“Aunt Hortensia—what are we to do?”
Miss Carew was engaged in ticking off names on a long, neat list. Every time she had to look up she lost her place and was obliged to go back to the beginning again. As the list had already been checked at least a dozen times, this did not really matter, but every time it happened she became a little crosser. Weddings always made her cross, and Rose Anne’s wedding had already filled the house with people, upset its well ordered routine, and turned two capable, well trained maids into giggling chatterboxes. Goodness knew how long it would take to get settled down again, and she couldn’t go away and shut herself up in the study with the Times like James. She looked up with a frown and a jerk of the head.
“Go and tell Rose Anne. It’s her business, I suppose.”
Elfreda hesitated.
“Oliver’s only just come. They’re in the garden.”
Miss Hortensia coloured sharply.
“Good gracious—isn’t he going to have her for the rest of his life? Go and tell her at once! And she must make her own arrangements. I can’t do everything.”
Elfreda ran out of the room—quickly, because she didn’t want to have a row right in the middle of Rose Anne’s wedding and she felt one coming on. How Rose Anne had contrived to live all those years with Aunt Hortensia she simply couldn’t imagine. Uncle James wasn’t too bad, but Aunt Hortensia was a menace.
She opened the garden door and stepped out. It was going to be fine for the wedding all right—bright sun, cold air, a nip of frost tonight perhaps, and a lovely October day tomorrow for Oliver and Rose Anne.
She stood looking down the garden, a plump girl with a lot of fair hair. She had good grey eyes but rather light lashes. Her thick fair eyebrows rose to a peak in the middle and gave her rather a surprised look. She would have been prettier if she had weighed less. She had a soft heart and a sweet tooth. She adored Rose Anne, who was twenty-two to her nineteen. She didn’t want to break in on her and Oliver. She stood there hesitating and thinking about the wedding. Mary Leigh, the other bridesmaid, was dark, and they were going to wear stiff dresses of lilac and white shot taffeta with flat wreaths of pink and mauve flowers like highly sophisticated daisies, and they were to carry sprays of Michaelmas daisies and pink chrysanthemums. The wreaths were very becoming. Frederica was a beast. If they didn’t come, they might use some of the biggest Michaelmas daisies—pink and mauve ones, just single flowers nipped off and sewn on a narrow strip of net. They must be looked over for earwigs though. Grim to have an earwig in your hair at Rose Anne’s wedding.
She went down the narrow path between the apple trees. She knew just where they would be, in the sheltered sunny corner where a bit of old brick wall kept the wind off and you could look across at the dahlias, and the daisies, and the orange heleniums.
But Rose Anne and Oliver Loddon were looking at each other. Rose Anne saw a fair young man with lines of humour about his mouth and a little frown between his eyes, a quick frown which came, and went, and came again. The eyes told very little as a rule. Just now they were telling Rose Anne that he loved her. They were no-coloured eyes and could be secret. She saw this. She saw Oliver who had made love to her the third time they spoke together. And tomorrow he would be her husband.
Oliver saw Rose Anne, lovely and beloved, most gentle, most gracious—a loving heart, a gentle mind, a sweet intelligence—the turn of her head sheer grace, the texture of her skin fine as the rose petal just drifted from the wall. He would have liked to set it against her cheek, rose against rose, but he refrained, because any movement, any word, must break the enchantment of the hour. He looked at her, and wondered whether he could love her more, whether the years which steadied and deepened love would rob him of this quivering delight in her beauty, her perfection—the sun on her chestnut hair and the lovely shades in it, grey-blue eyes, very dark, very deep, the same thick lashes that Elfreda had, but dark instead of light, and in place of surprised fair brows a delicate arch much darker than her hair. He saw these things, and the way she had of smiling without seeming to move her lips, and the little ripple which saved her nose from being merely straight.
Elfreda came round the last apple tree, and thought, “She’s lovely. He’s awfully in love with her. Lucky them!”
