Although she looked round as well as she could, Anya was unable to see any sign of David, and was driven to the dejected conclusion that he had left without bothering to say good-night to her. It might have been difficult to find her in the throng, of course, but the thought that he had gone without a word to her made her extremely unhappy.
“Well, was it a good party?” Bertram enquired, as they started on the drive homewards.
“Very good, thank you.”
“Everyone make a fuss of you?”
“Yes. Everyone was very kind.”
“One or two people told me you were a great success. I saw some people I know, as I was coming in, and they were quite enthusiastic.”
“Were they?”
“Yes.” Bertram glanced at her. “Uncle Basil’s stock still high?”
“Oh, yes.” She laughed slightly.
“What went wrong, then?”
“Nothing went wrong!”
“But you don’t sound like someone who’s had a whale of a time. You sound rather subdued,” Bertram told her.
“I was just—thoughtful.”
“I see,” Bertram did not press the point. But, after a moment, he asked, “Whom did you meet?” Anyone specially interesting?”
“David was there,” she said suddenly, and smiled.
“O-oh. With Celia?”
“And that’s why you’re so solemn and reflective?” he suggested.
“Oh, no! At least, not only for the fact that they were there together. Only—” she hesitated a moment, and then burst out—“it didn’t work out the way you said it would.”
“What didn’t?” He looked amused and rather puzzled.
“Why, you said that if I were recognized as Sir Basil’s niece and—and rather made the centre of attention, then David—people would find me more attractive.”
“No, I don’t think I put it quite as naively as that,” Bertram protested good-humouredly, “though maybe the central idea is there. But, anyway didn’t David find you attractive, in the role of Edcombe’s niece?”
“I don’t know,” Anya said soberly. “But he congratulated me in a rather grave way and—and said I shouldn’t belong to you all much longer. That wasn’t what I wanted him to say at all!” She caught her breath on an unexpected sob. “He spoke as though I’d taken a big step right away from him—from you all. And he spoke of himself as a str-stranger, and said he knew no stranger could mean as much as one’s family—which isn’t true at all. I don’t want uncles or aunts or anyone else if it means losing David.” And suddenly she began to cry in earnest.
“Here—here—there’s no need to do that!” Bertram slowed down the car and put an arm round her. “You cry on your Uncle Bertram’s shoulder. At least—no, not if uncles are so out of favour. But, you silly child, what does it matter if David got a bad jolt on seeing you attached to someone else?”
“He didn’t get a j-jolt. He accepted things in a sort of g-grave and dignified way. But so finally. As though we were already talking to each other across a gulf. Besides—Celia was pleased with things. I could see she was. And she evidently thought that the new situation was to her advantage.”
“Then she was wrong,” said Bertram calmly.
“Oh, Bertram! It didn’t look that way.”
“Who has the better judgment, do you suppose? Celia or my not-so-humble self?” he enquired drily.
“Well—you, I think.”
“Then you take my word for it—Celia is not going to gain over this change.”
“But David thinks of me as no longer quite his concern!”
“Then he must be made to realize that you still are. You leave that to me.”
“Oh, Bertram—will you really see that David understands everything?” Anya asked anxiously.
“I can’t guarantee quite such a tall order as that,” Bertram said. “But I’ll see that the right hints are dropped in the right places.”
“Oh, thank you!” She actually kissed him in her eager gratitude.
“You’d better not do that,” he told her, “or you’ll probably make bad blood between cousins. I shall begin to wonder why I’m smoothing the way for another fellow.” But he laughed and gave her an encouraging hug before he released her and started the car once more.
As they drove on, Anya was a little shocked to find that she had confided quite so fully in Bertram. But it was too late to retreat now, and she had the comforting conviction that, frivolous though he might often be, he was a very good friend when he cared to put himself out.
By the time he left her at the Prestons’ house, she had recovered from the worst of her anxiety, and was ready to give Mrs. Preston a full account of the day’s events.
“Darling child! What a wonderful and exciting time you must have had!” Mrs. Preston was enchanted at what she considered to be an almost traditional happy ending to Anya’s story. “But I hope your uncle won’t want to take you away from us at once.”
Anya said that she very much doubted if such a thing were in her uncle’s mind.
“He is truly moved and happy to have found me,” she said earnestly. “But I don’t think he is the kind of man to want to have his day-to-day life altered without a good deal of thought beforehand. And he didn’t say anything at all about my going to live with him, Mrs. Preston.”
“That’s a good thing!” One could not doubt the comforting sincerity of Mrs. Preston’s tone. “Then you will go on living here for the time being. And possibly you may go to stay with him for short visits.”
This was so exactly what Anya had hoped for—so exactly the arrangement by which she might hope to see something of David either at home or in town—that she could not help hugging Mrs. Preston and saying how grateful she was.
“And the moment I am able to earn my own living, I won’t be a nuisance to either of you,” she exclaimed.
“You are not a nuisance to me at all,” Mrs. Preston told her tranquilly. “And Martin was saying, only today, that there is something very satisfying about having the child of his old friend in the house.”
