Then Sydney looked young Carstairs in the eye and said, with a composure she was far from feeling.
“I think there’s a muddle somewhere. Relationships are the most involved and confusing things sometimes. But we can settle that later.”
“But, Matron—” began Carstairs.
“No. Later,” Sydney interrupted quietly, but as though silencing the head boy were the same thing as silencing Alistair. “Please go back to your own seat, Carstairs.”
The reprieve was only temporary and Sydney foresaw that Edward’s doubts would inevitably return, and that there was little possibility of putting off some sort of explanation much longer. But at least she had been able to lessen the shock and to see that Edward was not scarred by some crude and violent discovery.
With Carstairs himself she had achieved no more than the arbitrary imposing of silence by the weight of sheer authority. And though the emergency had dictated this unpalatable course, Sydney felt she could not let the boy go off for the week-end smouldering under a sense of injustice, as well as shocked to the core by what must have been, for him too, a shattering discovery.
Looking down the long carriage she saw that he had taken himself off to the small section of corridor which could be seen beyond the sliding glass door of the compartment. And there, in solitary state, and considerable unhappiness she felt sure, he stood staring out of the window, obviously in a condition of gloomy indignation.
Resisting the impulse to go to him immediately, Sydney waited until even the small boys around her were deep in their various activities. Then she got up and passing along the carriage, with an odd word here and there, she went out into the corridor, drawing the sliding door to behind her.
For once Carstairs did not welcome her with his ready smile. Indeed, he bestowed upon her the nearest thing to a scowl which she had ever seen on his handsome face.
“I’m sorry, Carstairs,” she said kindly, but with a note of firmness. “I very much dislike silencing you just now in that arbitrary manner. But I couldn’t let you go on. Any dramatic disclosure at that moment might have done Edward, at any rate, a great deal of harm.”
“But, Matron, do you mean to say they don’t know that their mother is alive—and perhaps longing for them?” Carstairs was shocked and moved by his own version of the situation and his voice actually shook slightly.
“My dear, it’s a very difficult and delicate situation.”
“Do you know all about it?”
“I know a good deal about it,” Sydney conceded.
“Lucas Manning’s version of it, I suppose?” Carstairs said in a tone of scorn and dislike.
“Not entirely.” Sydney felt that her own observation and judgment had entered into it sufficiently for her to assert that. “But I wouldn’t claim for a moment that I was qualified to make quick and drastic decisions, or even to pass judgment. What concerns me is that Edward, who is virtually in my charge, incidentally, does not know about his mother.”
“It’s monstrous!” the head boy cut in indignantly. “To treat Anne like this and even to let her own children think she’s dead. You must see that Lucas Manning behaved abominably over this, however much you may like him.”
“I tell you, I’m not qualified to judge,” Sydney repeated patiently. “For good or ill, rightly or wrongly, Edward thinks at present that she is dead. It could do the child nothing but harm to be told the truth suddenly and brutally. That was all I was trying to avoid, Carstairs. And I think your own sense of fairness will tell you that I was right.”
Carstairs was silent for a moment.
“Have you known this a long time, Matron?” he asked at last.
“Only a matter of weeks, really.” Sydney saw no reason why she should not be frank over any aspect of this unhappy affair which she could discuss. “Edward and Alistair came here at the beginning of this term, and it was then I met their uncle. He told me—”
“I thought you were old friends!” exclaimed Carstairs, and she remembered vexedly that this had been the impression she and Lucas Manning had given when Anne and her brother had discovered them together on that Sunday afternoon.
“We thought it best to imply that,” she said, brushing aside the interruption with more confidence that she felt. “He told me something of the situation with regard to his wards, and he mentioned their mother’s name before her marriage.”
“Why?” asked Carstairs, with acumen beyond his years.
Sydney hesitated. Then she said, “He thought she might find out where the children were and ask to see them. I suppose he thought it as well that I should know the name she would use.”
“Every precaution was taken to keep her out, wasn’t it?” Carstairs said reproachfully.
