Yours to Command

by Mary Burchell

  “Yes. She is an extraordinarily beautiful person, to look at,” he agreed. Then he gave her one or two last messages for Edward and Alistair, and they shook hands and parted.

  Not until she was in the train once more, returning to Fernhurst, did it strike Sydney as odd that he should permanently keep a photograph of someone he apparently so intensely disliked on the wall of his dressing-room. It was true, he said, that the photograph commemorated his first West End part, but one would have thought it might have been possible to have a scene in which Anne did not appear.

  Interesting, Sydney thought. But then the whole situation was interesting; a welcome antidote to the melancholy and frustration of her own affairs.

  As she came out of the station at her journey’s end, however, she immediately saw something which brought her thoughts back, with a shock, to her own concerns. A car was standing at the kerb, and Hugh, sitting at the wheel, was just about to start the engine.

  She tried to pretend not to have seen him, but he looked up at that moment and caught sight of her. She was not quite sure whether he accepted the inevitable, or definitely followed his own inclination, but he immediately leaned forward to open the door of the car.

  “Jump in,” he said almost peremptorily, “and I’ll give you a lift up to the School. I’ve just been seeing—someone off on the London train.”

  She supposed that must have been Marcia, and that the substitution of “someone” for Marcia’s name was in consideration for herself. Anyway, there was nothing to do but accept the offer gracefully, and a moment later she was sitting in the car beside Hugh.

  If she had known how dangerously sweet and nostalgic the experience would be, she would have found any sort of excuse to avoid it. Sitting there now, in the unavoidable intimacy of a smallish car, she was not only poignantly aware of him, but also of a hundred other sweet and remembered occasions. In order to break the curiously pregnant silence at any cost, she said, in what she felt was an unnaturally bright tone of voice, “I’ve been to town to see Lucas Manning in Yours to Command.”

  “Oh, yes? He’s rather good in it, isn’t he?” Hugh was studiously polite.

  “He’s quite wonderful in the part,” Sydney retorted, slightly nettled on Lucas Manning’s behalf, even though there were much more important matters to think about at the moment.

  “He always strikes me as rather conceited.” Hugh was obviously only making conversation. But, so far as Sydney in her present mood was concerned, it was unfortunate conversation.

  “He’s not in the least conceited,” she stated crisply.

  “No?” Hugh suddenly shot her an amused glance which reminded her so cruelly of the old days that she caught her breath. “Do you know him, then?”

  “S-slightly. He has two boys at the School, you know.”

  “Good lord! I didn’t even know he was married.”

  “He isn’t. They’re his nephews. He’s their guardian.”

  “And so you feel you almost know him.” There was something faintly indulgent in Hugh’s voice, and in her present condition of hurt resentment she took it for mockery.

  “I do know him,” she said coldly. “I went to lunch with him, and to the show as his guest.”

  “Is that so? Then you must certainly be friends,” Hugh replied pleasantly, and she immediately wondered if she had sounded crude and boastful.

  They drove the rest of the short journey in silence. But, as they turned in at the gates of Fernhurst, he said, “Sydney, on my first evening here, you said something about feeling that you—ought to leave. I hope you won’t think any more about doing so. The Bursar was telling me what a splendid influence you are, which doesn’t surprise me, and I’m sure you’re very well settled here. I shouldn’t like to think that you’ve made any—any unhappy decision on my behalf.”

  She was silent for a moment, touched by what he had said and wanting to answer with equal composure and generosity. But so strange a thing is human nature, and particularly human nature when it has been badly hurt, that all she could manage to say, and that rather coldly and stiffly, was, “I wasn’t thinking specially of you. Only the—the unpleasantness and embarrassment for us all.”

  “So far as Marcia and I are concerned—”

  “Did she tell you to say this?” enquired Sydney, with a fierceness that horrified herself.

  “No. Certainly not.”

  “But if you’re speaking for her too, you must have talked this over together.”

