresa. And Celia,” she added pensively.
“Perhaps you’re right.” The mention of Celia suddenly damped his ardour for immediate explanations. Besides, there was a good deal of sound common sense in what his aunt had said. And, after a few more words, he arranged to meet Lady Ranmere and Anya downstairs in half an hour’s time, and went off to his own room to change.
David was hardly aware himself how anxious he was that Anya should make a good impression on the members of his party. He felt oddly jealous on her behalf—eager that her elusive loveliness should be appreciated. Not because there would otherwise be some implied reflection on his own taste and actions, but simply because he wanted others to share the curious fascination she exercised upon him.
Consequently he was almost elated to see how lovely she looked as she came down the stairs with his aunt some time later. She was still wearing the indeterminate cotton dress which was the only thing he had ever seen her in. But round her shoulders she wore the beautiful silk stole, and this gave a certain charm, even elegance, to her appearance.
She was pale, but her bright hair was smoothly brushed back from her wide forehead, and her soft attractive mouth looked so red against the clear pallor of her skin that David thought Lady Ranmere must have found her a lipstick from somewhere.
She smiled when she saw David waiting in the hall below, and the smile lit up her eyes and gave a sort of inner radiance to her grave young face.
“Well, here we are.” David’s aunt was not given to self-evident statements, and he guessed that she felt rather less at ease than she looked. “Where are the others?”
“I think they have already gone into the dining-room. Shall we join them?” David smiled reassuringly at Anya, who looked if anything, rather more composed in a gentle way than his aunt did.
When they entered the dining-room the others were already at their usual corner table, but all three stood up as Lady Ranmere made the introductions, which gave a more formal quality to the scene than David would have chosen.
It was Mrs. Preston who seemed best able to handle the situation and, for once, her manner had more decision than that of her daughter.
“Come and sit down, dear,” she said kindly to Anya. “We are all very happy to have you here.”
And, as the thought came to David that perhaps it was her own grandchild whom Teresa Preston was addressing thus, he found the moment curiously moving.
Celia was courteous but no more, and she looked at Anya with something like faint surprise. It irritated David to know that she was probably wondering what anyone saw in the child.
Bertram too gave the newcomer a curious glance. But he at least did not find Anya unimpressive. He even managed to murmur to his cousin,
“What a stage face! Almost perfect bone structure and a genuine quality of repose. I wonder—”
He broke off there, however, and there was no opportunity to press the line of Bertram’s wondering, for everyone was anxious to keep a flow of conversation going, so that their tragic visitor should not feel isolated or thrust back upon her own unwelcome recollections.
Presumably it was the first time she had ever dined in an hotel—even a provincial hotel—and much of the situation must have been frighteningly strange to her. But she showed no sign of finding it so. She answered gently when spoken to and she smiled when Mrs. Preston—it was usually Mrs. Preston—addressed some special kind remark to her.
From time to time her glance sought David, as though he represented some form of security. But there was nothing gauche or awkward about the way she conducted herself in what would have been, for most people, trying circumstances.
When Mrs. Preston admired her stole and said how pretty she looked in it, she said shyly,
“David gave it to me. He found it was my birthday today.”
If it was a slight shock to some of them to hear her refer thus intimately to David, all of them except Celia concealed the fact. And she only slightly raised her admirably marked eyebrows.
“And may we ask how old you are today? Bertram enquired. “Or are you already too much of a young lady to be asked such a question?”
“I’m not a young lady at all.” Anya shook her head gravely. “And I am eighteen.”
Perhaps it struck all of them that few people could have celebrated their eighteenth birthday in more melancholy circumstances. At any rate, th
ere were sympathetic glances for her and, leaning forward, Mrs. Preston patted her hand and said,
“We shall have to celebrate properly another time. It would be a shame for you to have to remember your birthday only for sad things.”
Anya said, “Thank you,” and looked back at Mrs. Preston with a faint smile. And then, as she did so, something happened which neither David nor his aunt had foreseen. Her glance shifted from Mrs. Preston’s face to the fob brooch which swung forward as its wearer leaned towards the girl.
“Who—” Anya leaned forward in her turn, and her politeness gave way before a strange, incredulous urgency—“who is that?”
Mrs. Preston glanced down at the photograph and smiled with sad pride.
“That is my son.”
“But—it can’t be!” Anya looked up, and her startled gaze travelled round the circle of faces, as though she sought some explanation among them. “I know him. I mean, I know that photograph—quite well.”
“You know him?” Teresa Preston’s voice ran up excitedly, almost hysterically, so that Celia said warningly, “Careful, Mother. It’s all right. She is probably mistaken.”
“No, I am not mistaken.” Anya spoke almost sharply to the other girl. “I do know the photograph. I have one like it. It’s upstairs. David—” she turned eagerly to him for confirmation—“you saw it. You even asked me about it.”
“David! Is that true?” Mrs. Preston turned almost accusingly upon him.
“Yes, but—”
“Why didn’t you tell me? Don’t you see what this means? Why, it’s proof positive—”
“No, Teresa. It isn’t proof positive of anything.” That was Lady Ranmere, unemotional, almost stolid, in her determination to bring everything bade to a normal level. “It was I who persuaded David to say nothing for the moment. I hardly thought this evening was the right occasion for upsetting discussion. In any case, I understand that Anya’s photograph is of two young men. She doesn’t know which is—the important one.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about.” Teresa Preston’s usually rather colorless face was suffused and her eyes flashed indignantly. “You had no right, Mary, to keep such a discovery from me. My dear—” she put a slightly trembling hand on Anya’s arm—“my dear—”
Love Is My Reason Page 6
