by Sara Seale
“It’s always embarrassing to be discussed in public,” she said briskly. “Now, Dane, tell me your news since last we met.”
Emily listened to their talk, while she poured out the tea and attended to their wants. She thought Dane seemed unusually forthcoming, as if this link with the past, in the shape of Louisa Pink, released some inhibition in him. They spoke of names and places of which Emily had never heard, of Dane’s past work and the work that was still left for him to do; they spoke of Alice and his possible plans for her future, and they discussed the problem of the day, comparing them with those of yesterday. Vanessa’s name was never mentioned and Emily wondered if Miss Pink had known her.
When tea was finished, Emily left them, feeling herself in the way. She called Bella, to let her out for a run, and as the door closed behind them, Louisa Pink observed: “That’s a nice child. Are you making her happy, Dane?”
He filled a pipe, and sat back, puffing at it contentedly. “I hope so,” he said. “How did you hit on the right person so unerringly, Louisa?”
“I don’t know that I have,” she retorted. “I’m not sure Emily isn’t too self-effacing for you.”
“Meaning just what?”
“Well, you might be a little alarming to a young girl pitch-forked suddenly into such a strange situation.”
“That was your responsibility,” he said. “I own I hadn’t bargained for someone quite so young and inexperienced.”
“Yet you married her—and pretty quickly, too.”
“Perhaps I took advantage. It was rather like taking a little skinny cat into one’s home and doing one’s best.”
“Not the sort of motives I would have imputed to you,” she remarked dryly. “You’re not regretting things, I hope?”
“Not on my own account, but—Emily causes me uneasiness, sometimes. I feel she doesn’t quite realize what she’s taken on.”
“I think she realizes very well. It’s not a bad exchange, you know, from her point of view—a home and security in return for loyalty and consideration.”
“Would you have thought the same at that age?”
“Oh, me!” Louisa stretched comfortably. “I was always a careerist. I never wanted that sort of security, but Emily’s different.”
“I wonder why you picked her.”
“Well,” she said humorously, “the two candidates I first selected were hardly successful, were they? I thought I’d better try someone less sophisticated, someone with a more proper appreciation for benefits conferred, besides—she’d been on my books too long.”
He smiled.
“You’re scarcely as inconsequent as that,” he said. “On the face of it, Miss Emily Moon, unsuccessful in love and self-preservation, was an odd choice.”
“I had a hunch,” she replied doggedly. “Besides, I wanted to do the girl a good turn, as well as you.”
“Yet you didn’t tell her the main reason for. her employment here?”
She looked a little ashamed.
“At the last I baulked,” she admitted. “I thought I might scare her off—and, in any case, you were the right person to do your own courting.”
He laughed a shade grimly.
“What an old-fashioned word to apply to such a prosaic arrangement! Have you never thought, Louisa, that you might have a lot to answer for?”
For a moment she looked angry.
“Well!” she exclaimed indignantly. “I like that! You appealed to me because of an old friendship, when I told you at the time that what you needed was a matrimonial agency, and now you want to reproach me. You both had your month’s trial and presumably went into things with your eyes open. If anyone has anything to answer for, it’s you, my dear.”
“All right, all right, I wasn’t reproaching you,” he said. “I believe you’re really a sentimentalist under that hard-boiled exterior, Louisa. Perhaps you had thoughts of playing Cupid.”
She looked at him for a long, silent moment before she replied. She had argued with him in the carefree days of his youth, in the first bitter weeks after his accident, in the moment of decision to shut himself away in his newfound inheritance and let the world go by. She had had no patience with this last, but now, she thought, he had conquered the handicap of his body if not of his mind.
“You owe something to life, Dane,” she said sternly. “Old Mr. Carey’s gift came at the right time for you, but that time is now passed. You cannot shut yourself away from the world for ever. When I sent you Emily I thought—I hoped—”
“You hoped I might be tempted back to normality, is that it?”
