Mine for a Day

by Mary Burchell

  “I’m very glad you came,” Leila said sincerely. “You—haven’t written yet to Aunt Hester?”

  Rosemary shook her head.

  “I didn’t want to get into touch with any of them. Not Mother or Simon or anyone—until I’d seen you and heard how things were. And now it’s your turn, Leila. Now you must tell me everything that happened after I left.”

  “I think,” Leila said, beckoning to their waitress, “that we’ll go home before I start that story.”

  It was the obvious thing to do. But it was also the one way in which Leila could secure a reprieve—just a few minutes longer—in which to decide how much, and in what way, she was to tell her cousin of what had happened during the last few days.

  She was not sure whether it was a real state of fact, or just her imagination, but the flat seemed cold and depressing to Leila when they returned there. Rosemary, however, seemed more than happy with everything.

  “It’s lovely here. I’d no idea you had made yourself such a comfortable home, Leila,” she said. And, with an air of making herself entirely at home, she switched on the electric fire once more, seated herself in the most comfortable chair.

  Leila, who had taken off her outdoor things more slowly, came over to sit in the opposite chair and, though she seldom smoked, reached for a cigarette.

  Rosemary shook her head at the proffered case, and waited with obvious impatience while Leila lit her cigarette. Then she burst out: “Do hurry up and begin, Leila. You make me nervous. Is there anything very terrible to tell me?”

  Leila looked at her almost incredulously.

  “I don’t know what you would call ‘very terrible,”’ she replied rather soberly. “Your parents were extremely upset—naturally.”

  “And angry?” enquired Rosemary.

  “To a certain extent—yes. Not so much because you changed your mind, Rosemary. But because of the way in which you did it. Aunt Hester felt very badly about being left to do all the explaining and excusing, and I think she had a right to feel that way.”

  “She had you,” Rosemary pointed out, with a sort of naive shamelessness. “She will get over it, Leila. She has probably got over it now.”

  “I don’t know about that.” Leila thought of her aunt’s angry, distressed voice on the telephone.

  “And then—Simon.” Rosemary did hesitate a moment before she said his name. “Will it be very difficult to make Simon forgive me, Leila?”

  There was dead silence in the room. Leila felt as though time stopped, and a terrible chill of inevitability touched her. She was surprised to hear herself clear her throat and ask, in a normal-sounding voice:

  “Do you mean—forgive you in a purely academic way? Or are you—are you hoping to take things up with Simon again?”

  “I suppose,” Rosemary replied thoughtfully, “that depends on Simon’s attitude. Was he very angry, Leila?”

  “He was simply furious,” Leila said coldly. “And he had every right to be.”

  “Oh! Was he?”

  In some obscure way, it pleased her to see how completely startled Rosemary looked at last.

  “What else did you expect? He came home the day before his wedding, worried to death about his mother—”

  “Oh, yes, of course. Poor Simon. I forgot about his mother. How is she?” Rosemary asked rather absently.

  Leila held herself carefully in check.

  “She is dangerously ill. They are operating on her tomorrow, and it was essential that she should not be shocked or upset in any way. The only thing she wanted was to see Simon’s—wife before she went into the nursing-home. Simon came to Durominster, meaning to ask you to postpone the honeymoon long enough to go with him to his home. You can imagine what it was like, having to tell him that there would be no wedding because you had run off with another man.”

  “Oh, dear! I’m truly sorry, Leila. I didn’t know it would be as difficult as all that for you. Or for him,” she added, looking solemn and remorseful, as a child might look solemn and remorseful. “Whatever did you do?”

  “I went instead of you,” Leila stated coolly and clearly. “I accompanied Simon to his home and was introduced to his mother and sister as you.”

  “Leila!” Consternation and amazement and a sort of amused admiration chased each other across Rosemary’s expressive face. “What a nerve! And”—she considered the position for a moment—“did you get away with it?”

