Yours to Command

by Mary Burchell

  “Yes.” Edward apparently accepted that idea. Then he added, unexpectedly, “I think perhaps she was rather like you.”

  There was no likeness whatever in reality, Sydney knew, and that very fact caught at her heart. But she managed to say cheerfully, “Do you, my dear? Well, thank you for a very nice compliment.”

  Edward smiled then, as though pleased to discover that he had been unknowingly gallant. And off he went to join the others once more.

  Sydney even managed to restrain herself from glancing thoughtfully after him, but she was both moved and disturbed by the irony of the situation. That Edward should have mentioned his mother for the first time when she was actually in the house!

  It was almost dinner time now and, looking into her own room, she found Carstairs and his visitor about to bid each other goodbye. It seemed to have been a happy, even an emotional occasion for them both, and Carstairs at least looked as flushed and eager as if he had been taking out a girlfriend.

  Both of them thanked Sydney very cordially for the use of her rooms, and Anne added charmingly, “I am hoping to see more of Robert, now that I’m in England, and perhaps you will come out with us one day?”

  Secretly perturbed at the thought of the complications which seemed to loom ahead, Sydney made some suitable but non-commital reply. And then their visitor departed.

  During the next few days Sydney found that her nerves were not under quite such good control as usual. Life in Park House was uneventful and quiet, but she could not rid herself of the idea that she would one day be summoned to Hugh’s office and have to face some unpleasant reaction from her conversation with Marcia.

  But the days went past and nothing happened, and after a while Sydney began to think that Marcia had wisely decided not to stir up further trouble, while on the question of Anne Carstairs she told herself that here too she had exaggerated the dangers.

  And then one afternoon she was called to the telephone to take a personal call from London.

  Sydney went to the phone puzzling a little over the unknown caller. But the moment she said, “Yes? This is Matron speaking,” she recognized the answering voice as that of Lucas Manning.

  “Oh, Matron—Miss Dayne, I asked for you personally because you’re the one who knows about this business.” He paused a moment, as though deciding with some difficulty exactly what to say. Then he went on rather deliberately, “I have just heard that Anne—that my sister-in-law is back in London. I don’t really expect her to attempt to see the boys, but if she should come to Fernhurst—”

  “She has already been,” Sydney said, without any real intention of being dramatic. But the way he said, “What?” told her she had shaken him a good deal.

  “Tell me what happened,” he commanded abruptly, and she had the curious certainty that he was looking grim and a little pale.

  “Nothing,” she told him soothingly, “so far as your two boys are concerned. She came to see her young brother who also happens to be at this school. She is, I imagine, quite unaware that her—that the other two are here.”

  “Did you say her brother!”

  “Yes.”

  “That would be young Robert?”

  “Yes. He’s our head boy, and a remarkably nice lad he is too.”

  “I’m sure,” replied Lucas Manning, politely but without interest. And then, after a moment, "Miss Dayne, I think I must have a talk with you.”

  “Hadn’t you better have it with Hugh?” she said. “With the Headmaster?”

  “No. You’re the one who understands the situation.”

  “But I’m not supposed to take responsibility for home complications where the boys are concerned,” Sydney began. “I should be exceeding my duties if—”

  To her astonishment he broke in with a nervous impatience which suddenly showed how much his calm manner had been hiding.

  “Damn the exceeding of your duties!” he said. “I need your help—badly. You know all the circumstances, you’re genuinely fond of the boys, and I find you easy to talk to. I don’t want to start rattling family skeletons all over again for the benefit of your Headmaster, or anyone else. In any case, if the fellow hasn’t the intelligence to prefer you to the girl I’ve seen coming out of the next door flat, he hasn’t the intelligence to deal with this. Now will you help me?”

  “Of—of course. In any way I can,” Sydney said, shaken by his violence but indescribably gratified by the reference to Marcia. “I only wanted to make sure that you consulted the right person.”

