Love Is My Reason

by Mary Burchell

  Anya was astonished to hear what genuine feeling Celia put into her attractive, flexible voice, and for a moment one could almost see the tears trembling on her long lashes.

  “Oh, David! It’s such a wonderful day for us!” she exclaimed, smiling up at him as though her happiness were all the greater for her being able to share it with him.

  David was touched, Anya saw.

  “I’m sure it is, my dear,” he said, with feeling. “And we all share in it.”

  “Except poor Anya.” That was Mrs. Preston, unnecessarily regretful. “I’m afraid it must be difficult for her to rejoice.”

  “I don’t think so,” David said quickly. “Besides—” he smiled across at Anya—“she tells me she has had good news too, though she is a bit mysterious about it.”

  Everyone looked surprisedly at Anya, who flushed and explained quickly,

  “It isn’t exactly good news. It’s just that—that—”

  She turned appealing to Bertram. “You explain, Bertram.”

  Bertram smiled indulgently.

  “I suppose you’re all worrying yourselves about the problem of Anya’s future, now it has been established that she’s not Mrs. Preston’s granddaughter. Well, the problem has more or less solved itself. She happens to have a rare form of stage talent which cries out for development. I propose to develop it. That’s all.”

  “You propose to?” There was no disguising the annoyance in David’s tone. While Mrs. Preston clasped her hands like a pleased child and cried,

  “Why, how splendid! Everything seems to be working out perfectly today.”

  “But is she so talented?” That was Celia, frankly sceptical and not at all pleased to have the limelight turned on Anya again. “How can you be sure?”

  “By trusting to my own judgment, which is excellent,” replied Bertram drily. “And before you begin raising objections, Mama, let me tell you that my mind is quite made up.”

  “It’s all extremely sudden,” Lady Ranmere objected.

  “Discoveries are apt to be sudden,” Bertram assured her lightly. “And Anya is a discovery.”

  “And what has Anya herself to say to all this?” enquired David quietly—even a little drily.

  “Why, it’s wonderful! It’s the most glorious discovery. I-isn’t it?” she added timidly, suddenly aware that his enthusiasm fell very far short of what she had expected.

  “I don’t know, Anya. If you say so, I suppose it is.”

  She longed to ask him what was the matter—if she had, in some way, displeased him. But Celia was sitting beside him, noticing every word, and chilling every opportunity of warm understanding between them.

  “It would make me independent, able to stand on my own feet. I shouldn’t have to go to—to anyone for—anything,” Anya pressed, wishing that David would see the practical advantages to himself, without her having to point them out.

  “And that is something you want very much?”

  “Why, of course!” Surely he must know that she didn’t like being a burden to him.

  “Well, then, I do see there are advantages to the plan, if we can work it out in a practical way. How long would this—training take, do you suppose?” He turned to his cousin, and spoke with coolness rather than friendliness.

  “Hard to say. Three months—four months. It rather depends on what opening offers. One can always intensify that kind of training, or spread it out. And there is no need to hurry things I suppose—” Bertram turned carelessly to his mother—“Anya would go on living here while she was training. She could travel up to town three or four times a week.”

  There was a curious moment of silence.

  Lady Ranmere was an hospitable woman, and she owned a large and well-run house. But from the moment she had heard Bertram begin to express his inexplicable interest in this attractive mystery girl from nowhere, all wish to have Anya beneath her roof evaporated. The idea that she might be settled there for a matter of months suddenly appeared to Lady Ranmere in the light of a menace.

  “There is no need to settle details just yet,” she said—an evasion she would have despised in anyone else. “Of course Anya may stay here for the time being. But—”

  “Darling, I have the solution!” cried Mrs. Preston, and for once her impulsive eagerness was music in Lady Ranmere’s ear. “Anya must come and stay with us. Yes, of course she must! I shan’t feel so badly then about raising her hopes of coming into our family. It’s the least I can do. And I’ll be happy to have her.”

  Indescribable dismay struck a chill to Anya’s heart. And, for the first time in all their acquaintances, she glanced at Celia with something like hope. For surely Celia would not allow such an arrangement.

  But Celia, although she smiled, had a shuttered look upon her face, as she said agreeably,

  “I think it’s an excellent idea. We owe Anya some hospitality. And our having her will relieve Lady Ranmere of any—anxiety.”

  “There is no anxiety connected with Anya,” David exclaimed, somewhat nettled. “And I don’t know that we want any hasty rearrangements of this sort. Do we?” He looked enquiringly at his aunt, whose house, after all, this was.

  “We shouldn’t do anything hastily, as you put it.” Lady Ranmere, uncharacteristically, did not meet her nephew’s glance. “But the idea is excellent, as Celia says. I am out a great deal, which would make it quiet and lonely for Anya here. She would have much more company with Teresa. And now that no—complication is involved, I do think she would be happier there.”

  “Then it’s settled!” Mrs. Preston looked delighted. While Anya bit her lip and with difficulty kept herself from crying,

  “I should not be happier there! I don’t want to go away from here! I don’t want to leave David! I don’t know what has happened. It’s all gone wrong suddenly. David isn’t pleased about my acting, as I thought he’d be. And I’m being banished—sent away—where I shall hardly ever see him. Oh, please let me stay!”

