“I expect you’re right, Matron.” His good humor was evidently restored. “Will you have lunch with me and the boys?”
“I should like to. I’m sorry about the official tone.”
“Don’t be. I’m hoping one day you’ll ask me if I’ve washed behind my ears.”
“Oh!—Did I sound so bossy?”
“You sounded sweet,” he told her, rather unexpectedly. “And you’ve stiffened my morale no end and made me feel almost cheerful about phoning Anne. I’ll do it right away. The boys and I will fetch you about twelve-thirty. And if Anne has agreed to see me this afternoon, you shall take them out somewhere afterwards, while I go and settle the fate of all of us.”
“All of us?”
“I meant the boys, myself and Anne.”
“Oh! Yes, of course. I’ll be ready at twelve-thirty,” she promised and rang off.
At twelve-thirty precisely, Lucas Manning’s car drew up outside her hotel. And, as Sydney went out to it, Edward and Alistair waved from the back seat as though she were the oldest and best friend they had.
“We’re going to have lunch now,” Alistair informed her. “And I’m going to have chicken because we don’t often have chicken at school and I like chicken.”
“I’m so glad. I shall probably have chicken too,” Sydney told him with a smile. Then, while the boys fell into a great discussion about what else they would have, she said quietly to their uncle, “Did you arrange anything?”
“Yes. I’m seeing her this afternoon.”
“I’m very glad.”
“Are you?” He gave her a wry little smile. “I wish I were.”
Over lunch Lucas Manning was very gay. No one, certainly not his nephews, could have supposed that a crisis was pending. And afterwards he said naturally, “Matron is taking you out this afternoon, to Kew, I believe. I have to go to see someone. But we’ll meet later.”
The boys accepted this cheerfully and also seemed to like the idea of Kew.
“Could we go in a Green Line bus?” begged Edward.
“Yes. Let’s go in a bus,” echoed Alistair. “It’s nicer than a car.” So their uncle drove them to a Green Line bus stop and, leaving them there with Sydney, drove away rather slowly. For her part, Sydney could not help feeling that he probably needed her at this moment rather more than the boys did.
The expedition was a great success, and on the way down there, more than once Alistair smiled at Sydney and said, “This is much nicer than a car, isn’t it?”
Sydney smiled back and said, “Yes,” and wondered, not for the first time, if parents always knew exactly what they meant when they talked about wanting the best of everything for their children.
It was a beautiful, warm spring day, and the sun was hot enough to make Sydney feel relaxed and almost drowsy. But suddenly she realized that Lucas Manning was not to be the only one to have an afternoon of awkward explanations. For at that moment Edward said, “Matron, did you ask my uncle about my mother?”
So this was why he kept coming back to her. And this, after all, was what she had meant when she told his uncle that Edward was bound to ask one of them some pertinent questions this week-end.
Sydney roused herself to deal with the emergency, while contriving to look as though Edward had asked a perfectly natural and unsensational question.
“Yes, I asked him,” Sydney said slowly. “And I found, Edward, that although your uncle had never actually told you your mother was dead, you assumed she was killed at the same time as your father, and he did not correct you.”
“Why not, Matron?”
“Mostly, I think, because it couldn’t be arranged for you to see her anyway, and he thought it best for you to feel you had a happy and stable home with him.”
“But she’s still alive?”
“Yes, dear.”
“Why don’t we ever see her?”
“She’s lived in America for some years now,” explained Sydney, as though it were quite usual for one’s mother to go off and live in America.
“Why?” asked Edward simply.
“I don’t know,” replied Sydney with equal simplicity. “But you know how sometimes, for family or business reasons, the boys have a parent or both their parents abroad. That’s how it is with you.”
“But it’s usually their father that goes.”
“True,” agreed Sydney, as though that point had not struck her and did not materially affect the argument now.
“Can’t I ever see her?” enquired Edward, disturbed but not, Sydney was glad to see, shattered by the disclosure.
“Oh, I expect so, when you’re older,” Sydney said reassuringly. “These things can usually be arranged. But one has to find just the right moment, you know.”
Edward seemed to find that reasonable.
“Could I write to her?” he suggested.
“I don’t know. I think you’ll have to ask your uncle that,” Sydney said, feeling that much depended on the talk that afternoon between Lucas Manning and his sister-in-law.
“All right,” Edward agreed, and at that moment Alistair rejoined them.
“Alistair,” Edward said rather soberly, “we’ve got a mother, after all.”