  “You are the right person, so far as I’m concerned,” he retorted. “When can I see you?”

  Sydney considered the practical difficulties of this.

  “I’m afraid I can’t come to London again for some time.”

  “Then I’ll come down to you,” he said, brushing that aside. “It will have to be next Sunday. I can’t get away before then.”

  “But if you come here to Park House, you really will have to see either Mr. or Mrs. Dingley,” Sydney insisted. “It would be most peculiar if—”

  “I am not seeing anyone but you,” the beautiful voice of Lucas Manning informed her firmly. “Come and have lunch with me in the town.”

  “I can’t get away for lunch,” Sydney explained apologetically.

  “It’s a good thing I’m a persistent wooer,” he exclaimed, and she guessed he was smiling. “For what can you get away?”

  “Tea?” suggested Sydney.

  “Tea,” repeated Lucas Manning, as though this were not a meal that had registered much on his understanding up till now. “Very well—tea. Four o’clock at The Crown. I suppose they serve some sort of tea there.”

  “A very good one,” Sydney assured him demurely. “And I shall be happy to come.”

  “Very well.” He laughed over that for some reason. “But don’t talk about this business to anyone else, will you?”

  “Not if you don’t want me to do so.”

  “I very definitely do not. Not even to your Hugh,” he told her.

  Sydney laughed rather ruefully, and before she could stop herself said, “I must repeat that he is not mine. Marcia made it her business to come and tell me so about a week ago.”

  “She did? My poor child!” Sydney wondered if it were natural kindness of heart or superb stage training which deepened his voice to that warm note of sympathetic interest. “Do you mean she made a scene?”

  “Oh, nothing quite as vulgar as that. But—it doesn’t really matter.”

  “You shall tell me all about it on Sunday—over tea,” he said, as though he had all the time in the world for her worries as well as his own.

  Then he bade her good-bye and rang off, leaving Sydney with the curious impression that there were few people to whom she could talk with more refreshing frankness than the famous actor-manager.

  In spite of a certain amount of anxiety, Sydney found herself looking forward to Sunday with lively pleasure as well as interest.

  Sunday was always a busy day from her point of view, because several hundred boys at leisure are always a bigger problem than the same number safely settled in the schoolroom, however, at a quarter to four Sydney was able to catch a bus outside the school gates and drive down into town for her meeting with Lucas Manning.

  Fernhurst was situated on the outskirts of one of those pleasant cathedral towns which imparts so much beauty to English provincial life.

  For the hundredth time Sydney noticed and enjoyed the beauty of the High Street as she walked along it and turned in under the timbered archway of The Crown. But when she entered the long panelled room at the back of the ancient hostelry she forgot about its charm, for Lucas Manning came forward at once to greet her, and even here he became inevitably the centre of the scene.

  “You’re wonderfully punctual.” He took her hand and smiled down at her. But she thought he looked tired and a trifle worn, as though he had had an exacting week.

  “I spend so much of my life drumming punctuality into resistant little boys
that common justice demands that I try to practise it,” Sydney told him, smiling in her turn. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t make the journey to London. I’m afraid this trip must have done you out of your one day of leisure.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he assured her, and led the way to two deep, chintz-covered armchairs set at a comfortable distance from the big open fire. An elderly waiter immediately appeared and, on being asked for tea, slowly set out on the low table beside them the sort of tea that the Junior School would undoubtedly have approved.

  While he was doing so, Lucas Manning and Sydney discussed unimportant topics. But, as soon as they were left to themselves, Sydney’s companion said quietly, but rather urgently: “Now, tell me what happened when Anne came.”

  Unhurriedly Sydney poured out tea, instinctively aware that his calmness covered a certain amount of tension, and while she did so, she gave him a brief but clear account of Anne’s visit.

  He listened without any interruption, but at the end he said, “And are you sure she had no inkling that Edward and Alistair were there?”