  But of course she could not say anything like that. She had to smile and look grateful for Mrs. Preston’s eagerly expressed hospitality. She even had to seem not to mind that everything was being arranged over her head.

  For a moment such a tide of revolt swept over her that it was all she could do not to stand up in the middle of the room and cry her rage and despair aloud.

  For every day and month and year of her short life she had had to accept the decisions or others. She could not go where she wished, do what she wished, even say what she wished. The very clothes she wore had been given her as charity. The root over her head was there by someone else’s choice. Now she was to leave it—by someone else’s choice. And go elsewhere—by someone else’s choice.

  To everyone else in the room it was a natural law of life to go more or less where they pleased. No one told them where they were to live or what they were to do. No one arbitrarily and suddenly removed them from the presence of those they loved. They were gloriously happy, independent creatures, who dragged no ball and chain of the dispossessed at their rebellious heels.

  They meant to be kind. They believed they were acting for her good. But of them all, only Bertram had offered her the one thing she wanted. The chance to be free and independent.

  In that moment her wild desire for independence transcended even her love for David. And it was to Bertram, not David, that she turned and exclaimed, with a sort of fierce intensity,

  “You won’t forget me, if I go away from here, will you?”

  “Why, no, Anya, of course not.” Bertram looked rather surprised.

  “We shan’t any of us forget about you,” David said sombrely beside her. “Why should you pick out Bertram, Anya?”

  “Because he can give me the one thing I want,” she replied, still on that note of fierce intensity.

  “I see,” David said. And, turning away before she could elaborate on that, he escorted Celia out to the car.

  CHAPTER NINE

  In the next few days it seemed to Anya that the
arrangements for her transfer to Mrs. Preston’s house were carried out with terrifying speed and determination.

  Lady Ranmere was very nice about it, saying more than once that she was glad Anya was going somewhere where she would be able to have more company and attention. But when Anya timidly asserted that she would rather remain where she was, this was dismissed good-humouredly as being no more than polite conventional protest, and Lady Ranmere made it perfectly clear that the decision had been made and would be implemented.

  Even if she had wanted to appeal to Bertram—which she did not—it was obvious that he was not likely to prove an ally. Possibly the matter was not sufficiently important to him. Or possibly, since he was acute over such matters, he sensed his mother’s vague disturbance with regard to his interest in Anya, and had no intention of giving any substance to her doubts.

  His interest in Anya’s career showed no signs of abating. He talked to her about the arrangements of her training, laying down the timetable she would have to keep and specifying the days on which she would go to town. But, though he would possibly have preferred to have her living in his mother’s house and directly under his guidance, he certainly was not going to make an issue of this point.

  All this would not have mattered so much if David had not, in some curious way, become out of reach. Not physically so, for he came home most evenings. But there no longer seemed to be between them that subtle bond of sympathy and understanding which had been her principal joy and support.

  She tried eagerly to find the contact again. But it was like groping for notes which she had once played by instinct but which now evaded her touch.

  “Are you angry with me about something?” she asked him at last, in desperation, when she had him to herself for a little while, on the evening before her departure.

  “Angry?” He looked genuinely surprised. “No, of course not, Anya. Why should you think any such thing?”

  “Because you’re different in some way.” She knew she was not improving matters, and yet she had to go on. “It’s as though you—stand a little way off and don’t—don’t feel I am your concern any longer.”

  “My dear, you will always be my concern!” he exclaimed, and momentarily that comforted her. But he took the edge off his assertion by adding almost immediately, “I promised your father—I promised Beran—I would look after you. Don’t you remember?”

  “Y-yes.”

  She didn’t really want his care of her to be based on a promise to someone else, dear and touching though that link might be. She wanted him to look after her for herself. Because she meant something to him.

  “What’s the matter?” He smiled slightly at the gravity of her expression. “Are you beginning to feel nervous and doubt the value of Bertram’s prophecies?”

  “Oh no. No, it’s not that. It’s nothing to do with any practical worry. Besides,” she said, with sudden and complete conviction, “I think he knows. I think Bertram’s right and that he can make a success of me.”

  “Then you have nothing to worry about, have you?” He spoke a little drily and reached once more for his evening newspaper.

  “But that isn’t everything! If I am a success, you—you won’t stop—liking me because—” she groped helplessly for the right words—“because I’m no longer dependent on you, will you?”

  “Anya! You surely can think such a thing of me!” He was genuinely shocked and rather angry, she saw. “Do you suppose my feelings for you are based on some sort of smug satisfaction in being able to dispense charity? I must have been pretty clumsy and insensitive over any help I’ve given, if that’s the case.”

  “Oh, no, no!” she cried distractedly. “You were an angel about everything. It’s not that at all. It’s just—”

  She stopped, quite unable to think of anything but the simple plea—“Please go on loving me!” And this she could not say.

  “Look here—” he tossed away his paper, and spoke to her with kindness but some emphasis—“I think you’ve got this whole question of dependence and independence a bit out of focus. No one is going to grudge you your independence when it comes, child. Least of all myself.”