They both moved. Oliver frowned, and then smiled quickly, because he was in a smiling mood, and life was good and he liked Elfreda. “Rose Anne—” Elfreda thought—“she was in a dream—I’ve waked her—I wish I hadn’t. Why couldn’t Aunt Hortensia leave them alone?” She said in her pretty, fresh voice,
“I didn’t want to come—Aunt Hortensia made me. I do hate her, don’t you? But the wreaths haven’t come, and she said I was to tell you. And Frederica swears she sent them off before ten yesterday, and of course she couldn’t have, or else they’ve got lost on the way. And don’t you think we could do something with Michaelmas daisies instead?”
“I expect we could,” said Rose Anne. Her voice was gentle and a little aloof.
Oliver laughed.
“What do you want to do with them?”
He was the first person who had taken the least interest. Elfreda’s heart warmed to him.
“Well, I thought we might take some of the big ones, just the single flowers—October Dawn, and Lil Fardell, and Queen Mary—and put them on a strip of net and wind them in and out of our hair, only the snag is that Mary simply can’t wear real flowers. She says they just look at her once and die. That’s why we were having the wreaths from Frederica.”
“Flowers die on flirts, don’t they?” said Oliver. “I shall look forward to Mary.”
Elfreda giggled.
“Oh, but she isn’t. That’s the comic part—she couldn’t flirt to save her life—doesn’t know how to. Do you like flirts?”
“In reason,” said Oliver Loddon.
“Rose Anne can’t flirt,” said Elfreda in a teasing voice.
“She doesn’t want you to marry me under false pretences,” said Rose Anne.
“Rose Anne doesn’t need to flirt,” said Oliver. “She just looks, and we fall down flat—at least that’s what happened to me.”
Rose Anne got up: She was smiling. She didn’t say anything. Her lashes came down and hid her eyes. She moved away from them, going down the border, not picking among the flowers, but looking at them and touching one here and there. All at once she looked back over her shoulder and spoke,
“Did anyone ring up—for me?”
CHAPTER II
ELFREDA SAID, “NO.”
Rose Anne went on down the border as far as the tall pink dahlias. She stood looking at them for a moment, or looking past them, and then turned and came back again walking slowly, her eyes downcast and just the hint of a smile about her lips. Afterwards, when every word and look were being gathered up and put under the microscope, Elfreda was questioned and cross-questioned as to just what Rose Anne had said, and just how Rose Anne had looked.
“But what did she say, Elfreda? Tell us exactly what she said.”
And Elfreda in tears: “She said, ‘Was there a call for me?’”
“That is not what you said before.” This was Miss Hortensia.
“Well, that’s what she meant. She said, ‘Did anyone ring up for me?’”
“You should be accurate. It might be very important. Are you sure that that is what she said?”
In the midst of her misery Elfreda was heartened by a flare of rage. She stamped an angry foot.
“Yes, I am sure! She just looked over her shoulder and she said, ‘Did anyone ring up for me?’”
“And how did she look?” said Miss Hortensia.
Elfreda choked. They might badger, and harry, and confuse her until she didn’t know what anyone had said, but she would never forget how Rose Anne had looked, with the pale bright sun shining on her, and the pink, and lilac, and blue of the Michaelmas daisies, and t
he very bright pink of the dahlias. She choked and ran out of the room, and presently they brought her back and asked her the same questions all over again, and a lot more besides.
But all this was not yet. This was the moment when Rose Anne was coming towards them and the sun was bright on her, and Oliver’s love was bright on her. She walked in this double brightness, and it dazzled Elfreda a little and made her want to cry. She ran back to the house, and was scolded because, after all, nothing had been settled about the wreaths. The scolding took place in the dining-room where Miss Hortensia was putting out the best glass. Right in the middle of it the telephone bell rang. The telephone lived in the schoolroom, which had once been Rose Anne’s nursery.
The sound of the bell was most welcome. Elfreda had just been going to lose her temper, and it’s no good losing your temper—not with aunts anyway. Thank goodness no one could expect you to stay and be scolded with the telephone ringing its head off. She bounded joyfully out of the room, slammed the schoolroom door behind her, and took up the receiver. It might be news of the wreaths—
A man’s voice said, “Is that Miss Carew?”