  “Yes,” Leila said, without hesitation and without amplification, “we got away with it.” Rosemary was not the only one who had been considering the position, and Leila added, almost immediately: “That’s why, for the moment, whatever you wish to do, you mustn’t make any sort of contact with Simon.”

  She was ashamed the moment she had said it. But she was frightenedly exultant, too. Here was the perfect way of ensuring that no immediate disaster overtook her. She would have time to consider the position—time to think what was right and what was merely excusable. Time to decide what would be best for Simon. Time to find out if Rosemary’s feelings for Simon had anything deep or genuine about them.

  There was nothing fundamentally unfair, she assured herself, in making Rosemary wait. It was Rosemary herself who had created this situation. But none of these inner protests really quieted her conscience, and she knew why as soon as Rosemary asked her next question.

  “Did both his mother and sister accept you quite without question, quite without suspicion?”

  Here was the testing moment. The point at which she had to decide how far she was prepared to go in defence of her precious, but fatally light, hold on Simon. She prevaricated desperately. She said:

  “Why should they have any sort of suspicion? Simon introduced me as you, and they had never-seen you before.”

  “Ye-es. Of course, that’s true.” Rosemary bit her lip thoughtfully. “How long did you stay?”

  “I left there only today—when his mother went to the nursing-home.”

  Rosemary’s eyes grew suddenly round.

  “You were there several days, as Simon’s wife?”

  “Of—of course.”

  “My goodness, Leila! I’d never have thought of you as being willing to put yourself in such a position.” And she added, rather soberly: “You must be very fond of me.”

  Leila gasped slightly.

  “I am very fond of you,” she said severely and, as it happened, with truth, “but it wasn’t for you that I did that.”

  “Wasn’t it?” Rosemary opened her eyes wide again. “But for whom, then?”

  “Well—for Mrs. Morley, of course.” There was only the slightest hesitation about that.

  “But you don’t even know her. I mean, you didn’t at the time you took this on.”

  “Rosemary, you don’t have to know a person intimately before you decide to try to give them a chance of getting well, when your holding back might mean they would die.”

  “No-o. I see what you mean. I shouldn’t have thought of it that way, myself,” Rosemary said quite truly. “But it’s a lot to expect of any girl. Posing as a man’s wife and putting herself in such a queer position. I’m surprised Simon had the nerve to ask you to do it.” There was a short pause. “I suppose he did ask you to do it?”

  “No. I suggested doing it.”

  Rosemary laughed incredulously.

  “Leila, I begin to think I don’t know the first thing about you,” she exclaimed. “I always thought of you as rather—oh, correct and not a bit irresponsible.”

  “I’m not irresponsible!” protested Leila, a little nettled to have applied to her the word she almost always associated with Rosemary herself. “I assure you I didn’t take on that task in any mood of irresponsibility.”

  “All right. I dare say you took it on a good deal to please Simon,” Rosemary said equably. And Leila was dumb.

  For a few moments there was silence between the two girls. Then Rosemary said:

  “Yes—I do see that it wouldn’t do for me to ring up Simon,
or even perhaps to write, during the next few days. Not, of course, that I’m any good at writing difficult explanations anyway.

  “But I want him to know—quite soon—that I—that Jeremy is a past chapter. You will explain that to him, won’t you, Leila?

  “I?” Leila was terribly taken aback.

  “Why, yes. Of course. You’ll be seeing him, won’t you? Where is he, anyway? At his home or back in Durominster?”

  “At his home. I—I don’t know when he proposes to go back to Durominster. His work was practically finished there, you remember.”

  “Yes,” Rosemary said reminiscently. “We expected to come to London almost immediately after returning from our honeymoon.” And she sighed slightly—presumably for the nice arrangements which she had so foolishly upset. “So he’s at his own home—” She looked thoughtful.

  “Yes. He will stay there for a week or so, I expect. Until Mrs. Morley is out of danger.”

  “Or dies,” Rosemary added, not callously, but with the lack of personal interest she always displayed over anyone she did not know.

