by Sara Seale
“I’m not much of a bride, am I?” she said, trying to laugh. “I haven’t any glamor, I’m afraid.”
He looked at her thin pointed face with its delicate bone structure, the mobile mouth curving up in a tremulous smile while the tears still clung to her lashes, and was for a moment aware of quality, of an elusive delicacy which he might have fancied when he was younger.
“Well, not to say like some of these flashy dames on the pictures, but you ain’t bad, mind,” he said cautiously. “You got a sort of hungry look that some might go for. Dolled up a bit you wouldn’t be ’arf bad and I’m telling you straight.”
“Oh, Shorty!” she said again, and might even have kissed him if Dane hadn’t come down the steps from the house.
He was wearing the dark glasses he usually affected if he visited a town and Emily was glad that he could not see her. He settled back on the seat beside her, his hat tipped over his eyes, and they started on their wedding journey.
Dane spoke very little. Once he said: “Do I smell carnations?” and when she told him shyly that Shorty had given them to her, observed that he might have thought of that himself; and as the car turned out of the village past Torcroft, he asked Shorty if the house was still empty.
“Coming back next week, so I hear,” Shorty replied. “But the old lady won’t trouble us, sir. ’Ardly ever goes anywhere, so they say.”
“Yes, of course.”
“Is Mrs. Mortimer someone you want to avoid?” asked Emily, struck again by his apparent aversion to the reopening of Torcroft.
“In a sense, I suppose,” he answered reluctantly. “She’s rather an old vulgarian and used to be most persistent. When she finds out that I’ve inherited Pennyleat it’s possible that she might become a nuisance.”
“Oh, I see,” said Emily, wondering if Mrs. Mortimer was one of those embarrassing old women who plagued the life out of any available man. “Still, everyone knows round here that you won’t see people. She can hardly force her way in.”
“No, and I don’t suppose she would,” said Dane rather enigmatically.
They arrived at the Registrar’s Office fen minutes early and Emily found the wait in the chilly room adjoining the Registrar’s a little unnerving. The voices of another couple getting married could clearly be heard through the thin walls, and Dane sat with his blank stare fixed on a picture he could not see, as if he, too, had small liking for the experience.
The first couple were ushered out as Dane and Emily were summoned. They came out flushed and giggling and the bride walked straight into Dane.
“Excuse me!” she exclaimed, examining her enormous bouquet with annoyance. “Why don’t you look where you’re going?”
Emily saw Dane’s mouth tighten painfully. She put a hand under his elbow to guide him into the other room and felt him tremble.
“Don’t mind,” she whispered. “Don’t mind. They’ve all gone now.” The ceremony was soon over. It was all very impersonal, thought Emily unhappily. The Registrar gabbled his words as if anxious to be done as soon as possible and the two strange witnesses looked curiously at Dane and seemed surprised when Emily had to guide his hand to sign the register.
Soon they were outside again in the wet and cheerless street and Shorty standing at the door of the car gave Emily an encouraging wink. He drove them first to the offices of Dane’s lawyers, where Emily waited outside in the car. When Dane had finished his business there he told Emily she had better get herself some lunch. Later he had some matters to discuss with his old firm of research chemists who had their West Country branch in Plymouth. It would probably take some time, he said, so an afternoon at one of the cinemas seemed indicated.
“But what about you?” asked Emily, her heart sinking at the prospect of being left alone in a strange city for hours. “Won’t you be having lunch too?”
“I never eat in public places now if I can avoid it,” he replied. “Shorty will find me a sandwich somewhere. Here’s some money. You had better feed at the Grand as it’s close by, and meet us there at five o’clock sharp.”
Emily would have much preferred to have a sandwich too, but Dane seemed anxious to be rid of her, so she went to the hotel and ate a solitary luncheon, embarrassed by the waiter who, assessing her by her shabby clothes and air of uncertainty, paid her scant attention. Only the bright new wedding-ring on her finger reminded her that this should have been a day for rejoicing, a day to remember always.
She took herself to the nearest cinema because there was I nothing else to do, and wept quietly through most of the film.
III
Looking on her wedding day, Emily sometimes chided herself for inconsistency. What, she wondered, had she a right to expect? Their visit to the Registrar had, from Dane’s point of view, been simply a matter of expediency, one more appointment to add to the business of the day.
He had not left her alone afterwards from any sense of heartlessness, but because for him their marriage was incidental.
She was not, however, in this reasonable state of mind when they reached home soon after six o’clock. Dane seemed tired and spoke very little as Shorty drove them through the darkness, and Emily sat, turning her wedding ring round and round on her finger, staring out at the rain which still swept across the country.
The lights were on in the hall at Pennyleat and Bella came bounding out of Dane’s study, twisting her elegant tawny body into contortions of rapture as she fawned on her master. He stopped to make a fuss of her and Emily, watching his face, thought, with a pang: “He’s fonder of his dog than he is of me.”
“She’s missed you,” she said, trying to stroke the bitch, but Bella would have none of her and had eyes only for Dane.
“She’s unused to being left for so long. I seldom go anywhere without her,” Dane said, and Emily observed in a voice unlike her own that in that case it was a pity Bella had not accompanied them to the Register Office.