“I had, perhaps, a false belief in her gifts for loving and giving. I’m not so foolish, at my age, to try and play Cupid, as you put it.”
He smiled across at her with affectionate understanding. “Friday’s child ...” he murmured softly. “Yes, you didn’t do a bad job, Louisa. As you so rightly say, I went into this thing with my eyes open, but did Emily?”
“One presumes so. She’s not a child.”
“She was still a little raw, I think, from that old love affair. I caught her on the rebound, as they say.”
“Stuff and nonsense!” said Louisa crossly. “A love affair at that age means less than nothing. The young man was no good to her, anyway.”
“You know him?”
“I know of him. She took him too seriously, that’s all.”
“She told me she ran after him.”
“Very likely. It’s the sort of obvious mistake someone like Emily would make! Well, Dane, at least you can give her back her self-esteem. Who knows, she may do the same for you, one day.”
“Are you referring to Vanessa?” he asked calmly, and she looked annoyed.
“I had no desire, nor intention to refer to Vanessa,” she said tartly. “I had concluded that you had had the good sense to get over that by now.”
“Life has some queer twists,” he said softly. “She’s come back, you know.”
“Yes, I know. Does it make any difference?”
He smiled with faint irony.
“Vanessa must always make a difference—one way or another, mustn’t she?” he said cryptically, and he frowned with impatience.
“Dane—” she began, but Emily had come back into the room.
“Would you like to come upstairs?” she asked Miss Pink politely, and stood looking a little uncertainly from one to the other of them.
Bella ran to her master and lay down beside him on guard and Dane said, one hand idly pulling at the bitch’s ears:
“Yes, take Louisa up, my dear. We were approaching a quarrel.”
“Were you really—approaching a quarrel, I mean?” Emily asked as they went up the stairs together.
“No, of course not,” said Miss Pink impatiently. “Dane and I have always indulged in plain speaking. I’m a great deal older than he is, you know.”
“You—you won’t upset him, will you?” Emily ventured diffidently, opening the door of the prepared guest-room.
Louisa Pink tossed her belongings carelessly on to the bed and surveyed the old-fashioned room with amused eyes.
“Bless you, child, it takes more than a middle-aged spinster to upset Dane. What an incredible house! Brass cans of hot water in the basin and brass knobs on the bed! Has Dane altered nothing since Ben Carey’s time?”
“I don’t think so,” said Emily. “The house wasn’t strange to him if nothing was changed, you see. He can find his way about just as he used to as a boy.”
Miss Pink took Emily’s face between her hands.
“You’ve grown quite pretty, Emily,” she said. “Someone’s made something of your hair at last, and if you still have a slightly lost look, it’s becoming. Are you happy?”
For a moment the long lashes rented in two curving crescents on Emily’s cheek, as if to hide her thoughts.
“I think so,” she replied gravely. “I—I’m very lucky, of course. Will you come down to the library when you’ve unpacked, Miss Pink? We don’t change in
the evenings.”
III
It was a week-end of wind and squalls. Emily was disappointed that the weather should keep them indoors, but Louisa said, stretching her well-shod feet comfortably to the blaze of a wood fire:
“Don’t worry about me, my dear. I’m not a country girl, and I welcomed any excuse to stay by a good fire. Were you wanting to show me the beauties of the countryside?”
“Well, the garden is nice,” said Emily apologetically. “Spring is nearly here and—well, perhaps you’re not interested in such things?”
“Not a bit,” said Louisa bluntly. “I like my comfort and I like to talk.”
It was, indeed, Emily discovered, impossible to stop her talking. Most of the week-end they sat over the library fire and Louisa regaled them with London gossip, amusing anecdotes of her employment bureau, and sudden plunges into their own affairs. Emily began to feel exhausted but Dane was amused, with die easy tolerance of old acquaintance, and Emily was surprised to find him so ready with repartee.
“It’s done him good having you here,” she said to Miss Pink as they toasted their toes before the library fire on the last afternoon.