  “She’s not going to die,” Leila retorted fiercely.

  “Isn’t she? Oh, I’m terribly glad.” Rosemary meant that. “I thought you said there was a good deal of danger at one time.”

  “There still is,” Leila said curtly. “I just meant”—her voice dropped suddenly—“I couldn’t bear it if she died.”

  Rosemary looked really sympathetic.

  “I’m sorry, Leila. I didn’t realize you’d grown really fond of her in so short a time. I’m surprised you didn’t stay on, too. Why didn’t you, by the way? And how on earth did you explain to Simon’s sister? Didn’t she think it queer, your leaving your husband just a few days after you’d married him?”

  Leila’s mouth went dry.

  “I—pleaded urgent family reasons,” she was shocked to hear herself say.

  Suddenly Leila felt a weary and terrible distaste for what she was doing. With all the fervour of a naturally truthful person, she hated herself for withholding the exact truth from Rosemary. And yet—if she told Rosemary that her masquerade as Simon’s wife was at an end, and that there was no reason for discretion or caution, Rosemary would probably go to the telephone, late as it was, and speak to Simon this very night. The reconciliation—if reconciliation there was to be—would be completed by their meeting tomorrow. And next time Simon saw her, herself, she would be kind and practical Cousin Leila, who had been such a help in a purely temporary emergency.

  Leila got up sharply.

  “I think we’d better both go to bed now,” she said abruptly. “I’m dead tired. And I’m sure you must be, too. We can talk about everything else tomorrow. About your writing to Aunt Hester and—everything.”

  “Very well.” Rosemary stretched herself with an air of luxurious comfort. “You’re wonderful, Leila. I feel as though everything’s half solved the moment you take things in hand.”

  “Don’t be silly,” retorted Leila, so sharply that her cousin looked at her in surprise. But then Rosemary was not to know, of course, how her careless words weighed on Leila’s already overburdened conscience.

  Later, when Rosemary was happily sleeping on her made-up bed on the settee, Leila lay awake and stared at the ceiling and asked herself what she was going to do.

  On her journey to town she had been so happy going over and over the possible circumstances of her next meeting with Simon. Now she both dreaded and longed to see him. For she would have to decide quite finally then just how much she was going to tell him about Rosemary. Or if she were going to tell him nothing at all.

  From an objective point of view—if anyone so deeply involved as herself could think objectively—hadn’t Simon had a lucky escape when Rosemary ran away from him? With all her charm and her other lovable qualities, no one could pretend that she was anything but shallow and unstable.

  On the other hand, had anyone the right to suppress facts and even alter them slightly, on the basis that someone else did not know what was best for himself?

  Of course not, Leila told herself angrily. And, equally of course, it was impossible to argue this thing on a strict basis of right and wrong.

  After a miserably restless night, Leila woke early, and because it had become impossible to lie there any longer and start thinking again, she got up.

  She went into the kitchen and inspected supplies, and then decided that she must run downstairs to see if she could borrow some milk and bread off the housekeeper.

  Mrs. Boothby was used to such appeals from her tenants, and produced a bottle of milk and a brown loaf as though by magic, and then proceeded to satisfy her own curiosity.

  “Was it all right about the young lady, Miss Lorne?” she enquired, before Leila could retreat.

  “Quite all right,” Leila assured her with a smile. “She is my cousin and I was very glad to see her.”

  “ Will she be staying long?”

  “I don’t really know,” Leila said.

  At her own door, the postman, who had followed her up the stairs, caught up with her and handed her a couple of letters. One, Leila saw, as she glanced at them balanced on top of her loaf, was only a circular. The other was from the office.

  During the last twenty-four hours, Leila had hardly given a thought to her own official future. So many other things had demanded her attention. But now she felt a sudden nervous tension which was extraordinarily unpleasant.

  Setting down the other things on the kitchen table, she resolutely opened the letter from the office. It was short, she saw at a glance, and it was very much to the point.

