“You’re very welcome, Miss Anya.” Mrs. Downes was evidently pleased with this show of proper appreciation. “Sir Basil was very particular that everything should be as you would like it.”
“I ought to be happy and grateful!” Anya thought. “Oh, why do I have to be heartbroken just at this moment?”
Having ascertained that Anya had everything she wanted, Mrs. Downes retired, with the advice that she should “go down whenever it pleased her.”
Left alone, Anya unpacked her case. She was becoming quite accustomed to unpacking her things in other people’s elegant rooms. And presently, because it was very quiet in the house and not at all alarming, she decided to go downstairs and explore. If she stayed in her room she would only begin to cry—and that would fit her very ill for an evening with her uncle.
She felt slightly overawed by her surroundings, and her instinct was to walk on tiptoe down the wide staircase. But she found it was so richly carpeted that this precaution was quite unnecessary. So she walked down boldly and crossed the hall to the room she thought she identified as the one into which she and Bertram had been shown that first day.
The door stood ajar, and she saw that, in spite of the time of year, a pleasant fire flickered on the hearth, throwing delightful patterns of light and shadow on the well-chosen furniture.
It was a luxurious—in some way, a beguiling—room, and she entered it with a feeling of pleasure.
As she did so, someone rose from a seat on the other side of the room. In the first instant, she thought her uncle must have returned early. And then, with a mixture of alarm and rapture which sent the blood from her face to her heart, she saw that it was David.
“David—” she held out both her hands to him, all the distress and emotion and bewilderment of the last few hours in her shaking voice—“David—”
He came over and took her hands in his, wordlessly, but with a strength of clasp that steadied her.
“I don’t understand,” she stammered. “Have you—have you come to see my uncle?”
“No, my dear,” he said. “I have come to see you. Sit down.” He led her to a chair. “There’s a lot I have to tell you.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
She held on to David’s hand as though it were a lifeline in a stormy sea. But she knew, with leaden despair, what it was he had come to tell her. And because she felt she simply could not bear to hear from his own lips that he loved Celia, she almost cried out,
“Don’t tell me! So long as you don’t say it, I can pretend it isn’t true. But if you say it, then the last hope is gone.”
Even in the final resort, however, one had to try to preserve a remnant of pride and dignity. That she had learned from her stepfather long ago. So she called on some hidden reserve of strength and endeavoured to smile and look normal. Though not with much success, it seemed, for, as he glanced down at her, David exclaimed,
“Don’t look so scared, child. I shan’t make you listen to anything you don’t want to hear.”
She thought how blind even the nicest of men could be. But she managed to go on smiling fixedly, and even to say, in a voice she did not quite recognize as her own,
“Perhaps I already know what you are going to tell me.”
“Well, perhaps you do,” he agreed, thus stamping on the spark of hope which had still, in spite of all, glowed faintly until that moment. “I don’t think you miss very much when you watch us and smile in that secret way.” He ruffled her hair slightly, in that endearing manner which was all his own. “But I’ve seen so little of you lately, Anya. Too little.”
“It couldn’t be helped, with you in one house and me in another,” she said, desperately making conversation so as to put off the evil moment.
“No,” he agreed. “That wasn’t a good arrangement. I should have stood out against it in the beginning. Only, of course—” he frowned slightly—“perhaps it was for your good in the end.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well—if you hadn’t gone to Mrs. Preston’s house, perhaps we should never have had the opportunity to find out all about you, and establish you as the niece of a famous man, instead of our little mystery girl.”
“It—it was better the other way,” she said, almost in a whisper, before she could stop herself.
“What was that?” He bent down to her, so that his head was close to hers.
“N-nothing. It doesn’t matter.”
“But it does matter. Is something wrong?”
“No.” She pressed her lips together obstinately, because she knew they would quiver if she didn’t.
He looked at her in perplexity for a moment. And because she was terrified of what he might see, she exclaimed desperately,
“Why don’t you tell me what you have come to say, and have done with it?”
He looked taken aback for a moment at that. Then suddenly he laughed gaily and said, “Why don’t I?” And, to her mingled dismay and rapture, he put his arms round her.
In the first instant she knew only the happiness of being in his arms. But almost immediately followed the fear that she would break down if he did that, and she stiffened and drew back, so that she pressed against the arm which held her.
“What is it?” He spoke almost harshly, but he released her immediately. “First you say I may tell you—even that you know what I am going to say. And then, when I go to say it, you shrink into yourself and push me away.”
“I—I didn’t push you away,” she stammered. “Only—do you have to put your arms round me when you tell me?”
“It’s usually done.” He looked half amused, half angry. ‘Unless one expects the girl to refuse.”
“I don’t understand.” Her voice quivered with uncontrollable pain. “Your girl hasn’t refused you.” And then suddenly she knew it was better for her to say the words herself than to wait any longer for him to inflict the blow. “It’s all settled, isn’t it?—your engagement to Celia.”
She even looked him in the face as she said it. And so she received the full force of the blank, angry astonishment which swept over him.
“What are you talking about?” He had never spoken so roughly to her before. “I’m not engaged to Celia. I have no intention of being engaged to Celia. I’m trying to tell you that I love you, and damned difficult it is, if I may say so.”
“Oh—” Anya said softly, almost on a note of pain. “Oh, no—”
And suddenly she covered her face with her hands, and wept such tears of shock and relief that she thought she would never be able to stop crying again.