  He did not answer until they drew up in front of Park House. Then he spoke quietly and coolly, as the Head of Fernhurst and not at all as Hugh.

  “I have no wish to say or do anything that would make your position here awkward or unhappy. I merely wish you to know that any decision you make should be made solely from your own point of view,” he said.

  “Th-thank you,” was all Sydney could find to say in answer to that, for all the fight had gone out of her. Then she got out of the car and he drove away, without a backward glance.

  She had already dined on the train, so that the evening stretched clear before her. If she cared to go downstairs and join the Dingleys’ she would, she knew, be welcome, but she decided instead to have a quiet evening, reading by her own fireside.

  True, it was not so easy to find a book absorbing enough to take her thoughts off that unhappy ten minutes with Hugh, and, as she scanned her book shelves rather aimlessly, she was almost relieved to hear a slightly diffident knock on her sitting-room door.

  “Come in,” Sydney called, and the head boy came into the room, holding a roughly bandaged hand rather stiffly in front of him.

  “I’m sorry to bother you, Matron.” He gave her his boyish infectious smile. “But I’ve hacked a chunk out of my hand doing some carpentering. Do you think you could tie it up for me?”

  “Why, of course, Carstairs. Sit down and let me have a look at it,” Sydney said.

  It proved to be quite a deep cut and Sydney was some time attending to it, and bandaging it satisfactorily. While she did so, Carstairs relaxed in his chair and looked round the room with approval.

  “You’ve got a nice place here, Matron,” he said. “It really looks like someone’s home.”

  “Why, yes, I think so too.” Sydney agreed, busy with her bandaging. “Though I have a real home too, with three brothers and my father and a very nice step-mother.”

  “Have you?” Carstairs sounded interested. “It must be rather fun belonging to a big family.”

  Sydney thought for a moment how sadly it had complicated her own affairs. Then, remorse lending emphasis to her reply, she said, “Oh, it is!”

  “I’m more or less the only one at home,” Carstairs explained. “I have a sister, but she’s fourteen years older than I am, and she left home almost before I can remember.”

  “Did she?” Sydney said, with the most extraordinary feeling of watching pieces of jig-saw puzzle fall into place.

  She had finished the bandaging now, but for a moment she did not look up. With her head still bent, and her voice as natural-sounding as she could make it, she asked, “What was your sister called, Carstairs?” But she knew the answer before he gave it.

  “Anne, Matron. She’s lived in America for several years now. But I hope she may come home sometime this year.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  SYDNEY rose to her feet and regarded the first aid job she had done on young Carstairs’ hand.

  “I think that will be all right now,” she told him. “Try not to use it much tomorrow.”

  “Thanks awfully, Matron. That’s a lot better. Hardly hurts at all now.” And, giving her what Sister Matron had once described as his heart-breaker smile, off he went out of the room.

  Sydney looked after him.

  So that was it! He was Anne Carstairs’ much younger brother. No wonder she had thought the girl in the photograph with Lucas Manning looked familiar.

  How much, she wondered, did Lucas Manning know of the situation? When she had mentione
d young Carstairs, there had been no reaction at all. And, although Sydney judged that Lucas Manning was very well able to give any impression he chose, she thought, on the whole, that his appearance of ignorance was genuine. For why, after all, should he choose for his young nephews the one school where Anne’s brother was head boy?

  That Carstairs himself was ignorant of the situation Sydney felt certain. Which argued, of course, that everyone else at Fernhurst was equally unaware that a certain amount of family dynamite reposed in Park House.

  “But the fewer people who know about it, the better,” Sydney decided. “And that goes for Lucas Manning too. Carstairs will be leaving to go to the University at the end of the summer term. There’s no reason to suppose that any crisis will arise between now and then. Even if Mr. Manning knew the situation, there’s little he could do about it except worry, and so the best thing for me to do is to keep the facts to myself.”

  All the same, her knowledge weighed upon her rather, and possibly accounted for the fact that she had a restless night.

