Mine for a Day

by Mary Burchell

  “Nothing,” she assured him. “Nothing at all. I—I’m very glad that you feel this way.”

  For she could not tell him, naturally, that she had been cut to the heart by his implications that perhaps “friends” no longer applied to them.

  She told herself that she was being fanciful, that he had not meant it that way at all. And after a while she almost convinced herself, and the last half of the drive was accomplished in an atmosphere of easier friendliness than she had dared to hope.

  At the nursing-home, they were immediately admitted to Mrs. Morley’s room, where Leila—who had not seen her for some time—was rather hopefully impressed by what seemed to her an improvement, at any rate in general appearance.

  But, though affectionate, Mrs. Morley was languid and showed little of her usual brightness and energy. Indeed, after a few minutes, she even said that she found two visitors a little exhausting, and suggested that Simon should go and have a chat with one of the other patients whom he knew.

  He complied with her request immediately, but Leila saw that he was worried, and she glanced after him sympathetically as he went out of the room.

  The moment the door had closed behind him, however, Mrs. Morley drew a quick sigh of something which sounded extraordinarily like satisfaction, and said, in a much more energetic tone than she had employed so far:

  “It’s all right, darling. I’m sorry I had to make him anxious, but it was the only way I could think of to get rid of him. Now tell me quickly—what is the matter?”

  “The—the matter?” Leila stammered, looking at Mrs. Morley in astonishment. “What do you mean?”

  “Just exactly what I say,” Mrs. Morley assured her briskly. “And be a good child, and don’t waste our time by hedging. Everything was going along beautifully when you last came to see me. And then, suddenly, Simon stopped talking about bringing you here again—and, anyway, you didn’t come, and before I could frighten him into bringing you, I had to work very hard at being a fading lily. Fortunately I was able to keep him from having a serious talk with the doctor. But really it was very depressing having to droop every time poor Simon came near me.”

  “Mrs. Morley, you’re incorrigible!” Leila laughed vexedly. “You’re more like a naughty child than Simon’s mother. Do you mean to say that all this worrying set-back was sheer make-believe?”

  “No, not entirely. I did have a slight relapse about a week ago,” Mrs. Morley explained with candour. “And Simon kept on asking me so pressingly if there was anything I would specially like that I thought it was time I asked to see you. When he started to put me off, I saw I had better not begin to improve until I had got what I wanted. Now, tell me quickly, have you two quarrelled?”

  “Not—quarrelled, exactly.”

  Leila paused unhappily, and Mrs. Morley said impatiently:

  “If I have to extract every fact like a reluctant tooth, we shall not have got very far by the time Simon comes back, you know.”

  “Rosemary has returned,” Leila stated baldly, goaded into producing the one salient fact, because it never entered her head to query Mrs. Morley’s right to question.

  “Oh—dear! How tiresome! I never thought of that. The man didn’t marry her, of course?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t tell me that she is playing ‘broken blossom’ to my poor, foolish Simon?”

  “Oh, dear me, no! There isn’t anything of the broken blossom about Rosemary. She extricated herself very neatly from the situation before any damage had been done, I’m glad to say. So far as she was concerned, the only problem was when and how soon could she and Simon take up things where they had left off?”

  “What impertinence!” said Simon’s mother, but without heat. “And how silly even the best of men are. Did Simon—respond to the overtures?”

  “I don’t—really know. I kept them apart as long as possible—”

  “Thank you, my dear.“

  “—by most unscrupulous means, I’m afraid.”

  “Well, well,” murmured Mrs. Morley tolerantly.

  “Then they came together quite unexpectedly, before I—I had had time to think how I was going to explain my part in things. And I naturally appeared in a very bad light.”

  “In what way?

  “We-ell”—Leila stirred unhappily in her seat—“it just looked as though I’d been trying to make mischief between two people who meant a great deal to each other.”

  Mrs. Morley studied her for a while in silence.

  “Are you sure that’s how Simon saw it?”

  “I don’t see what else he could have thought. He—he said it was unwarrantable interference on my part.”

  “Such a difficult phrase to get out when one is really angry,” murmured Mrs. Morley reflectively. “I wonder just how much was real anger, and how much was the feeling that he ought to be angry.”

  “Oh, Mrs. Morley, I’m afraid that’s simply wishful thinking,” Leila said sadly. “He was very angry.”

  “And you haven’t made it up since?”

  “Well—” She thought of that scene on the way down. “He did tell me, on the way down in the car today, that one couldn’t keep up this sort of thing. He said something about not being able to govern all one’s future actions by a dispute between friends or—or acquaintances.”

  “Acquaintances?” repeated Mrs. Morley, and made a face. “Did he mean you and himself by that, or was it just a generalization?”

  “I don t know. I wish I did. And oh,” exclaimed Leila with a sigh, “how I wish I knew what the present situation is between him and Rosemary!”

  “Don’t bother too much about that,” Mrs. Morley advised realistically. “That’s a negative approach. The really important thing is the situation between you and Simon.”