“Have we?” replied Alistair absently. Then he seemed to realize the significance of that and, turning, he smiled slowly at Sydney. “Is it Matron?” he enquired.
Sydney laughed, but a slight lump came into her throat. “I’m afraid not, Alistair. I wish I were,” she said.
“Perhaps you could be,” suggested Alistair, who had a great respect for the things that matrons could do.
“No. That one is beyond me,” Sydney said, patting his round cheek. “Shall we go and have tea now?”
“Oh, yes!” agreed Alistair, to whom meals were always interesting and worthwhile occasions.
So they went and had tea, and Sydney felt fairly sure that Edward, as well as Alistair, had suffered very little harm from the afternoon’s disclosure. He knew and accepted the fact that somehow, somewhere in the world, his mother existed.
The bus on the way home was crowded. So Sydney took Alistair on her lap, where he promptly and heavily fell asleep.
In the taxi on the way to the flat, he brightened up considerably, and by the time he arrived home he was wide awake and very cheerful.
True to his promise, their uncle was there to welcome them, and was, Sydney noted approvingly, quite prepared to give them his time however preoccupied he might be.
“Please stay,” Lucas Manning said briefly to Sydney. “And then come out to dinner with me afterwards, will you? Unless,” he added, with a touch of humility she found rather charming in anyone so famous, “you have something better to do.”
“I have nothing better to do,” Sydney assured him with a smile. “And I should love to come. Though I don’t want you to think you have to look after my week-end as well as the boys’ week-end.”
While the boys had their supper she watched him from time to time, and tried to read from his expression if the talk with Anne had gone well, or badly. But he had been a good actor too long to give away any of his inmost thoughts, and all she saw was a perfect performance of a carefree uncle giving his time and attention to his two nephews.
Then, when they had said good night to the boys they went down to his waiting car and he drove her to the quiet Italian restaurant where they had first lunched together.
In the car she had refrained from asking any questions. And it was not until their first course was before them, and he raised his glass to her for a moment with a slight smile, that she said, “Well, what happened with Anne?”
“A very long conversation, which I’m sure she found most amusing and I found infuriating, but which, in point of fact, decided nothing,” he replied. And although his tone was light, almost careless, she saw suddenly that he was under a good deal of strain.
“Do you want to tell me about it?”
“Yes.” He nodded. “You’re about the only person I should want to t
ell about it. It’s not easy to describe one’s mortifying experiences to most people.”
“I’m sorry. Was it so bad?”
“Oh, there was not exactly what one would call a scene,” he said rather wearily. “For one thing, that young brother of hers was there.”
“Carstairs? How very unsuitable,” exclaimed Sydney.
“He was no real trouble.”
“I meant unsuitable for him,” Sydney said.
“Oh!” he seemed to think Carstairs must look after himself. “He contributed a few indignant and not very helpful generalities to the discussion, that was all. But at least his presence restrained Anne from making any reference to the days when we—felt differently about each other.”
“I’m glad of that,” Sydney said rather drily, and then blushed because Lucas Manning grinned at her quizzically.
“Well, anyway, she started by reproaching me, very effectively, I must say, for letting the boys think her dead. Which reminds me, of course, that we still have to tackle Edward on that question.”
“No,” Sydney said. “I forgot to tell you. I explained about it to him this afternoon. And he took it very well.”
“He did? So well that you forgot all about it?”
“I’m sorry. You see—”
“No, don’t apologize. I wish you’d come and run my theatre for me. I don’t believe any first-class crisis could live and breathe in your calm presence.”
Sydney laughed and colored.
“Oh, yes it can. I’ve proved that. But please go on. What happened after Anne had reproached you and you, I presume, had justified yourself?”
“ ‘Tried unsuccessfully to justify myself’ would perhaps be more accurate,” he corrected. “She then asked what I intended to do in the future, and I told her I meant things to go on exactly as they were. At this point young Carstairs intervened with rather more about her maternal feelings than she quite wanted, I think. She was a little curt with him, being afraid, I imagine, that she might suddenly find herself saddled with the two children, on the strength of an emotional appeal.”
“Did she say what she does want?” enquired Sydney practically.
“Only that she wanted to see them, and that she didn’t consider I could provide a suitable home for them.”
“Not a suitable home?” Sydney was quite indignant. “How did she make that out?”
“A bachelor’s apartment with no woman’s influence was no home for two young children, in her opinion,” stated Lucas Manning drily. “She implied that she was ready to go to court on that.”