  Dear Miss Lorne [she read],

  We very much regret that, owing to the reorganization of the office since the fire, we are finding it necessary to reduce our staff. It has been very difficult to decide with which members we should dispense, but, after due consideration of years of service, etc., we have had to include you among the number. Attached you will find a cheque for two weeks’ salary in lieu of notice, and should you wish to apply to us for a reference with regard to your work at any future date, we shall, of course, be pleased to supply this.

  Yours sincerely,

  Hubert Brogner.

  CHAPTER VII

  LEILA slowly folded up the letter again and ran her finger nervously up and down the creases.

  In a way, it was no more than she had expected. Indeed, the letter was more tactfully and kindly worded than she might have anticipated. But Leila was not deceived. She knew quite well that, in spite of all reference to reorganization and difficulties of deciding who should go, the important word in that letter was “etc.” “After due consideration of years of service, etc., we have had to include you among the number.” The “etc.” covered all the unfortunate impressions Mr. Brogner had gathered on his visit to the Morleys’ home.

  Well, she tried to tell herself cheerfully, it was not a complete tragedy. There were other jobs to be had. She was efficient and experienced. But she hated the feeling that, in spite of all considerate camouflage, she had been sacked because her employer considered her private behaviour undesirable.

  Leila was still standing by the kitchen table, twisting the letter idly in her hand, when the sitting-room door opened and Rosemary came out in an extremely chic and becoming negligee.

  “Hello, Leila! You up already? I had the most wonderful night. I expect it was because of getting rid of half my worries fast night,” and she laughed gaily. Then she saw the letter in her cousin’s hand. “Who is the letter from? Is it something about me?”

  “No. It’s nothing about you.” Leila put the letter into its envelope again, and started to see about breakfast. “It’s from Mr. Brogner—my boss, you know. They’re reorganizing the office and cutting down staff. They won’t need me back there.”

  “Leila! That’s a bit of a blow, isn’t it? D’you mean you are without a job?”

  “Um-hm. Temporarily. I’ll have to see about getting another one as soon as possible.”


  “Is it very—serious?” Out of her recent experience on short money, Rosemary was able to appreciate the situation as she would never have done m other days.

  “I’m not wondering where the next meal is coming from, if you mean that,” Leila assured her with a smile. “But no one likes—losing her job suddenly. I’d better go and put my name down at one or two of the agencies this morning.”

  “That’s a good idea.” Rosemary brightened in a way that suggested Leila was already in a highly paid new post. “I might come with you and do the same thing.”

  “You?” Leila was startled, and looked it. “But—but do you intend to stay in London, Rosemary? I didn’t realize that was your idea.”

  “It wasn’t until I had thought things over again last night,” Rosemary admitted. “But I can’t go back to Durominster. Not yet, anyway. Not until some of the gossip has died down. Even supposing Mother and Daddy aren’t too mad to have me back, I mean,” she added. But to that idea she paid only lip-service, Leila saw. She could not really imagine her indulgent parents refusing to have her back home.

  Nor could Leila, and she said firmly:

  “I think you ought to write to Aunt Hester before you make any decisions about staying here. If they very much want you to go home, you ought to go, Rosemary. You have given them enough worry. You owe them a little consideration now.”

  Rosemary thoughtfully sucked her underlip.

  “I know what you mean, Leila. And there’s something to be said for it. But I couldn’t go back to Durominster just yet. Not before I’ve had a chance to settle things with Simon again.”

  Leila went on perfectly deliberately with what she was doing. There was no sign of her agitation in her manner, or even in her voice, as she said:

  “Why don’t you go back home first? While you’re—you’re waiting for a suitable opportunity to get into contact with Simon, I mean. Your mother and father would feel much better about things if you actually went to see them, and—explained. Then you could tell them that you wanted to live in London for a while—if that really is what you want to do—and I’m sure they would agree.”