  She had told herself that in future she would avoid every chance of seeing Hugh. But since she chose to go to evening service in the chapel the next day she inevitably both saw and heard him speak. What had really drawn her there, or so she believed, was the fact that Curtis was to sing a solo. For, in the curious way nature has of endowing unangelic little boys with angelic voices, Curtis was the possessor of an exquisite soprano.

  Indeed, so beautifully did he sing, “O, lovely Peace with plenty crowned,” that evening, while looking rather like a dedicated owlet, that Sydney was very nearly reduced to tears. And she was, therefore, in a very softened mood by the time Hugh stood up to give the boys an informal talk in the place of a sermon.

  He spoke well and sympathetically, without a trace of sentiment, and Sydney found herself thinking how curtly and ungenerously she had spoken to him the previous evening.

  “Why couldn’t I have met his dignity and generosity with the same on my side?” she thought remorsefully. “He was only trying to ensure that I didn’t leave here against my will, out of misguided consideration for himself. Most men would have left things as they were, and been only too thankful to see me go, regardless of how I felt about it. I will manage to accept the situation with grace and courage. And later in the term, when I am able to look at things quite calmly, I’ll decide what will really be best for the future.”

  Somewhat comforted, both by the reflections and the resolution, Sydney entered on the new week with the hope, almost the belief, that the worst hours were over. But her confidence received a rude shock when, two or three days later, Mr. Dingley took her aside after breakfast and said, “I’m afraid Mrs. Dingley is in bed with a sick headache, Matron, and she certainly won’t be in a condition to entertain Miss Downing to tea this afternoon. But you won’t mind deputising, will you? Miss Downing was particularly anxious to see over Park House.”

  “Miss—Downing?” Sydney repeated rather huskily. “I didn’t know she was coming here.

  “Oh, yes. She’ll be going round to see each of the houses today. And of course she was to have tea here, as it’s the senior house. I’m sure none of us would want to have that arrangement altered.” Sydney, who knew all about the little inter-house jealousies, against which even Mr. Dingley was not proof, she had to smile and assure Mr. Dingley that she would be ready and eagerly waiting to entertain Miss Downing at any time after three-thirty that afternoon.

  “Good. As you know each other already, I expect you will enjoy talking over old times,” observed Mr. Dingley, recollecting what he obviously considered to be a happy circumstance.

  “I’m sure we shall love it,” agreed Sydney with irony.

  All the morning the thought of the visit hung over her like a menacing cloud.

  At lunchtime Sydney plucked up courage to ask Mr. Dingley casually if the Headmaster was also to be expected to tea that afternoon. But Mr. Dingley thought not, and for this at least, Sydney supposed, she might be thankful.

  “I understand that Miss Downing expressed a wish to go round on her own, getting to know everyone,” said Mr. Dingley, evidently finding this rather charming of Miss Downing. “I hope to bring her over to Park House myself, and possibly even stay for a cup of tea. But, even if I cannot stay, no doubt Corbin will join you.”

  “I see,” said Sydney, glancing over at young Mr. Corbin, and seeing, in his rather undistinguished person, something like her last line of defence.

  But, in the end, none of it worked out at all as expected. Mr. Corbin, to his own great regret, had to take an extra athletics period. And although Mr. Dingley did bring Marcia over to Park House, he had to leave again immediately to attend to some emergency which had arisen over the timetable.

  Sydney, therefore, faced Marcia alone and unaided in the large, pleasant drawing-room of Park House.

  “Would you—like to see over the house first?” Sydney asked, her tone formal and almost cold because of her effort to seem calm and unperturbed.

  “It might be a good idea.” Marcia sounded much less friendly and sociable than when she had spoken to Sydney in front of Mrs. Dingley. “I expect all the houses are similar. But I should like to feel that at least I’ve seen them.”

  So Sydney led the way, and conscientiously they did the rounds of dormitories, study-rooms, recreation-rooms, dining-hall and even with charmingly tactful and suitable comments to cook, the kitchens.

  “I think that’s everything,” Sydney said at last.