Anya was so moved that she could not say anything. And she thought that if only David could be made to understand that he was still her protector and her hero and her guiding star, there was nothing more she could ask for in life.
At least—almost nothing.
The following day her uncle telephoned from London, with the suggestion—or half-command—that she should stay with him in town from Friday until Monday. He specified exact dates, and nothing in his invitation suggested that Anya should regard his house as home. But his voice was warm and affectionate as he said,
“Come in good time on Friday afternoon, my dear, and you can go to the show on Friday evening. You have never seen me act, I take it?”
Anya said she had not.
“Well, well—I must be on my mettle,” he said. And she thought he rather liked the idea of showing her why her uncle was such a distinguished man. “Then on Saturday you can shop or sight-see, or whatever you want to do, and on Sunday I shall be free to enjoy you.”
Anya thanked him, and tried not to feel disappointed at the thought that David would most probably not be in London during the weekend.
“And bring that photograph with you, Anya. The photograph of poor Francis and his friend,” her uncle said, just before he rang off. “I don’t think I have ever seen it.”
So Anya promised to do this and then bade her uncle good-bye.
During the week, she went once to London for a lesson. But although Bertram accompanied her, they went by train and there was certainly no opportunity to ask whether he had yet said anything tactful to David. Indeed, Bertram seemed a trifle preoccupied, and Anya could not help wondering anxiously if her unimportant affairs had more or less slipped from his mind.
He was interested, however, to hear that she was going to spend the weekend with her uncle, though he told her he would not be available to take her to London himself that day.
“B
ut you can have a taxi to the station, and also from Marylebone,” he told her. “You’re beginning to find your way about now, aren’t you?”
Anya said that she was, since she did not want to be a nuisance to anyone. But secretly she was a good deal alarmed at the prospect of going on her own.
When Friday came, however, the excitement and interest of going to stay with her uncle, in the big, elegant house with the white front door, enabled her to subdue her fears somewhat. She bade Mrs. Preston an affectionate good-bye. She even did the same to Martin, who had come to adopt an indulgent, half-avuncular attitude towards her himself.
Then, just as she heard the taxi drive up to the front door, she remembered that she had not packed the photograph which Sir Basil had asked her to bring.
“Oh, ask him to wait a moment,” she cried to Mrs. Preston. “I’ve forgotten something.” And she ran upstairs to her room.
At the top of the stairs she almost cannoned into Celia, who stepped back and said coldly,
“Are you just off?”
“Yes. But I forgot the photograph of—of my father. Sir Basil wanted to see it.”
“To establish your bona fides?” asked Celia, not very kindly.
“No.” Anya raised her chin defiantly. “He never expressed any doubts about me at any time.”
“Then I’m surprised he doesn’t offer you a home with him,” retorted Celia drily. “A weekend visit seems rather poor measure from a devoted and trusting uncle.”
“You do try so hard to spoil everything for me, don’t you?” Anya’s eyes went dark with anger and distress. “But I’m not going to stand and argue with you now. I know you are longing to have me out of this house permanently. But fortunately the decision doesn’t rest with you.”
Celia looked at her speculatively in silence for a moment. Then, as Anya would have pushed past her, she said slowly.
“It doesn’t matter, really, because I shall not be here so much longer myself. Perhaps this is as good a time as any to tell you that David and I shall be announcing our engagement next week.”
“David—and you—!” For a moment Anya felt as though something had struck her on the head, and she was so sick and stunned that it was difficult to enunciate clearly. “David—and you—” she said again. But she could get no further.
“Yes. There’s no harm in telling you, since you are going away. We shan’t be telling Mother for a day or two. But by the time you come back—If you do come back—” she added thoughtfully. And then, “If you can persuade your uncle to keep you, perhaps it might be—easier all round.”
She did not wait for Anya to make any reply to that. She went on downstairs, quite calm and collected, while Anya went unsteadily towards her room, unable to remember what it was she meant to fetch from there.
“It’s not true! It can’t be true!” She stared at her pale reflection in the mirror, as though the girl who gazed back at her might give her some reassurance. “David—and Celia. He can’t love her! He can’t, he can’t. Oh, what shall I do? Why didn’t I die in the camp, long ago, like my mother? I don’t want to go on if David isn’t there—What am I looking for—?” She opened a drawer and fumbled aimlessly among the contents. “Oh, David—David—David! Do you really love that girl better than me? She doesn’t know the very first thing about loving you. She is so unloving. Don’t you know it? I must go. The taxi is waiting to take me away. Away from David—forever and ever and ever—”
“Anya dear,” Mrs. Preston called from below, “you’ll have to hurry if you’re going to catch that train.”
“I’m coming,” Anya said distractedly. “I’m coming.” Then suddenly she remembered what she had come to fetch, and she snatched the photograph from the desk where it had been standing.
“It’s all over,” she told the bright-eyed young man who was her father. “The story’s ended. It’s like the act I do with the bonnet. All the while I was making my silly little plans to please him—he liked the other girl better and walked away with her. Oh, I wish I were dead!”