  “How could she? There was no point at which she could have caught even a glimpse of them.”

  “But the Headmaster might have mentioned them—before you came in.”

  “He had no reason to do so,” Sydney pointed out soothingly. “He knew of no connection between them.”

  “No—that’s true.” He frowned thoughtfully. “And—her brother? Might he have made any casual reference to them?”

  “I don’t see how he could,” Sydney said. “From the way he has spoken it’s obvious he has no idea of any relationship between himself and them. I gathered that he hardly even saw his sister after her marriage, when he himself must have been a small boy. Her two children must be entirely nebulous creatures to him. I don’t expect he has ever seen Alistair over in the Prep, and if he does know that one of the juniors in his house is called Manning, which I very much doubt, he certainly hasn’t connected the boy with anyone in his own family—yet.”

  For a moment Lucas Manning did not reply but sat with his handsome head bent, as though he were considering what she had just said. Then at last, when he looked up, she was happy to see that the slightly strained look had gone and that the little smile, which so often seemed to be one of self-mockery, was back again.

  “Thank you,” he said. “I see why you are a successful matron of a school. I feel like one of the juniors who has had all his first term worries explained away.”

  Sydney laughed and coloured slightly.

  “I hope I didn’t sound offensively professional.”

  “No. You sounded wonderful,” he said.

  “Oh—” She was touched and amused and a trifle put out. “Thank you. I’m not going to pretend that the situation isn’t tricky. But—”

  “Up to the present, you would describe it as in hand?” he suggested, his easy, amused self-possession miraculously restored.

  “Yes, I would,” Sydney agreed, eager to consolidate a peace of mind she was happy to see restored. “I know that at any moment—”

  And there she stopped, for the door had opened just then and into the room came two people. One was the head boy of Fernhurst. The other, looking beautiful and alert and interesting, was Anne Carstairs.

  CHAPTER SIX

  NO one spoke. It seemed to Sydney as though for a moment no one even moved. Then Anne came slowly forward until she stood beside her brother-in-law, and said, with a deceptively mild and social air, “Why, hello, Lucas. What brings you to this remote and unlikely spot?”

  Left to herself, Sydney would undoubtedly have thrown in her hand at this point. But Lucas Manning was made of tougher material, evidently. He rose to his feet, smiling at Anne with a sort of dangerous friendliness, and said, “I’ve been visiting a very good friend of mine. Do you know Sydney Dayne? I understand your young brother is head boy of the school where she is a matron.”

  “We have met.” Anne smiled slightly, but her eyes were watchful as they shifted for a second to Sydney.

  “And this, I take it, is your brother?” Lucas Manning nodded in the direction of young Carstairs who was standing, not quite at ease, just behind his sister.

  “Yes, this is Robert.” Anne made the introduction but did not, Sydney noticed, claim Lucas Manning as her brother-in-law, which looked as though there were some explanations which she herself preferred to leave unmade at present.

  “So you and Lucas are very good friends?” Anne Carstairs turned her guileless glance on Sydney again. “I wonder you didn’t mention something about that when we spoke of him the other evening.”

  “It was such a very passing reference.” Sydney was surprised to hear how cool and plausible she sounded. “I didn’t feel it was necessary to go into details.”

  “You funny girl!” Anne somehow put the most questionable inflection into the way she said “funny,” so that disingenuousness seemed to be the least of the things she was implying. “I told you that I knew him.”

  “Yes,” Sydney retorted a little drily, because she found she resented the other girl’s tone strongly. “You also told me he was as hard as nails. I didn’t agree with you, but found the occasion very ill-chosen for an argument. That was really why I let the subject drop.”

  She heard the man beside her laugh, she thought approvingly. “Too bad,” he said. “I should have been flattered to think you argued about me. But don’t let us keep you, Anne. You and your brother must be looking forward to your family chat.”