“My dear boy, if one takes up a certain attitude in these unhappy family tangles one must also take precautions to see that the position is maintained,” Sydney replied reasonably. “Anyway, I still had no idea of your part in things. Nor, to tell the truth, had Mr. Manning.”
“Then how did you find out?”
“You told me yourself,” Sydney reminded him with a smile.
“I did?” Carstairs was mystified.
“The evening you came to have your hand bandaged you told me about your sister Anne who had been in America for some years. Don’t you remember?”
“Good lord—yes!” For a moment Carstairs grinned at the recollection, and looked more like his usual good-humoured self. “And then you realised the connection—immediately?”
She nodded.
“Wasn’t it a bit of a shock? Or do you get used to being indifferent about other people’s problems?” he said, half resentfully, half curiously.
“Nobody with a reasonably good heart ever becomes indifferent to other people’s problems,” Sydney said slowly. “For one thing”—she smiled ruefully—“one is inevitably reminded of one’s own. But it’s the most difficult thing in the world, Carstairs, to judge for someone else. Even for one’s nearest and dearest.”
“You’re trying to tell me that I’m seeing this thing from Anne’s point of view only, aren’t you?”
“No. I didn’t mean that specially. Though I don’t see how, as a devoted brother, you could or should, do anything else at a first glance. All I want to say is that impulsive intervention almost always does harm. Please do wait and see how this thing works out for itself.”
“But I’m going to stay with Anne this week-end, Matron. I can’t just say nothing about such a discovery,” the head boy said earnestly.
Sydney bit her lip.
“No—I do see that,” she agreed at last. “I suppose the moment for a decision, showdown whatever one likes to call it, has arrived. It’s asking too much that you should actually conceal the situation from your sister. But will you try to tell her rather unemotionally, Carstairs? It will help her as well as everyone else.”
“But she’ll be there at Paddington to meet me.”
“Oh, dear!” Sydney visualised a scene of domestic drama played out under the disapproving gaze of Mr. Quinn.
“She’ll see the kids. Perhaps she—she might even cry. I couldn’t just hustle her away, Matron!” Carstairs obviously also visualising the scene, but in slightly different terms.
“Look here, Carstairs,” Sydney spoke with sudden decision, “will you do something for me?”
“I—if it’s not anything that will hurt Anne,” the head boy said, divided between sister worship and his natural desire to be of help to anyone.
"Will you see that you’re one of the first out of the train. Find your sister as soon as you can and go off with her. Don’t hang about to show her off to the others, tempting though I’m sure that must be. Get her away quickly, whatever excuse you have to make. I’ll see that Edward and Alistair are among the last to get out. With reasonable luck we ought to arrange that they don’t all meet.”
Carstairs looked doubtful.
“It seems hard on Anne. And almost deceitful.”
Sydney resi
sted a desire to scream—but with difficulty.
“It will be much the best thing for her too,” she said in a kind and reasonable tone, as though concern for Anne were also consuming her. “You will be saving her a shock, possibly a painful scene, and you can tell her quietly and tactfully at your own chosen time. Meanwhile, I will take a good opportunity to tell Mr. Manning what has happened, and point out to him that—that”— Sydney sought desperately for a vague and non-committal phrase—“the position must be clarified,” she finished rather triumphantly.
“And you promise to do that, Matron?”
“Absolutely,” said Sydney solemnly.
“Then that might be the best way,” agreed Carstairs, who was not a trouble maker by nature and was obviously impressed by the fact that Sydney had been reasonable and co-operative.
Cautiously Sydney drew a sigh of relief.
“I’m relying on you,” she said gravely, and went back into the compartment feeling that most of the immediate danger was over.
The rest of the journey was uneventful. And although there were some awkward moments at Paddington, when Edward and Curtis surged to the front, she was able to recall Edward and ask him to keep beside her and Alistair until all the Prep, members had been handed over to their devoted and (in some cases) almost tearful mothers.