There were endless questions afterwards as to his voice. Elfreda could only say and stick to it that it was a man’s voice. It made no more impression on her than that, because her mind was full of Rose Anne, and the wreaths, and Aunt Hortensia being so disagreeable. The voice might have been young or it might have been middle-aged, it might have been rich or it might have been poor, it might have had ginger eyelashes or a bald patch on the top of its head, or it might have been like Gary Cooper. As far as she was concerned it was just a man’s voice, and it said, “Is that Miss Carew?”
“Miss Hortensia Carew, or Miss Rose Anne Carew?” said Elfreda briskly. She wasn’t going to drag Rose Anne in from the garden if she could help it.
“Miss Rose Carew—”
Elfreda was quite sure he said Rose and not Rose Anne, because that was how she knew that he couldn’t be a friend. Rose Anne always had her two names from everyone who knew her, so a person who said Miss Rose Carew must be a stranger. And that was the first hint of the strangeness that was going to break in upon them—just a man’s voice on the telephone asking for Miss Rose Carew.
Elfreda dealt firmly with him.
“She’s engaged. What is it? I can take a message.”
The voice said, “I’m afraid you can’t.” And then, “It doesn’t matter—I can ring again,” and right on the top of that the click of the receiver.
Elfreda hung up at her end. She meant to tell Rose Anne at tea, but there was an influx of cousins up from Devonshire for the wedding, Carews and Leighs—Madeline and Robert Carew, and Mary Leigh, who was the other bridesmaid and Madeline’s sister, and Hugo Ross,* who wasn’t a cousin but was married to Loveday Leigh, who was somewhere between a fourth and fifth cousin of Rose Anne’s and a second cousin twice removed of Madeline’s and Mary’s. They were all staying at the Angel. So was Oliver Loddon, and there was a great deal of talk about how they had all been fitted in, and how pleased and excited the Garstnets were, and how comfortable Mrs Garstnet made you, and how absolutely thrilled she was about the wedding.
“She’s a Devonshire woman, you know, and she was Rose Anne’s nurse. She married Mr Garstnet when his first wife died about ten years ago.” This was Elfreda explaining to Hugo Ross, who said, “It all sounds very j-jolly.”
Miss Hortensia stopped in the middle of pouring out a cup of tea for Loveday.
“I was thankful when she left. She had no sense of discipline whatever. She allowed Rose Anne to do anything she liked.”
“Now I thought her a very comfortable woman,” said James Carew. “I don’t think you’ve given me any sugar, Hortensia.”
“It’s extremely bad for you, James—Elfreda, pass your uncle the sugar—Mrs Garstnet may have been what you call comfortable, but I can only repeat that I was thankful when she left.”
“I cried myself sick though she was only going as far as the Angel,” said Rose Anne.
“It’s a pity the child is so delicate,” said James Carew, stirring his tea. “Poor little Florrie.”
Miss Hortensia sniffed.
“Ruined by indulgence! Just exactly what I always complained of here. Florrie wants treating with firmness. She’s a naughty spoilt child, and those crying fits of hers are nothing but temper. She should be whipped for them instead of being cossetted and encouraged. No, James, I know you don’t agree with me, but that is my opinion, and as for allowing Rose Anne to be at the Garstnets’ beck and call every time Florrie has a tantrum, I consider it the height of folly. Anyhow they’ll have to do without her after tomorrow, so perhaps they’ll try a little discipline for a change.”
Rose Anne coloured up. She was very fond of Florrie Garstnet, and it troubled her to think of the little creature crying for her when she was far away. She said in a low voice to Madeline,
“She had some sort of fright. No one knows quite what it was, but it started these crying fits. They send for me because she seems to think she’s safe when I’m there—I don’t know why. It’s dreadful to see a child so frightened, but they hope she’ll grow out of it. She is much better.”
“She wants a good sound whipping,” said Miss Hortensia in her small acid voice. “And as for those two stepsisters of hers, if they had been properly corrected when they were children they wouldn’t have grown up the way they have.”
Mr Carew looked up with a frown.
“Really, Hortensia—that’s a little drastic. Fanny and Mabel—”
Miss Hortensia broke in scornfully.
“Fanny and Mabel can always get round a man—you don’t have to tell me that, James! Red-haired flirts both of them! I’m sure I was thankful when Fanny married, though I was sorry for the young man. And if there wasn’t something odd about the whole thing, why wasn’t she married here, and why haven’t they been back to stay?”
