In the middle of her third week at the office, Simon said to her one morning, after he had finished dictating:
“When are you coming to see Mother? I think they will allow her an outside visitor or two now.”
“Why—any time!” Leila looked up from her notebook and smiled eagerly.
“How about tomorrow evening? We can both leave a little early, and I’ll drive you down. And perhaps, afterwards, you’ll come and have dinner with me.”
“That would be very nice.” She knew she sounded almost sedate, but that was better than showing the excitement and joy which she felt.
The next day, she paid the most careful attention to her work. If she had allowed her thoughts to move from it for any length of time, she knew that she would have found herself lost in a vague state of bliss about the coming evening, in which she might have made all sorts of mistakes.
As it was, she obviously worked so hard that, when she prepared to leave half an hour earlier than the others, one of her colleagues remarked:
“I don’t wonder Mr. Morley said you could go. You’ve done a day and a half’s work already.”
Leila smiled, and said something about having wanted to finish a special piece of work. Then she bade her colleagues good night, and went off, to find Simon waiting outside in his car.
It was a beautiful evening. One of those brief, nostalgic reminders of summer which do occasionally irradiate the autumn. They didn’t talk much at first—not until they were more or less free of the traffic—but they were so pleasantly at ease in each other’s company that neither felt the need for conversation.
Then he indicated one or two familiar points of interest on the way, and Leila said it was rather a long drive for him to do twice a day, and didn’t he ever think of having a place in town?
“Oh, but I have a small flat in town,” he assured her. “It’s just that, at the present time, I prefer to be near my family.”
“Yes—of course.”
“Besides—” He hesitated a moment. Then he gave a rather short laugh. “I haven’t felt much like going to my flat. I was going to take Rosemary there, you know.”
She felt her mouth go dry.
“Were you?”
“Um-hm. It’s no good being sentimental about these things, and I’ll get used to the idea, I suppose. But, just now, I feel the flat would seem singularly empty and—pointless.”
“I suppose—it would.”
There was a silence. Not a pleasant and easy silence this time. Then he said:
“I know I’m a fool to bother further about her. Only—I can’t help wishing I could have some news of her.”
“What sort—of news?” Leila wondered if he noticed that her voice was husky.
“Oh—any sort of news. I suppose your aunt hasn’t written to you since that unfortunate phone conversation? Or has she, Leila? I never thought of asking you before. Has Mrs. Lorne written to you at all about Rosemary?”
CHAPTER IX
IT seemed to Leila at that dreadful moment that a chasm almost literally yawned at her feet.
Why had she never thought how simply—how almost inevitably—disaster could break over her? Why had she not foreseen that, as they became more intimate, Simon must quite naturally speak to her of Rosemary and even question her?
“Aunt Hester—did write to me—two or three days—after I returned to the flat.” Did she sound as jerky and unnatural to him as she did to herself? “She had—no news then. She begged me to let her know when—if I heard anything.”
“I see.” He smiled slightly. “She had decided to forgive you for your particular escapade?”
“Yes. Oh, yes.” She saw she might sidetrack him on that, and rushed on desperately into further speech. “Aunt Hester is essentially generous and understanding, you know. When she’d had time to think things over, she decided that my intentions had been good, even if she still thought I ought to have taken her into my confidence. I think what annoyed her most of all was the idea that Miss Parker—the organist, who saw us together at the Junction should have brought her the news. And a very garbled version of the news at that.”
“Ye-es.” He frowned over that, though she had meant him to be amused. “I don’t know that I’ve been taking the tiresome Miss Parker quite seriously enough.”
“I think Aunt Hester is capable of managing her, now that she has the facts,” Leila said hastily. The last thing she wanted was to have Simon transferring his attention to Durominster once more.
He smiled, half convinced.
“Well, I don’t want you ticketed as the girl who pinched her cousin’s fiancé,” he said.
“N-no. Naturally not,” Leila agreed, feeling very uncomfortable.
And then the subject lapsed, and Leila sat there, staring at the road ahead, and wondering how much further she had tied her own hands.
Suppose she made up her mind to be truthful now? Suppose she regarded this as the moment when she had secured enough of Simon’s friendship and attention to risk his knowing that Rosemary—in spite of all her foolishness and bad behaviour—was still free, and still interested in him?
How did one begin to make the disclosure? How, above all, did one explain why one had not made the disclosure before?
A sort of panic took hold of her. It was no longer a simple matter of timing. She was going to have to explain some very curious behaviour on her own part. If—when—she did tell Simon the truth.
As they drove through the soft evening sunshine, she felt overwhelmed by the weight of her secret and suffocated by the tangle of her own deception. In that moment, she wanted nothing so much as to be free of it all. And, without even waiting to think how she was to do it, she said—timidly but urgently:
“Simon—”
“What, dear?”
He was negotiating a difficult corner, and the half-absent endearment which he threw at her came as naturally to him as the question.