Dane looked at her sharply, as if he could read the expression on her face, but he only said mildly:
“I scarcely think she would have been admitted.”
Mrs. Pride appeared suddenly from the kitchen regions. Emily saw that she wore her best black dress and the little apron she reserved for special occasions.
“May I offer my congratulations, sir—madam?” she said in an expressionless voice. She had always prided herself on saying the correct thing in the hearing of those who paid her good wages, but her hard eyes flickered over Emily with barely concealed contempt.
“I’ve moved Miss—Mrs. Merritt’s things as instructed,” she finished.
“But I am very comfortable where I was,” said Emily with surprise, and almost heard the woman sniff.
“If you would care to come up I will show you your new room,” she said.
“I don’t think there’s any need to be quite so formal, Mrs. Pride. It will be the room next to mine, Emily—you know your way,” Dane observed, and Emily flew up the stairs, conscious that in Mrs. Pride’s eyes she had sunk still lower by reason of her gaucheness.
She had never had cause to enter Dane’s room but she knew where it was. The room next to it was large and rather Victorian, with massive furniture and a double bed with a high carved bedhead of cupids and fluttering scrolls.
A door obviously communicated with the room next door and the old-fashioned dressing-table had voluminous petticoats of starched muslin.
“Well! This evidently was once somebody’s bridal suite!” said Emily aloud, and began to laugh hysterically.
She found herself wishing that Alice was still in her little room along the passage. She would miss the child, and the future alone with Dane, in this isolated house, stretched alarmingly ahead.
She began to make herself ready for dinner. Her belongings had been arranged neatly in drawers and cupboards and Emily knew a sense of discomfort that all her poor possessions had been revealed so nakedly to Mrs. Pride who must have moved them. The shoes that needed resoling were ostentatiously placed apart
from the others, no doubt in rebuke, and the torn cover of her hot-water bottle had been taken off and replaced by another.
She went down to the library where someone had already switched on the lights so that she did not have to feel her way to a chair.
“Emily?” asked Dane, as he heard her close the door. “Good. There’s a champagne cocktail waiting for you. Shorty thought it would be more suitable than sherry on this occasion. I hope you like your new quarters.”
“The room seems very comfortable, thank you,” she replied. “I wonder what Mrs. Pride thinks.”
He frowned.
“Why should she think anything?”
“Well, my promotions have been so rapid. From the servants’ wing to the bridal suite in not much over three weeks. It was once a bridal suite, wasn’t it.”
“Very likely.”
“All those cupids and things! Why did you have me moved there?”
The lamplight fell across his face, and his high-bridged, dominant nose cast an arrogant shadow.
“Well, my dear girl, wasn’t it the obvious thing?” he demanded impatiently. “Mrs. Pride would have thought it still odder if you’d been left where you were.”
“Oh!”
“I shan’t trouble you because there’s a communicating door between us, I assure you, but I presume you wouldn’t object to coming in to me occasionally if I’m unable to find something? It will save Shorty a journey.”
“Of course not,” she said, feeling rebuffed by the slight astringency in his voice.
“Good. You sound a little unlike yourself this evening, Emily. I’m afraid you’ve had a dull day,” he said, and she began to laugh.
He glanced quickly in her direction, detecting the quality of her laughter and said sharply:
“Have you had your cocktail yet? No? Well, drink it up, it will do you good. What was so funny, anyway?”
She reached for the glass that stood waiting for her and took a generous swallow.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It only struck me as funny to be told I’d probably had a dull day because I’d gone out to get married.”
He reached for his own glass, sipping the champagne thoughtfully, and when he next spoke, his voice held a shade of doubt.
“I’m afraid I didn’t manage the day very well,” he said. “Tell me, Emily, are you regretting things already?”
The ready tears filled her eyes but she managed to keep her voice steady.
“No,” she said. “No, of course not, Dane. I suppose, to any girl, getting married must be an event, even—even if it means nothing.”
“And I’ve cheated you?”
“Because there wasn’t confetti and champagne and a wedding breakfast? I never expected it.”
“You’re very gallant, aren’t you? That wasn’t what I meant.”
“Whatever you meant,” she said gently, “I have no regrets. I can only hope you’ll have none either.”
He swallowed the rest of his drink at a draught and sat twirling the stem of the glass between his fingers.
“It’s too late for regrets for either of us,” he said a little harshly. “Personally I can only have gratitude and I hope you’ll remind me of that if I seem to take you for granted.”
The household soon settled back to normal, indeed, thought Emily, going about the familiar daily routine, except for the fact that she had changed her name, nothing had really altered. Mrs. Pride made it plain from the start that she expected the running of the house to be left in her hands as before, and Shorty, although he never entirely returned to his former hostility, had his difficult moments and small jealousies.
Only Mrs. Meeker marked any change, being torn between her natural interest in a wedding and indignation that such an event could happen under her nose without her knowledge. Emily had to endure endless blunt questions the first few mornings and share many surreptitious cups of tea before the topic was exhausted, but Mrs. Meeker was a kindly soul and always ready to intervene with Mrs. Pride, whom she disliked. Her unruffled West Country cheerfulness was more than welcome and she was someone with whom to laugh.