“Beast!” said Elfreda to herself. “She’s just doing it out of spite because she knows Rose Anne is fond of Fanny, and that Fanny simply adores Rose Anne. She can’t bear people who adore Rose Anne.”
Rose Anne had coloured deeply. She said,
“It’s not very long, Aunt Hortensia—it’s only a year.”
Miss Hortensia laughed tartly.
“You see what you have to expect, James. Rose Anne will be letting a year or two go by before she thinks of paying you a visit.”
Elfreda forgot all about the telephone call. There was going to be a big family dinner—not only the cousins who had dropped in to tea but an uncle who had gone for a walk, two aunts who were resting, and a grandmother, Mary and Madeline’s, who had absolutely refused to stay quietly at home in Torquay though everyone except herself was quite sure that the wedding festivities would be too much for her. She replied to all and sundry that she had been at dear Rosabel’s wedding, and that she meant to be at Rose Anne’s if she had to walk every step of the way, and she meant to be at the dinner too in her new black velvet and her best old lace, and the diamonds which she had left to Madeline and Mary in her will but had no intention of parting with as long as she could wear them herself. And for the wedding she had a puce taffeta, and a sealskin cape, and a most fashionable hat with a purple ostrich feather shading into one of the discreeter pinks. Old Mrs Leigh had been a beauty, and she could still carry fine clothes with an air. She too was resting at the Angel.
Presently the cousins melted away. Oliver got out his car and went off to Malling to meet his best man. Rose Anne went up to her room. Elfreda ran Aunt Hortensia’s errands, thought for the hundredth time how much she disliked her, and was finally told to go away and make herself tidy, a most irritating injunction.
The Vicarage was a long, straggling house with a good deal of passage on either side of which rooms seemed to occur more or less fortuitously. The schoolroom was on the left just before you came to the
back stair. The door was not quite shut, and there was a light in the room and someone talking. Elfreda pushed the door a little wider and looked round it.
It was Rose Anne who was talking. She had her back to Elfreda, and she was speaking into the telephone. She said, “I don’t see how I can—it’s too late.” And then she looked round and saw Elfreda.
“Oh, Rose Anne—I thought you were resting.”
Rose Anne put her hand over the mouthpiece of the receiver.
“I won’t be a moment. Shut the door like an angel.”
Elfreda stepped back into the passage and shut the door, but before she could move away she heard Rose Anne say, “I oughtn’t to.” And then she thought she heard a “but.” She wasn’t sure. She never could be sure.
There were two strokes from the hall clock as she ran upstairs. That was half past six. Dinner was at half past seven. A whole hour to dress in, a whole hour away from Aunt Hortensia. She had a very pretty new frock, pale blue but so beautifully cut that it made her look quite slim, and she was going to do her hair the new way with curls all round the front. It took simply ages, and when it was done she wasn’t quite sure whether she liked it. She went along to show it to Rose Anne, but Rose Anne wasn’t in her room. Glory—it must be later than she thought, and brides may be late, but bridesmaids definitely not. She heard the bustle and flutter of arriving aunts, and ran down all in a hurry, because old Aunt Marian Leigh would be most frightfully insulted if everyone wasn’t there to meet her.
She was only just in time. The black velvet and point lace were emerging from a tremendous fur coat. Aunt Marian was declining to be led upstairs to a bedroom. She kissed Elfreda, made her usual remark about its being a pity she took after the Moores, and then turned to snub Miss Hortensia, who was urging her to come into the drawing-room out of this terrible draught.
“My dear Hortensia, if I thought as much about draughts as you do, I should probably be an invalid by now. Fresh air never hurt anyone, and I am thankful to say—”
She passed into the drawing-room, and Elfreda greeted her daughters—Aunt Agnes, weather-beaten and mannish, with a stiff crop of iron-grey hair and a black satin dress which had cost a good deal some years ago when she was slimmer; and Aunt Maud, very thin and droopy in pale blue lace, with the sort of hair that will neither stay up nor lie down. They were both kind and full of interest in the wedding, Aunt Agnes practical and hearty, Aunt Maud rather sentimental.
Walk with Care Page 27