  “Oh, I know—I know,” she said remorsefully. “I put it badly.”

  “We often do when we feel deeply about something,” he told her, not unkindly. “I didn’t quite realize what it meant to you until you spoke about your independence so fiercely the other day.”

  “Did I speak fiercely?” She was surprised.

  “Well—as fiercely as you can,” he conceded with a laugh. “Anyway, you rather flung it at me that Bertram could give you what you wanted most. I take it you meant independence?”

  “Y-yes,” she said, dismayed to realize how her momentary passion had betrayed her. She could not possibly tell him now that his love and care for her meant more to her than all the independence in the world. Or that the freedom she had so fiercely and openly coveted only had value if she could use it to be near him.

  “Perhaps I was too emphatic about it,” she said soberly at last.

  But he laughed then and ruffled her hair in the way she loved.

  “No, my dear,” he retorted teasingly. “You cling to that independence of yours and show us all that you can manage without us—”

  “Oh, David, not without you!”

  “Yes, without me too. One of these days you’ll do it and attain your highest ambition. You see, I can prophesy as well as Bertram! But when you’re a successful actress, remember me for the occasional first night, won’t you? and send me a couple of tickets, so that I can boast to my friends and say that I once knew Anya Beranova before she became famous.”

  “Oh, David!” she said again, not knowing whether to laugh because they were friends again, or cry because she knew she had in no way removed his conviction that she wanted to be fee of even the dearest ties. “If I ever become famous, I shall owe it entirely to you.”

  “Don’t you let Bertram hear you say that,” he warned her good-humouredly. “He thinks you’re going to be his creation.”

  But he laughed, well pleased, she thought. And so relieved was she to have him speak with his old air of friendly indulgence that she thought she could not venture to explain herself further, for fear there were more misunderstandings.

  They had no further opportunity for any intimate sort of talk after that. And the next morning the good-byes had to be said.

  There was nothing in the nature of a real good-bye to be said to anyone, of course, because the two families saw so much of each other, and Anya was the concern of both; so that, on the surface at any rate, the situation would not be radically changed.

  But she was glad that David kissed her before he went off to town. And she was half amused and half put out that Bertram did the same.

  “You can have a few more days’ holiday,” Bertram told her, “as the coach I want for you is still in Paris. But after that it’s going to be hard work, my girl. So make the most of your leisure now.”

  Anya smiled and said that she would. But privately she thought she would be very pleased to have something to do, other than drifting about Mrs. Preston’s elegant home and contriving to keep out of Celia’s way.

  It was Mrs. Preston who came to fetch her early that afternoon, and both she and Lady Ranmere were at some pains to assure Anya how welcome she was in either house. But Anya could not help knowing that Lady Ranmere said goodbye to her with some faint sensation of relief. And, as she drove away in Mrs. Preston’s car, she thought, with a sinking heart,

  “I shall never be asked to stay in David’s home again.”

  Mrs. Preston’s house, like Lady Ranmere’s, was large, attractive and exceedingly beautifully situated. It was more strictly luxurious, but it was not run with quite the same masterly precision. And though her servants liked her, they had none of the wholesome respect, and even fear, for her, which Lady Ranmere easily commanded from a staff who knew perfectly well that their mistress could, at a pinch, do their work at lea
st as well as they could themselves.

  However, the pleasant, friendly air of relaxation which Teresa Preston diffused around her was by no means unwelcome to Anya, and she was touched by the real kindness with which she was welcomed to the house.

  “I’m so happy to have you now, dear.” Mrs. Preston told her. “Just at the happiest time of my life. And it seems quite right that you should be here when Martin returns home.”

  Anya was not quite sure of the logic of this. But the good feeling was unmistakable. So she kissed Mrs. Preston gratefully and asked when Martin was expected.

  “He hasn’t fixed a date even yet,” Mrs. Preston confessed—making Anya recall Lady Ranmere’s remark only the day before that Martin Deane seemed as selfish and inconsiderate as ever. “He’s very busy, you know.”

  Anya didn’t know, but she looked gravely interested.

  “He’s doing some sort of journalistic work at the moment,” Mrs. Preston explained. “But as soon as it’s completed he will fly over here to see me. As he said himself, it could be next month and it could be tomorrow.”

  Anya said something appropriate about the surprise and happiness being just the same whenever he came. And then Celia came in, and conversation became rather more formal.

  She was quite pleasant in a cool way to Anya, and said nothing at all out of keeping with her unexpected support of her mother’s invitation. But Anya had known a good deal of thinly veiled dislike and indifference in her young life, and she was certain it was no love of herself which had prompted Celia to have her there.

  Mrs. Preston, on the other hand, seemed very pleased with the improvement in Celia’s attitude, and to take it entirely at its face value. Indeed, when she was called away to settle some minor crisis in the garden, she was actually naive enough to say, as she stepped out of the french window,

  “I expect you girls will have quite a lot to talk about.” Neither answered this, and for a few moments after Mrs. Preston’s departure there was silence. Then Celia said, “How often will you be going up to London, Anya?”