  “But I don’t think—there was ever—”

  “Of course there was! Don’t underestimate your own powers of attraction,” Mrs. Morley said, looking amused. “And don’t overload yourself with a sense of guilt, child. If you did try to keep him and Rosemary apart, I can assure you that you have his mother’s blessing on the enterprise.”

  Leila laughed reluctantly.

  “You make me feel so much better,” she declared, and then looked faintly put out, because Simon chose that moment to return, and naturally seemed slightly surprised to find these words issuing from the wrong mouth.

  However, he looked at his mother with a good deal of satisfaction and said:

  “You look rather better, too, for the visit, Mother.”

  “Yes. This dear child makes me feel better, just by sitting there and talking to me. You must bring her again soon,” declared Mrs. Morley, seizing the advantage with shameless speed.

  Simon smiled at Leila, and it was a warm, approving smile once more.

  “Indeed I will! If she will come.”

  “Of course I will.” Leila returned his smile, happily and confidently, for her conversation with Mrs. Morley had given her entirely new courage and made her see things in a much more optimistic light.

  She bade Simon’s mother an affectionate good-bye, and went out of the nursing-home beside him with her chin up and her courage high. As Mrs. Morley had said—why pay such exaggerated attention to the situation between Simon and Rosemary? Let her look rather to the situation between Simon and herself.

  Her new mood of courage and gaiety lasted all through the meal which he insisted on her sharing with him, and she could not help knowing that her new ease and self-possession insensibly drew him, too, towards something of their old intimacy. Before the meal was over, he was teasing her a little, in the indulgent way he used to do, and there was no hesitation about his calling her Leila now.

  She was so happy that, although she had refused wine with her dinner, she felt slightly intoxicated with her own good spirits. She knew that she was being amusing and charming, and that he found her so, and she asked herself why she had not tried to achieve this before.

  How providential that she should hav
e had that talk with his mother! Mrs. Morley was such a wise—even a worldly—person, in spite of her fragile, feminine air. It had not taken her long to assess the position in its right proportions. Why assume that Rosemary was necessarily—even probably—of overwhelming importance any more. She herself might pretend so, but the truth was that she had not brought forward one single fact to substantiate her implied claim on Simon. For all Leila knew, they might not even have met again since that scene in the office.

  She very nearly asked him, there and then. But even her new-found confidence did not supply her with the coolness to ask that.

  This time he did not drive her back to town, having a previous engagement which he could not break. But he drove her to the nearest station, and waited with her until the train came.

  “I’m glad we have established this as a habit again,” he said, just before she got into the train.

  “Oh, Simon, so am I! Thank you for a—a wonderful evening—and for making things all right again.”

  He laughed and squeezed the hand he was holding.

  “Well, I couldn’t nave left things as they were. Not in the special circumstances,” he said.

  Then he handed her into the train, and the wretched thing began to move, before she could ask him what he meant by the special circumstances.

  All the way to town, the last few words of their conversation teased her. No doubt he was referring to his mother’s fondness for her, or something like that. But she wished she could have known.

  Not until she put her key in her front door did she recollect that during her hurried day she had not remembered to telephone and tell Rosemary that she would be late. It was not absolutely essential that she should, of course, but she felt faintly guilty, as she called out:

  “Hello. Did you wonder where I was?”

  “No. I knew.” Rosemary came and stood in the sitting-room doorway.

  “You knew? How did you know?”

  “Simon telephoned from the office and said he was taking you down to see his mother.”

  “Oh—did he?” An extraordinary chill enveloped her, and some of the colour went out of her world. For if Simon were on those terms with Rosemary—

  “I see,” she said, after a queer little pause, and she turned to go to her room.

  As she did so, something suddenly impinged on her consciousness with the force of a physical blow.

  Rosemary’s left hand rested lightly on the jamb of the door. And on her hand sparkled her engagement ring once more. Simon’s ring.

  CHAPTER XII

  TO Leila’s great astonishment, she heard herself say quite calmly: “Why, you’re wearing Simon’s ring again. Is the engagement on once more?”

  “Yes.” Rosemary examined the ring with affectionate attention. “Didn’t he say anything about it to you?”

  “No,” Leila said, and felt the bitterest resentment against him.

  “Maybe he thought you already knew—from me.”

  Well, that was possible of course. In fact—

  Suddenly she remembered his words about being glad to have them on good terms again, “in the special circumstances.”

  She, poor fool, had tormented herself all the way to town wondering what he had meant by that. But she never thought of the simple truth. He wanted to be on friendly terms with her once more because he was going to marry her cousin. That was all. Just a nice harmonious family atmosphere all round.

  Well, now she knew.

  She wanted to ask when the decision had been made—how long it had taken Simon to realize that, in spite of everything, he still wished to marry Rosemary. But the words stuck in her throat.

  “It’s all right,” Rosemary said understandingly. “I know you can’t want to discuss it all. Just wish me well, Leila, and leave it at that.”