  “That’s quite all right.” She gave her sweet silvery laugh. “We’re waiting for someone to join us. Hugh Lulworth is coming, and Miss Downing, his fiancée.”

  Hugh and Marcia! Sydney could not quite hide her dismay, and feared that Anne not only noticed it, but misinterpreted it.

  “Mr. Lulworth has been so kind and understanding about my seeing Robert,” Anne went on innocently, “I thought it would be nice to invite him, and Miss Downing, to meet us outside the school. I’m so glad they accepted, but”—her half-smiling eyes went in seeming concern from her brother-in-law to his companion—“I hope we shall not be an embarrassment to you here.”

  “This is a public room,” Lucas Manning pointed out drily.

  “And you and Miss Dayne have nothing to conceal,” Anne added mischievously. “Oh, Lucas, you ought to know how to complete the line. It’s a stand-by for every delicate situation in every domestic drama that’s ever been written.”

  For a second he actually seemed nonplussed, and it was Sydney who, to her own immeasurable astonishment, answered.

  “But hardly appropriate for Lucas and me. We’ve known each other rather too long and too prosaically for either delicate situations or domestic dramas.” And then she laughed good-humouredly; and somehow looked as though she found Anne Carstairs’ spiteful innuendo no more than mildly amusing.

  “Come, Anne. It’s time we found seats,” Carstairs put in rather hastily. And he took his sister away, though she cast a glance backward which suggested that she was by no means satisfied that things were as they seemed between her brother-in-law and the young school matron.

  “Very well played,” remarked Lucas Manning judicially, when the other two had passed out of earshot.

  “It was the best I could do on the spur of the moment,” she said. “I apologise for the familiar use of your name, but I had to do something to support the good old friends theory.”

  “My dear girl, you are more than welcome, even if the situation had not demanded it,” he assured her. “And you’re going to have to keep it up. I’m sorry to have dragged you into this, but from now on you’ve got to be the girl who is capable of bringing me to a cathedral town on a wet Sunday afternoon. And, God knows, that’s something!”

  “But—” Sydney gave a disturbed little laugh, “do you mean we really have to go on with this masquerade?”

  “For as long as I can keep her in ignorance about the boys—yes. She’ll tire of visits as the devoted sister presently. B
esides, her other interests will take her back to America by the summer. It won’t be very long.”

  “But”—Sydney secretly thought that perhaps his long association with theatrical situations tended to give him a melodramatic slant on real life—“is it so important for her not to know about the boys? You implied that you have the legal guardianship of them. You surely don’t think she would try to—take them away?”

  “No, of course not. The last thing she wants is to be actually burdened with them. But, as you must have seen, there’s a sort of freakish spitefulness about Anne. If only to flout me she is quite capable of going to some considerable pains to see them.”

  “She might well do so for less questionable motives,” Sydney felt bound to say. “They are darling children, and they are hers.”

  “You’re crediting her with feelings she doesn’t possess,” he assured her rather dispiritedly.

  “Well, you know her best,” Sydney conceded. “But suppose she did contrive to see them, would it be such a disaster?”

  “For Edward, yes.” The flexible voice was suddenly cold and flat. “He thinks she’s dead.”

  Sydney caught her breath.

  “I didn’t realise that. Was that what he was led to suppose when she—left them?”

  “No, not then. There were no actual explanations then when he was so much younger. But”—Lucas Manning passed a hand rather wearily over his face and suddenly looked all of his thirty-four years, “when his father was killed I had to tell him. For some unknown reason he concluded that she had been there and was killed too. I didn’t see fit to undeceive him.”

  “It was taking a very obvious risk,” she said gently.

  “I know, I know.” He spoke with a sort of unhappy impatience. “But if I had underlined her existence at the very moment when he had lost his father the child would have been bound to feel increased interest in her. There could have been all sorts of complications.”

  Sydney thought there had been enough anyway. But she said, with genuine sympathy, “Yes. I do see your difficulty.”