Distribution, under the able management of Mr. Quinn, was accomplished in record time. And, in less than ten minutes, not having caught so much as a glimpse of Anne, Sydney found herself and the two little Manning boys safely installed in a taxi on the way to Lucas Manning’s flat.
Then, and only then, did Edward ask rather abruptly, “What did Carstairs mean about his sister being my mother, Matron?”
She had not expected anything so direct, the moment they were alone, and she had to think quickly.
“I’m not quite sure, Edward,” she said, in her most matter-of-fact tone. “It all sounded rather a muddle to me. But I’ll ask your uncle about it this week-end. I wonder what plans he has made for us.”
“I want to go to the Zoo,” announced Alistair. “And I’d like some monkey nuts. And some of them I shall eat myself and some of them I’ll give to the monkeys.” And then he went into a happy sort of trance in which he was obviously considering the equitable division of the monkey nuts.
When they arrived at the not very large but very exclusive-looking block of flats, and stood outside the door of Lucas Manning’s apartment waiting to be admitted, Sydney could not help glancing at the neighbouring doors and wondering which of those belonged to Marcia. But as soon as the door was opened, she forgot about anything else, for Lucas Manning himself admitted them to his spacious and very beautiful home.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t come to meet you myself,” he said, as he took Sydney’s coat, while the housekeeper made the little boys welcome. “But I had a sudden call from the theatre and just couldn’t make it.”
“That was quite all right,” Sydney told him, secretly thinking that it had been providential in the circumstances. “Everything went very smoothly.”
“What are we going to do this afternoon?” enquired Alistair coming straight to the point. “I’d like to go to the Zoo. And I’d like some monkey nuts and—”
“Your uncle will have to be at the theatre this afternoon, Alistair,” Sydney began to explain. “It’s Saturday and there will be a matinee, so I expect—”
“I don’t want to go to the theatre,” announced Alistair, thrusting out his lower lip and going very red in the face. “Theatres are dull and silly, and monkeys are much more fun.”
“He has the makings of a dramatic critic,” observed Lucas Manning dispassionately. “But, in any case, we don’t any of us have to go to the theatre this afternoon.” He turned to Sydney. “My understudy takes some of the matinees, you know. It’s good for him and very convenient for me. It’s Stephen Alloway, and he’s darned good, as a matter of fact.”
“Then are we going to the Zoo?” enquired Alistair, who had a one-track mind.
“All right. I’ll drive you out to Whipsnade, if that’s what you want,” said his uncle good-naturedly. “Could you bear it?” he asked Sydney.
“Then we’ll have an early lunch and start in good time. But I daresay, Mrs. Wyvern,” he turned to his housekeeper, “that the boys could do with some milk and biscuits now, after their journey.”
“Yes, sir,” said the housekeeper, and she took the two little boys away with her, while Lucas Manning ushered Sydney into a beautiful wide-windowed room, with a most attractive view over Regents Park.
“I wanted a word with you first—” he began.
“And I must have a word with you,” Sydney said quickly.
“Indeed?” Her tone obviously arrested his attention. “Has something happened?”
“In a way—yes. But it’s more a question of what is likely to happen in consequence.” And she gave him a rapid but comprehensive account of what had happened in the train.
He listened in complete silence, though he brought her a glass of pale amber sherry and set it on the table beside her. At the end he said, “Then we have to reckon with some immediate move on Anne’s part, I don’t doubt.”
“We have also,” Sydney pointed out, “to reckon with Edward’s reactions. He’s going to ask either you or me some very pertinent questions this week-end, and we have to decide what we’re to tell him.”
They were both silent then, looking, as Hugh Lulworth would have been able to tell them, rather like slightly anxious parents.
Then Lucas Manning said slowly at last, “I suppose there’s nothing for it but to tell him the truth.”
“I think so. In a modified form, of course,” Sydney agreed. “Would you like me to tell him?”
“My dear girl, would you?”