“Well, my dear, I bring back old memories without any pain attached,” Louisa replied comfortably. “You will have gathered by now that Dane and I have known one another a long time. However one shuts oneself away, the past is always with us.”
“The past?”
“I meant Dane’s sort of past—when he was enthusiastic about his job, the sort of contracts he achieved—when he had his sight. He was very brilliant, you know.”
“And you had a part in it?”
“Only the sort of part a mother might have played—or an elder sister, perhaps. I was a background for him. He could come to my flat and relax and tell me all the wonderful plans he had for the future.”
“The accident must have been a terrible blow,” Emily said softly. “All those plans—all that enthusiasm. ... It doesn’t seem possible now, does it?”
“Not to you, perhaps, but—” Louisa frowned, puffing away at her cigarette with thoughtful energy. “Ben Carey’s unexpected legacy seemed a godsend at the time,” she said, then: “But I’m not sure—if he’d had to stand on his own feet—well, who’s to know, really?”
“Did you ever know a Miss Vanessa Larne?” asked Emily suddenly.
Miss Pink glanced at her uneasily.
“Oh, yes,” she said. “I gather she’s come back into your lives.”
“Dane told you?”
“No. She came to see me the other day. As usual, Vanessa got information out of me that I wasn’t really prepared to give.”
“Information?”
“How Dane had come to marry you, and so on.”
“But I think she knew that I came here as his secretary, and someone to look after Alice.”
Louisa looked uncomfortable.
“Yes, of course, but she put two and two together, and made it five. Have a care with Vanessa, Emily—she can be dangerous, and Dane was very much in love with her at one time. She, rather more than his accident, has made him what he is today.”
“Yes,” said Emily, shielding her face from the hidden warmth of the fire. . “I shouldn’t have married him, really.”
“Because you think Vanessa still wants him?” Louisa’s cheeks were unbecomingly flushed, and she leaned forward urgently in her chair. “Listen, Emily, if Vanessa hadn’t learned too late about that inheritance of Dane’s, she wouldn’t be back now. She was in love with him, five years ago, but if he had had money at the time of the accident, I don’t think she would have left him.”
“But that’s horrible!” Emily exclaimed.
“Yes,” said Louisa grimly. “It was horrible. Don’t let her start things all over again. Don’t let her, Emily.”
“How can I stop her?” asked Emily sadly. “She’s so lovely and I—well, you know why Dane married me.”
Miss Pink studied the pale, delicate face in the firelight and saw there a different strain to the strain of anxiety for the immediate future, to which she was used.
“I think you’re in love with Dane,” she said softly, and Emily’s eyes, clear and wide with their heavy, unblinking lashes, met hers for a moment
“I should have foreseen this,” she said angrily. “Perhaps, in a sense, I did. It was my gamble, my trump card.”
“You, surely, couldn’t have imagined it would have made any difference to him,” Emily said gently.
“Why not? Isn’t that what he needs—someone to love him as he is—not as he was?”
“Perhaps, but I can’t compete with the past.”
“Nonsense!” Louisa exclaimed. “The past is false. If Dane were to lose his money, you would hear no more of Vanessa Larne. Emily, I think I should tell you. When Vanessa came to see me the other day, I—I talked too much. I hinted at that old affair of yours with Tim Lonnegan— perhaps to justify my own part in the proceedings.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Emily. “That was all over long ago. It was, I expect as you’ve always told me, Miss Pink, just calf-love.”
“But the point is, Vanessa knows him.”
“Well, how can that matter now?”
“I don’t know, but—oh, for heaven’s sake, child, grow up! In Vanessa Larne, you’re dealing out of your class. If you want to keep Dane, fight for him—don’t give the enemy a loophole.”
The wind whistled round the house, a lonely, solitary sound. Emily cocked her head to listen, struck by a new desolation.
“You can’t fight what isn’t there,” she said forlornly. “You can’t keep what has never been yours. A marriage like mine has bounds and limits. When you are your husband’s guest and no more, your hands are tied, aren’t they?”