Emily worked with Dane most mornings, attending to his correspondence and accounts and, when he was in the mood for it, the more complicated compiling of his book. It was not easy then to remember that she was his wife as well as his secretary, and once she addressed him quite naturally by his surname and he began to laugh.
“You musn’t let me drive you too hard,” he said. “After all, I owe you something more than barking at you like a disgruntled employer.”
“You don’t bark,” she said, laughing with him. “But I do find it hard to remember sometimes. Mr. Merritt seems to come out more naturally than Dane.”
“That’s bad. It means you must still feel like an employee.”
“Isn’t that what you wanted?”
She asked the question in all innocence, but the amusement died out of his face.
“No,” he answered brusquely. “If I’ve made you feel I that then I’ve failed in what I set out to do. There can be friendship, I hope, in our relationship—friendship and equality. I’m not such an egocentric boor that I consider my wife no better than a paid servant.”
She closed the reference book in which she had been searching for a chemical combination he wanted and sat with it in her lap.
“You’ve never made me feel that, Dane,” she said gently. “It’s just that sometimes I forget I am your wife.”
“Yes—yes, I suppose so,” he said, and suddenly decided to abandon the morning’s work and take Bella for a walk.
Emily had learnt not to ask to accompany him on these occasions, but this time he made the request himself. As she walked beside him he put a hand under her elbow and felt the light buoyancy of her movements.
“You’re too young,” he said abruptly. “You need fun, young companions. Who can tell you when you look pretty and appreciate a new frock or hair-style.”
“I’m not pretty, and I’ve never had much fun,” she said.
“Well, fun is what you make it, I suppose, but as for looks—well, you remember what Alice said the first time she saw you.”
“Children aren’t to be relied on. They have queer, unconventional ideas about beauty,” she said.
“On the contrary,” he retorted, “children frequently recognize the truth. Besides, there’s nothing conventional about beauty.”
She was silent. Let him see her through Alice’s eyes, she thought humbly; it was strange that the first time she should be made aware of a beauty she did not possess was through a man who did not care for her.
After that morning he would take the trouble to enquire how she would like to spend the rest of the day. Once he suggested that they should take the car and make an expedition round Dartmoor so that she might get to know the famous beauty spots, but this, as Shorty had foretold, was hardly a success. Emily had not driven Dane in the car yet and, already nervous, she committed every fault from crashing her gears to stalling her engine.
He sat beside her in a silence which grew grimmer with every mile. When they reached the group of tors which could be seen from the windows of Pennyleat, he ordered her to stop.
“Where are we?” he asked, and she replied nervously that the last signpost had read Tavistock one way and Princeton the other.
“Turn back and go home,” he said, adding unkindly: “I suppose you can reverse?”
She turned the car with difficulty, almost in tears, and drove back the way they had come. When they reached the house he told her to leave the car outside and let Shorty put it away. The little cockney came out of the garage in time to hear this last remark and grinned complacently.
“Couldn’t get on without me, after all, could you, sir?” he said cockily, then catching sight of Emily’s dejected face, added: “Still and all, Miss Moon—I mean Mrs. Merritt—ain’t had much practice with motors, and this ’ere car’s tricky for a lady, see?”
“I daresay,” retorted Dane, feeling
for the handle of the door. “Then the less she drives it the better for all concerned.”
Shorty shrugged and took Emily’s place behind the wheel.
“I’ll take you out on the quiet and give you a few ‘ints-like, see?” he told her in a hoarse whisper. “It’s worse for ’im on account of being blind, you understand. Likely as not imagining h’accidents ’arf the time.”
Dear Shorty, thought Emily gratefully, following Dane into the house; he would, it appeared, always stand by her in a crisis.
Dane apologized later for his churlishness. It was probably difficult for her to understand what torture the drive had been for him, he told her.
“Apart from the fact that you appeared to me maltreating a first-class engine, it’s this damned helplessness of mine that got me down in the end. I could do nothing to help you if you got yourself into trouble. But I’m sorry—I probably only made you nervous.”
“Yes, you did,” she admitted. “Don’t bother, Dane, I understood. I’m probably better at typing.”
She had learnt most of the small things that could irritate him now; a familiar object out of place, a clumsy action of his own, the unexpected presence of someone he had not known was in the room. Above all she had learnt not to help him unless particularly asked, and this was the hardest lesson of all.
But he would sometimes call her into his room at night or the early hours of the morning to hunt for something which had been mislaid, and then she would laugh and tease him when she found the missing article until he finally lost any embarrassment he may have felt and sometimes summoned her aid in finding some object she began to suspect he had deliberately hidden.
“I like having you next door,” he told her on one occasion. “You’re young and fresh and I can hear you cleaning your teeth in the morning.”
“Oh, Dane, you can’t! The walls are much too thick,” she exclaimed, her color rising.
“Well, perhaps they are,” he laughed, pinching her cheek. “I believe you’re blushing again. Is it on account of the sounds that might be heard through the wall, or the sight of a half-dressed man that outrages your maidenly sensibilities?”