  “You yourself live in this house, don’t you?” Marcia asked.

  “Yes,” Sydney said. But she made no friendly offer to show her her own quarters, having a strange feeling that she could not bear to see Marcia in them. And so they returned once more to the drawing-room to enjoy the tea which cook had provided.

  “And now,” thought Sydney desperately, “this is where we make polite small talk to each other, pretending that there’s nothing else to think about.”

  But in this she was mistaken. For no sooner had tea been poured out than Marcia said calmly, “It’s really rather fortunate that we’ve been left to ourselves, Sydney, isn’t it? You and I have a lot to talk about, and this afternoon is as good a time as any.” Sydney felt her heart begin to beat uncomfortably fast.

  “Is there so much to talk about?” she said rather defensively.

  “Of course.” Marcia sounded good-temperedly impatient. “It’s no good our being unrealistic and pretending that things haven’t turned out most awkwardly for us all. What I really want to know, naturally, is what you intend to do about it?”

  “What I intend to do about it? I hadn’t realised that the onus for any action rested on me,” retorted Sydney, somehow contriving to sound as self-possessed as Marcia.

  “Well, surely you don’t expect Hugh to go, do you?” This time Marcia’s impatience sounded less good-tempered.

  “I hadn’t really decided that it was necessary for either of us to go,” Sydney returned coldly.

  The other girl made the impatient gesture of one who was used to having her own way and found any opposition tiresome and rather stupid.

  “Look, Sydney, it’s no good being resentful about this, I realise that it must be painful for you to find Hugh on the verge of marrying someone else. But engagements are broken and people do have second thoughts, and one has to accept new situations.”

  “I have accepted the situation,” Sydney said, still in that rather small, cold voice. “I don’t know why you want to talk the whole thing over in this way, Marcia. I don’t find it either kind or tactful.”

  Marcia flushed angrily, “You’re making things very difficult, Sydney,” she declared. “It isn’t for me to put your only possible decision into words. I thought I was being tactful in giving you the opportunity to do so yourself.”

  Sydney actually laughed a little at that, surprised to find that she had any sense of amusement left.

  “Marcia, you mean that you wanted me to put your decision i
nto words,” she replied good-humouredly. “You had decided that the only thing which would satisfy you would be for me to leave, but you wanted me to voice the idea. However, you know, this is not the only possible decision. You’re speaking simply for yourself.”

  “I’m speaking for Hugh too,” retorted Marcia quickly.

  “No,” Sydney said, “I think not. Hugh would disdain to push anyone into a decision simply to suit himself. I think you will find that he wishes me to do exactly what I’m intending to do; and that is to think the matter over calmly during the next few weeks and make a reasoned and unhurried decision then.”

  “But you seriously mean that you might decide to remain on at Fernhurst?” Marcia was aghast that anything so contrary to her own wishes could be possible.

  “I might,” Sydney agreed calmly.

  “But it would be an impossible situation. An—an almost indecent situation!”

  “Oh, no, Marcia.” Sydney smiled faintly. “You forget your own arguments. Engagements are broken and people do have second thoughts and everyone accepts the new situation. It’s quite a long time since Hugh and I decided, by mutual agreement, to end our engagement. It’s such old history. Of what are you afraid?”

  “I’m not afraid of anything,” Marcia retorted, evidently stung by the word. “I just think it’s going to be an impossible position for us all. Suppose anyone here knew, what would they think?”

  “No one here knows. Everyone has accepted you most happily as Hugh’s very new fiancée.”

  She had no idea why she used that exact phrase. Possibly with the subconscious intention of conveying that everyone liked the rather romantic flavour of the situation. Certainly it had not been her idea to annoy Marcia afresh. But the effect on the other girl was electrifying.

  “So that’s it” she exclaimed, her handsome eyes flashing and her colour actually fading with anger. “You’re hoping to profit by the fact that our engagement is such a recent one. I knew it all along. I have an instinct about these things. You never really wanted to give up Hugh, and now you think you’ll get him back because—”