But it effectually silenced Leila.
Never before had they been on terms when he might address her as “dear”. “My dear,” perhaps. That was a very different matter. One said “my dear” to almost anyone, and for a variety of reasons. But just to call her “dear” like that, almost as a matter of course, marked a stage in their relationship which took her breath away.
She no longer wished to unburden herself of any secret. She could not, of her own free will, spoil this extraordinary and enchanting situation. Her guilt and her anxiety counted as nothing now beside the surge of joy which overwhelmed her.
And so, when he glanced at her enquiringly, she found herself smiling casually and saying:
“Oh—nothing.”
He looked amused.
“Keeping your own secrets, eh?”
“No, no. It was nothing important.” Here she was, closing the door on the truth with her own hands, but she seemed hardly to be acting of her own volition. “I was wondering how much longer we were going to be, but I remember now—you said we should be there about half-past six.”
“Yes. Are you getting tired?” He sounded kind and even a little concerned, as though it really mattered to him that she might be tired.
“No,” she assured him. “I’m enjoying every minute of this drive.” Which was true, of course, if one left out the pangs of conscience which had assailed her from time to time.
He laughed softly, as though something about that pleased him a good deal.
“You have a great capacity for enjoying yourself, haven’t you, Leila?”
“Have I?” She smiled consideringly. “Yes—I suppose so. Though I’m inclined to worry unduly about things, too,” she added. And her tone was slightly defiant, because, at that moment, she was addressing Fate, rather than Simon.
He looked surprised and amused.
“I shouldn’t have said you were at all,” he declared.
“But—would you know me well enough to say?”
“Certainly! Didn’t we share a very worrying situation together? I th
ought you took all the fences very confidently on that occasion.”
“Oh—well, yes. If the situation is actually there to cope with, I suppose I manage reasonably well,” Leila conceded. “What I meant was that I—that I sometimes harrow myself about things which may never happen.”
“Don’t we all?” he said lightly.
“No. Rosemary never does—did,” exclaimed Leila, before she could stop herself. And then wondered how she could possibly have been so foolish as to reintroduce Rosemary into the conversation, and quite unnecessarily, too.
“Oh—Rosemary—” He seemed to consider his lost fiancée in retrospect. “No, Rosemary didn’t worry about anything. She let other people do the worrying.” He smiled rather ruefully, which took any rancour out of what he was saying, but showed that, oddly enough, he had not many illusions about her.
The discovery dismayed Leila, for at the back of her mind had always been the idea that he had had some idealized notion of her. She had indulged in the hope—unworthy, perhaps, but understandable in the circumstances—that, after having been forced to see Rosemary as she was, he might come to feel very differently about her. Now it came home to her that perhaps Simon had always known Rosemary for what she was and had loved her that way. He would not have been the first man to love a girl for her charming irresponsibility and her capacity for taking life lightly.
In silence Leila digested that unwelcome thought. And in silence they drove the last two or three miles of the journey.
“Here we are,” he said at last, as they turned into the drive of what looked like a pleasant country house. And Leila roused herself and prepared to look smiling and cheerful as befitted a visitor to the sick.
After the regular favourable reports she had had of Mrs. Morley, Leila was a good deal shocked to find her painfully weak and languid. Her brilliant eyes still looked lively and the smile she gave Leila was full of affection, but it was obvious that her small amount of strength was maintained with difficulty and she was not able to say more than a few words to them.
Leila saw that Simon was pleased and happy about her condition, and she guessed that he and Frances had grown so used to the idea that they might have lost her at the time of the operation that any signs of her holding her own gave them a feeling of optimism.
She herself found it difficult to share that feeling, but she naturally kept every hint of that to herself. And, when she was leaving, she kissed Mrs. Morley and said:
“I hope I shall soon be able to come for longer visits.”
“Yes, dear. Simon will bring you. I’m so glad you are at the office with him—and seeing a lot of him.”
“Mother thinks you are good for me.” Simon smiled indulgently. But whether the indulgence was for his mother or a little bit for herself as well, Leila was not quite sure.
Anyway, she replied quite gaily:
“He is taking me out to dinner now. I’ll look after him well for you.”
“That’s a good child.” Mrs. Morley’s glance lingered on her with genuine fondness. And, in addition, Leila was impressed again by the light of lively, almost humorous, intelligence in her eyes, although she herself looked pale and terribly still.
When they were outside once more, Leila said:
“She’s a wonderful woman. If spirit can do anything, she will pull through all right.”
“How do you think she looks?” he asked earnestly.
“On the whole—pretty well. But it’s going to take a long time to get her strength up to anything really reliable, isn’t it, Simon?”
“I’m afraid so.” He handed her into the car and came round to the driving seat. Then, as he turned the car in a rather deliberate half-circle and headed down the drive once more, he added, with equal deliberation: “There’s just one advantage in not having married Rosemary, after all, and that is that I’m available to go and see Mother every day. I think it makes a lot of difference to her.”