But she was alive, and the taxi was waiting, and one had to go on with things as they were, and do the best one could.
She ran downstairs, to find Mrs. Preston waiting anxiously in the hall. Fortunately she was sufficiently short of time for it to be quite natural for her to say no more than a passing word as she hurried out to the taxi. And then at last she was safe in its musty-smelling interior, and she was driving away to the station—and whatever life could still offer, now that David had gone from her.
There was no question about being nervous of the journey now. Such small things did not matter any more. If someone had proposed that she should go to America alone, she would probably have agreed, in her present mood. Nothing was of importance—nothing at all—beside the news which Celia had given her with such casual cruelty at the top of the stairs.
The train was already in when she entered the station. And, once she was installed in her compartment, she leaned back, with closed eyes, and slowly and painfully passed the recent weeks in agonized review.
First there had been the time when she had not even known David. Inconceivable now—but true, nevertheless. And then he had come into her life, and everything had changed for her. He had smiled at her, that evening on the hillside, and the world had, quite simply, taken on a radiance it had never shown before.
Even the dreariness and sordidness of the camp had lost its final degree of misery. Even the death of her stepfather had brought with it the comfort of David’s presence and sympathy. Indeed, she remembered that she had felt guilty because she could be happy in the shadow of so much tragedy, and she had wondered if it were wicked of her to be able to feel so much joy when David put his arm round her, even though her step-father had died that day.
And then had followed the strange new life. The wonder and delight of it, as well as the many problems. And through it all, David had been her support and joy. Didn’t he know—didn’t he know—that she could not fail to love him in return?
But then, if he had already given his love to Celia, none of this would be important to him.
Only—how did one love Celia? she thought wonderingly. How did one yield one’s heart and soul and being to anyone so essentially cold and unloving?
The train clattered on its way, and outwardly Anya remained calm and quiet and self-possessed. But inwardly her heart and mind raged round the situation which had so suddenly overwhelmed her.
She had been stupid to listen to Bertram—she saw that now. Stupid to console herself with his specious assurances that, once Sir Basil acknowledged her as his niece, her position would be entirely different.
“He couldn’t know,” she thought sadly. “My instinct was sounder than his. I knew something went wrong at that party the other evening. I should somehow have managed to see David afterwards, and convince him that no uncle—no change of status or family or position—could in any way loosen the bond between us.”
But if he loved Celia, none of that would have been of any avail either. She would merely have run the risk of embarrassing him by betraying the fact that she loved him although he only liked her.
“Nothing would have been any good. She told herself bitterly. “Why do I pretend to myself that, if I had done this or that, the situation could have perhaps developed differently? If he loved her, that’s an end of it. Why can’t I accept that fact?”
But she knew why she shrank from it. For, even more shattering than the discovery that he would never love herself, was the conviction that he must love Celia. The first she could forgive him, but the second she could not. For if David could truly love that cool, shallow girl, then he was not the man she had thought him.
It was agony to think of him as less than the dear and wonderful figure he had always been to her, and she struggled angrily against the acceptance of such an idea; but she knew, in her inmost being, that if he could really love Celia and marry her, he was not quite worth the misery he was now causing her.
/> She wished she could have seen things less clearly. In the depths of her unhappiness, she would much rather have slung to her illusions than rejected them. But, as the train-wheels rattled along to the rhythm of “David—David—David—” the bitterness of disillusionment was added to her silent heartbreak.
By the time they arrived at Marylebone the afternoon was clouding over, and rain spattered on the taxi windows as Anya drove through the streets towards her uncle’s house, as though even the weather were in sympathy with her mood.
She made a great effort to put her personal misery out of her mind, or at least to thrust it into the background of her consciousness, for instinct told her that Sir Basil would not be specially pleased to have a pensive or melancholy niece upon his hands.
To him her visit was a matter for rejoicing. And rejoice she must, if she were to please him. But the thought of having to smile brightly and be cheerful, while she was still reeling from an almost mortal blow, seemed very nearly impossible to Anya at that moment.
When the taxi stopped, however, she deliberately summoned a pleased and happy expression to her face. She would have to play her part exactly as she played out her little sketches. If she made a sort of game—even a sort of challenge—of it, she should be able to satisfy Sir Basil.
Keyed up, as she was, to meet him immediately, she was somewhat taken aback when the manservant greeted her courteously with the information that Sir Basil had had to go out and would not be home for an hour.
“But he said you were to make yourself entirely at home, Miss Anya, and Mrs. Downes, the housekeeper, will be pleased to show you to your room.”
At this point Mrs. Downes appeared. Rather large and gowned in rustling black, and so exactly like a stage housekeeper that it was almost impossible to believe in her authenticity.
However, she greeted Anya with a nice mixture of respect and condescension, and conducted her upstairs to a charming bedroom, which had obviously been made ready with some care and imagination for a young girl.
Anya was touched by such evidence of thought on her behalf, and shyly thanked Mrs. Downes for everything.
Love Is My Reason Page 19