  “I wish you well,” said Leila coldly, and went to her room. But it was not true, of course, she told herself as she closed the door behind her and leant helplessly against it. She didn’t wish Rosemary well. She almost hated her at that moment. Black, bitter, unfamiliar thoughts surged through her mind.

  She loved Simon, and she wanted him, with a desperate violence of emotion which frightened her. She was sick of well-behaved resignation. She loathed her role of civilized loser, who must show dignity and self-control. She wanted Simon, and, she hated Rosemary for having succeeded where she herself had failed.

  It was not as though Rosemary were worthy of him. Just a flighty, gay, pretty creature, with hardly one stable quality in her whole make-up.

  Only, that was how he had loved her. And it seemed that was how he loved her still.

  At least he could not have the faintest idea how Leila herself felt. He could not possibly have behaved as he had this evening if he had guessed her feelings for him. She told herself that this was some comfort. And then rejected it bitterly because it was no comfort at all. She almost wanted him to know that she loved him. Wanted him to measure her own deep, enduring passion for him against Rosemary’s fickle fancy.

  But what was the good? People did not give or judge affection that way. He loved Rosemary, and that was the beginning and end of it.

  An hour ago she would not have believed that she could ever feel so wretched as this again. The future had seemed full of the loveliest possibilities. Now it was empty, and with no more hope in it than on the day when she had stood and admired Rosemary’s wedding-dress.

  Indeed, she had a horrible, cheated feeling of “This is where I came in.” All the vicissitudes, the hopes, the fears, the possibilities, of the last few weeks had suddenly narrowed down again to the same unbearable situation. Simon was going to marry Rosemary, and she herself was merely the likeable cousin who would be an onlooker.

  “I shouldn’t have relied so completely on Mrs. Morley’s judgment,” Leila thought bitterly. “She has hardly seen Simon during the last two weeks. How could she know where his affections really lay?”

  Only now, in the depths of her disillusionment and unhappiness, could she measure the heights to which her hopes had soared on that solitary journey home.

  It was a terrible night, during which she slept very little. Sometimes she blamed herself for having been an optimistic fool. Sometimes she pitied herself for having been the victim of the cruellest set of circumstances. But, towards morning, she just wearily dragooned herself into accepting the inevitable fact once more that life must go on, even if she felt like death.

  “Only it can’t go on with my seeing Simon day after day,” she told herself.

  That was the one unalterable decision which emerged from her miserable night of self-examination. It was quite impossible that she should go on working for Simon if he were married to Rosemary. Her only chance of regaining any sort of peace of mind was to make a clean break. She must accept the situation as it was, understand that it was now utterly impossible for her to change it, and try, somehow, to make some kind of life for herself elsewhere.

  It hurt unbearably even to think of any life which did not include some contact with Simon. But, with all the sanity which was left to her, Leila saw this was her only chance of a decent happiness one day.

  She took the utmost pains with her appearance that morning. Neither Rosemary nor Simon, later at the office, must have any reason to think that their decision had shattered everything for her. If it was the last effort she ever made, Leila was determined to be pleasant and cheerful and matter-of-fact about this business. And, somehow, she even managed to disguise most of the evidence of her broken night.

  At breakfast, Rosemary gave her an odd glance or two. But they were speculative, rather than observant, and Leila withstood them admirably. She wished now, with passionate intensity, that she had never been so weak and foolish as to confess her love for Simon to her cousin. But, since she had done so, all she could manage now was the determinedly pleasant and cheerful air of one who had conquered an infatuation and come to sensible terms with life once more.

  On the way to the office, with no one w
ho knew her to see how she looked, Leila could relax. She sat in the front seat of her bus, with her eyes closed and, she knew, a drained and defeated expression on her face. But as she neared her stop she gathered her strength and resolution together again, and the Leila who stepped off the bus and walked briskly up the steps to the office was a bright-faced, self-possessed girl to whom life apparently presented no insoluble problems.

  The most searching test of all, of course, was when she had to go into Simon’s office.

  At first, she had thought that she would refer to his renewed engagement to Rosemary—lightly and in a friendly and, if possible, congratulatory way. But, when it came to the point, she was quite unable to do so.

  He himself had not seen fit to tell her, and there was really no reason why she should take on herself the fearful task of introducing the subject. From what he had said the previous evening, he was evidently under the impression that Rosemary had already told her. The best way was to ignore the subject, to go on as normally as possible in her working relations with him—and to find another position with the least possible delay.

  Indeed, with little or no appetite for lunch, she devoted the midday break to visiting a nearby business agency and enquiring about alternative work.

  The businesslike woman who interviewed her flicked over some record cards, questioned Leila about her experience and qualifications, made some entries, and then told her there was nothing to suit her at the moment.

  Leila, who had been feeling, all the morning, that she could scarcely bear to work out a week’s notice at Barraclough & Morley’s, bit her lip to control her disappointment and an incredible impulse to weep.

  “Are you sure? I wouldn’t insist on the same conditions as I have at present. I would even be willing to consider a post outside London,” she said, mentally relinquishing, with a pang, her treasured flat.