“Don’t, my darling!” He was kneeling beside her now, but not touching her. “Don’t cry like that. I swear my loving you shan’t make the slightest difference if it frightens and distresses you. You don’t have to do a thing about it—I won’t make the slightest claim upon you. I meant to start by reassuring you about that, because I didn’t know how you felt. But then I seemed to get it all mixed up—and, anyway, you said you knew what I was going to say—”
“But I didn’t,” she gasped between her sobs. “I didn’t. I got it all wrong too.”
“Oh, Anya, don’t cry. You break my heart.” He put out his hand and touched her almost diffidently. “That time I saw you leaning against the wall and crying, the day your father died, I vowed I’d try to see that you never wept again. And now I’ve made you cry myself—and you sound even more unhappy than you were then—”
“I’m not—I’m not!” She looked up then and, casting her arms around him, she pressed her wet cheeks against his. “I’m so happy and relieved, I could die!”
“Well, that at least you’re not going to do.” He held her tightly and kissed her. “I don’t understand a single thing, but if you love me, nothing else matters. I don’t know what all these tears are for, but—”
“Because I love you. I—I adore you—” She gave him rapid little kisses all over his face. “You’re my whole world and my hope of heaven—and I thought I’d lost you. Why did you come
to me when I most needed you? How did you know? How did you know?”
He looked down at her lovingly, torn by the sight of her pale face and her long lashes stuck together in wet points, and by the fact that every now and then, even now, she gave a sort of childish hiccough of distress after all those tears.
“I wish I could say that some unerring lover’s instinct brought me,” he told her with a smile. “But it wasn’t that. At least, I’ve been longing to come, but I thought you were happily settled without me, and I didn’t want you to feel I would make any claim upon you because you had once been my little mystery girl.”
“I’m always your girl,” she whispered. “But what made you come now, when I was almost mad with despair?”
“Bertram made me come.”
“Bertram?” For a moment she was chilled by the thought that Bertram might have said too much about her feelings.
“Yes. He saw you half an hour ago at Marylebone, but you didn’t see him. He spoke to you, but you didn’t notice him. You ran past him to a taxi, and he said you looked white and distraught, as though you’d just had a great shock—”
“Bertram did?”
“Yes. He was going home himself, so he telephoned to me and said he thought I’d better come along and see you and straighten things out. And it was then that I thought perhaps it was not all roses and honey at your uncle’s, and that I might have a chance with you, after all.”
“A chance! Oh, David—didn’t you know that I—I almost worshipped you from the very first evening?”
“No, darling, I didn’t.” He laughed and kissed the side of her cheek softly. “I’m not the sort of chap that people worship. And you mustn’t do that either. It’s not a proper relationship between husband and wife.”
“Between husband—and wife,” she repeated slowly. “Is that what we are going to be? Husband and wife. Husband—and wife. They’re beautiful words, aren’t they? So real—so old—so universal. Something which means that you belong to someone, and he belongs to you. Darling David, you know I’m not a very suitable sort of wife for you, don’t you?”
“No, I don’t,” he replied with emphasis. “What gave you that idea?”
“Well—” She thought of all the things that Celia had said and even of the things which Lady Ranmere—though more kindly—had implied. And suddenly none of them meant anything any more.
“Perhaps it’s all right.” She smiled and put her hand against his cheek. “It’s all right, if you say so. Everything is all right, if you say so.”
“Is it, my little love?” He held her and looked down at her anxiously. “Will you really feel safe and happy and secure when you are married to me?”
“Yes,” she said slowly. “I shall feel safe—and happy—and secure, forever and ever.”
“That’s what I want. That very first time I met you, Anya, you said you had no home and no country, and that you were what is called as displaced person. That’s all behind you now, my darling. My home is your home, my country is your country, and your place is here, in my arms. Will you try to forget all the unhappiness that went before?”
“No,” she said gently. “I shan’t forget it, and I don’t want to forget it, David. Happiness and security are gifts from God, and if He makes us those gifts, it is we who should remember that others are still wandering the earth looking for them.”
“Perhaps you’re right,” he said soberly. “And yet I can’t help wanting you to have even your memories happy.”
“I’m making those every minute,” she told him with a smile.
He laughed, half reassured, and kissed her yet again. But still he said,
“You haven’t yet told me why you were in despair, as you said, when I came this afternoon. Nor why you looked as you did when Bertram saw you.”
She opened her eyes wide in surprise, as though she could hardly recall her previous state of mind.
“I thought you were going to marry Celia,” she said.
“But why, for heaven’s sake?” he demanded almost impatiently. “Why get the idea just then?”
“Because—” she began, and then suddenly she was silent. For in that moment she knew, fully and completely, that she had come into her own and could afford to be generous. In David’s arms, with his kisses upon her, she was no longer the little refugee, but a queen in her own right. And queens must be above pettiness.
It was in her power to revenge every slight Celia had put upon her, by the simple process of exposing her unscrupulous scheming to David’s angry gaze. It was also in her power to cover her enemy’s shame with the cloak of her own generosity.
For the first time in her life, Anya knew what it was to have the power to give or withhold protection and help, out of the abundance of her own riches. It was a heady, intoxicating moment, but her choice was instantaneous.
“I don’t know why I thought it,” she said slowly. “I suppose one sometimes has a sort of panic about the things which matter most. I can’t explain it, David. But it’s over now. We need never think of it again.”
The End
Love Is My Reason Page 20