“I am sure it does. You’re very close, you two, aren’t you?” Leila said.
“Very. My father died a good many years ago, you know, and that naturally made us more—dependent on each other. More important to each other, I suppose.”
“Then I can’t understand—” She stopped, and he looked enquiring.
“What can’t you understand?”
“Well, it isn’t my business. But I’m surprised that you didn’t take Rosemary to see her during the months of your engagement.”
He frowned.
“She was not very keen to put herself out to that extent,” he replied curtly. And Leila saw that this at any rate had been a lack in Rosemary towards which he felt no indulgence.
Illogically enough, her instinct for making excuses on Rosemary’s behalf immediately asserted itself.
“She just didn’t realize how charming your mother is, or I’m sure she would have come.”
“She could hardly realize it without coming first,” returned Simon dryly.
“Well”—Leila smiled quizzically—“as it happened, it was fortunate that she never did visit your home. Otherwise we could not have put our plan into practice. And, though I know it served no very useful purpose in the end, I wouldn’t have missed that experience.”
“Good heavens, nor would I!” he declared, with amused fervour, his good temper entirely restored. “I should never have known you so well if it hadn’t been for that.”
She smiled again, but she said nothing. And after a moment, as though he thought that needed amplification, he added:
“And that’s another thing I wouldn’t have missed for anything.”
“Thank you, Simon.” Her smile remained self-possessed and friendly, though she was keenly aware that there was a deeper shade of significance in his tone when he said that. An unself-conscious significance of which she thought he was unaware himself. “I, too, am very glad that we had the opportunity of knowing each other so well. Even back in Durominster I used to think sometimes that you must be a nice person to know well. But of course you were just my cousin’s fiancé there.”
“Was that really how you thought of me?” He was obviously intrigued.
“Occasionally.” She experienced a sort of heady excitement over the secret pleasure of stating the truth as a half-laughing admission which was apparently not meant to be taken at all seriously.
“I never really took you in very much in Durominster,” he confessed with candour. “I mean—I thought Rosemary had a very nice cousin, and left it at that.”
She laughed quite gaily.
“Very proper, too, considering that you were marrying Rosemary within a matter of weeks,” she said.
He laughed.
“All right—I accept that. Look, here is the place where I thought we’d have dinner. The dining-room looks out on the river and it’s rather attractive.”
She thought it the most beautiful place possible for dinner. But perhaps that was because of the mood and the company. Anyway, the head waiter found them a table on the glassed-in terrace, where they could eat and talk in comparative privacy, and watch the evening sun setting across the river.
“It’s a heavenly place, Simon,” she said, and hoped he had never brought Rosemary there. Then she remembered that was most unlikely, as it was near his home.
“Like it? I thought you would.” And he smiled at her across the table with the contented air of someone who had thought out a plan carefully and was pleased to see it materializing with perfect success.
“It must be wonderful here in the spring.” She looked rather dreamily across the water to the thinning trees, and imagined them with the first green mist of the early leaves on them. But perhaps nothing would ever be more beautiful than this autumn evening with Simon.
“Yes, it’s very lovely here about April or May. I’ll bring you next spring, and you shall see for yourself.”
“Will you really?” She looked back at him once more and smiled. And her eyes looked bright and faintly dazzled—either from looking into the sett
ing sun, or because Simon spoke so confidently of future plans for them.
“Would you like that so much?” His voice changed again to that curious note of significance which she had noticed before.
She nodded and said: “So much,” and was not quite sure if she were relieved or disappointed that the waiter came up at that moment and broke the tension.
It was a leisurely and indescribably pleasant meal. Once or twice she had the impression that he was surprised to find that he could enjoy himself so much. But then Simon had been through a good deal in the last few weeks, between his broken engagement and his anxiety about his mother. It was natural that he should find a very special relaxation and delight in the undemanding evening in company with a charming girl whom he was just beginning to know really well.
They talked of books they had read and plays they had seen. And, again, she thought he was astonished to find anyone with tastes and preferences so much in line with his own. Even when they disagreed—and they did so sharply once or twice—the argument was amusing and stimulating.
It pleased her immensely to see him push away his coffee-cup, cross his arms in front of him on the table, and settle down to a discussion with every sign of enjoyment and interest. He could not, she supposed, have had many discussions of that sort with Rosemary. Not that Rosemary was unintelligent in her way, but nothing mattered very much to her. And it is a little difficult to have a really stimulating discussion with someone who hardly minds which way the argument goes.
Neither of them noticed the time—strange, she thought afterwards, how she always forgot the time when she was with Simon—and it was almost completely dark when he exclaimed: “Here, I’d better be seeing about getting you back to town. It’s quite a drive.”
“Oh, Simon, you don’t need to take me right back to London! Just drive me to the nearest station, and we’ll see what trains there are.”
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