Louisa threw her cigarette end into the fire.
“Lord, why was I ever party to this?” she exclaimed.
“Party to what?” Dane’s voice asked with interest from the door. As usual, Emily had not heard him coming, and she started guiltily as he came into the room and felt his way to a chair.
“Nothing that concerns you,” Louisa said brusquely. “You shouldn’t go creeping about like that, Dane, it’s unnerving.”
“I’m sorry,” he said mildly. “The wind, no doubt, drowned the sound of my footsteps. Is Emily blushing?”
“Why, for heaven’s sake, should the poor child be blushing?” demanded Louisa, watching with exasperation the color staining Emily’s cheeks.
“I don’t know, but I think she suffers that way. Has Louisa been embarrassing you, Emily?” He felt for, his pipe and his matches. Bella, who had followed him into the room, laid her head on his knee and gazed up at him with soulful eyes.
“Not at all,” said Emily with admirable composure. “I’ll go and see about tea.”
“Such an easy let out for the mistress of the house, I always think,” observed Dane, grinning in Louisa’s direction as Emily closed the door.
“Dane, you can be impossible!” Louisa scolded. “Your Emily has certain admirable qualities which I hadn’t appreciated when I sent her to you.”
“Indeed? Well, I’m duly grateful to you, Louisa.”
“I should hope so! You cut a most romantic figure incidentally, with your watch-dog gazing up at you with drooling adoration.”
“How cross you sound, Louisa,” said Dane, pushing Bella away. “Have you and Emily not been getting on?”
“On the contrary,” said Miss Pink crisply. “We have been getting on very well, though she, like you, needs a little sense knocked into her. Is she to play Man Friday to your Crusoe for ever?” She saw his face close suddenly into the familiar rather weary mask and added hastily: “I’m not trespassing, my dear. You needn’t adopt that shuttered look.”
“The blind are necessarily shuttered,” he said coldly, and she saw him suddenly with Emily’s eyes.
Miss Pink left on Tuesday morning and Dane surprised Emily by electing to come into Plymouth with them.
“We’ll have lunch at the Grand,” he said, as if it was the most ordinary occurrence in the world. He would not, however, come on to the platform to see Louisa off and they left him sitting in the car.
“I hope it hasn’t been dull for you,” Emily said with anxious politeness, and Miss Pink’s worldly-wise eyes were a little critical.
“Not dull, dear child, instructive,” she said. “You’ve dressed yourself with great care for your lunch date with your blind husband. It’s nice to be able to buy pretty things, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Emily, “but Vanessa chose all my clothes.”
Louisa frowned.
“Beware the Greeks, Emily,” she said, but Emily smiled her curving smile of great trust and innocence.
“Oh, but the gifts weren’t hers,” she said gently. “Dane paid.”
“Naturally Dane paid. Really, Emily, you can be very irritating sometimes!”
“I’m sorry. Perhaps you read too much into things.”
“Perhaps I do. Well, my dear, run up to town and see me if you ever feel inclined, or want advice. My flat is at your disposal just as it’s always been at Dane’s.”
“Thank you,” said Emily shyly. “I hope you’ll come and stay with us again.”
She went back to Dane and the waiting car feeling absurdly bereft. Miss Pink, for all the awe she could still inspire, had been a bulwark, bridging the gaps in that silent house, drawing Dane from his customary shell.
“Where would you like to go now?” she asked him a little helplessly. It was still too early for luncheon and she knew he disliked walking in the streets without his dog.
“I want to buy you a present,” he said unexpectedly. “What would you fancy?”
She was so taken aback that she could make no suggestions and presently he said a little impatiently:
“There’s a jeweller’s up on Mutley Plain—Skindles, I think the name is. Drive up there and be careful how you park.”
She was nervous in traffic when he was beside her, and the intricacies of the city streets, still unrelated after the bombings of ’41 confused her. She knew she was driving badly and she was obliged to park the car some way from the jeweller’s to which he wanted to go.