“Well, of course. If you think that’s the best way. I imagine it would be easier for me to be reasonably matter-of-fact about it than for you. I have no very deep feelings in the matter, apart from a desire to do what is best for the boys. And children usually take these things better from someone connected with the unemotional background of school life.”
“I suppose they do.” He passed his hand worriedly over his hair. “And then, if he asks to see her—what then?”
“I shall say it isn’t practical at the moment, but that I shall see what can be done. Then you and she must decide what the future arrangements are to be.”
“I—and Anne?”
“Of course. This is something over which you must co-operate, however little you like it.”
“As their guardian, I’m unwilling for her to see them,” he said curtly.
“As their self-appointed guardian you probably aren’t in a position to insist on that,” Sydney countered dryly. “As I—as Hugh and I understand it, you can either come to some compromise with Anne or go to court for a definite legal ruling. I don’t know which you prefer, but I imagine the time has come when you will have to decide.”
“If I go to court,” he said, setting his mouth so grimly that it was difficult to remember how humorous and almost sweet-tempered he could look, “she’ll fight the case and there will be a damnable lot of publicity.”
“She didn’t fight the issue so bitterly when she separated from you brother,” Sydney pointed out.
“She didn’t hate him,” was the curt reply.
“And she does hate you—so much?”
He hesitated for a moment, then he said impatiently, “Oh, good lord, you surely know what the situation was between us?”
“I suppose,” Sydney said coolly, “that you were very much in love once?”
He gasped slightly, but he said, “Yes.”
“And then she took your brother instead, because at that time he was a much better catch?”
“Yes.”
“And ever since you’ve wondered just how she feels about you, and still more, how you feel about her?”
“I know how I feel about her,” he said impatiently. “I dislike and despise he
r.” Sydney was silent. And, after a long moment, he added, “I think.”
“And how does she feel? Or don’t you even know enough to guess at that?” Sydney asked.
“I know she never forgave me for standing whole-heartedly behind my brother when he divorced her,” Lucas Manning said slowly. “She always put that down to personal malice on my part rather than to any family solidarity, I believe. That’s why she would make every sort of trouble she could for me if it came to a court case over the boys.”
“Regardless of their best interests?”
“Oh, of course.” He brushed that aside. “But, apart from that, I sometimes wonder—” He paused, frowning, and then said, “Don’t think me an egregious ass for saying this. I’ve never quite put it into words, even to myself, before. But some inner instinct tells me that, in her heart, she’d like to go back on that early mistake and marry me, even now.”
“Marry—you?” Sydney was aware of a sense of shock so disagreeable that she could not even explain it to herself. “But I thought you said she hated you.”
“No, I didn’t say that. That’s one of the things I’m never quite sure about. We say bitter things to each other whenever we meet, of course. But that’s different.”
Sydney looked at him with something like dismay.
“But—it isn’t my business, of course—but, since you started the subject, do you mean to say that, if the opportunity offered, you would seriously consider marrying her?”
“That, my dear girl,” he said lightly, “is another of the things I’m never quite sure about.”
“I think you’re crazy,” Sydney said, so emphatically that he laughed and looked rather taken aback.
“Do you really, Sydney? May I call you Sydney?”
“Yes, you may call me Sydney. And yes, I do think you’re crazy,” she retorted impatiently. “Sometimes I wonder if males ever do anything emotionally other than grow sillier as they grow older. Just look at you—Alistair, Edward, Carstairs, and you. All at different stages, and, of the lot of you, Alistair has most sense. At least he knows he wants to feed monkey nuts to monkeys and that he jolly well thinks the theatre dull and silly, whatever anyone else says. Edward, poor lamb, is already finding life has its problems and is preparing to tear himself to ribbons about it. Carstairs is busy making his own problems. And you—a great, grown man, with money, fame, success and good health, can think of nothing better to do with a darned good life than hand it over to a woman you know to be worthless. Honestly, you make me wild.”
Yours to Command Page 10