“But they’re at a good boarding school most of the time.”
“Of course. But that argument did not seem to impress her. We kept on coming back to the bachelor apartment with no woman making a home for the children.”
Sydney frowned.
“And the real point of that was—what?”
“I suppose, my dear, that if I married her the family would be beautifully united and the children would have their mother once more.”
“But”—Sydney was aghast—“you didn’t fall for that, I hope?”
“No.”
“You ignored it?”
“Not altogether.”
“What then?" She was nervous, and showed it more than she intended.
“I told her that perhaps there was something in what she was saying, and that fortunately I was thinking of getting married, in any case.”
“You—” Sydney felt a little as though she had stepped off a too high step. “But you—aren’t, are you?”
“I wasn’t, until Anne started hammering away at the idea.”
“Then it was just a—a piece of bravado, a temporary measure, to put her off?”
“At first perhaps it was. Then suddenly, Sydney, I began to ask myself if the solution to most of my home problems were not to marry someone I—liked very much. Someone good and kind and humorous who would make an ideal mother for the boys.”
Sydney passed her tongue over suddenly dry lips.
“Do you—know such a person?” she asked almost timidly, and she looked across at the slightly bent dark head of the famous actor-manager.
He did not raise his head, but he raised his eyes and looked back at her.
“I’m inclined to think, my dear, that I do,” he replied.
CHAPTER TEN
SYDNEY gasped and said very quickly, “I—I don’t think I know what you mean.”
“Well, I see you do,” he replied with a smile, and lightly put his hand over hers which was resting on the table. “Do you find it such a bad plan, Sydney?”
“Do you mean—me?”
“Of course. Who else do I know who is half so good and kind and humorous; or who would make such a wonderful mother for the boys?”
She was silent for a moment, thinking confusedly of Alistair smiling at her and accepting her in advance, and of Edward listening trustingly to her as she explained about his mother. But one did not make tremendous decisions because of two little boys, however much they might tug at one’s heart.
“I’m terribly fond of them,” she said aloud. “But I couldn’t make them a reason for—marrying.”
“I hadn’t thought of them as the sole attraction,” he retorted. And although he laughed, she saw he was faintly piqued.
“Oh, I’m sorry—I didn’t mean—” She looked down at their hands. “You mustn’t think I don’t like you immensely,” she said earnestly. “But, as you know better than anyone else, I—love Hugh.”
“Oh! Lulworth?” He seemed to have forgotten Hugh, and to remember him now with reluctance. “Does he really come into this?”
“It’s a little difficult to keep him out,” she said with a slight smile. “After all, if I love him—”
“Do you have to repeat that when I’m proposing to you?” He made a humorous grimace. “It isn’t entirely relevant, really. Let’s look at this thing realistically, Sydney. I’m not offering you, or demanding from you, a tremendous love affair. If you like, I’m offering you no more than a very good second-best. But you’ve already more or less decided that Hugh is lost to you...”
“Oh, I haven’t!—quite.”
He stopped at her slight, pained cry of protest.
“No?” He looked at her quizzically. “Have you decided that you’ll go into the lists against Marcia?”
“I haven’t decided anything. That’s the unhappy truth.” Without knowing it, Sydney turned her hand and clasped his fingers nervously. “Sometimes I’m ashamed of myself for not knowing my own mind better, and sometimes I know that I’m just waiting and waiting for the sort of occasional miracle which does happen once in a thousand times. If Hugh suddenly thought it worth everything to break through all the complications—to break his engagement to Marcia and marry me—” She stopped.
“Do you see any signs of this happening?” he enquired drily.
“No. But that doesn’t prevent my going on hoping. And anyway, you were the one who first encouraged me to do so,” she added a little indignantly.
“I did? What a shocking lack of foresight on my part.” He smiled at her. “When did I do that?”
“When you told me that if he were not committed to Marcia in the eyes of the whole school, you thought he would throw her over and—and admit he loved me.”
“But he is committed to Marcia,” replied Lucas Manning, softly and regretfully.
She gave him a quick glance.
“And you think that makes all the difference?”
“I don’t know, my dear. I don’t know Lulworth well enough to make a guess. It would be asking a good deal of any man that he should precipitate such a crisis in his own affairs.”
“But he might.”
He nodded.
“Yes, he might. And I do see that beside the thought of a glorious gamble for ‘love and the world well lost’ a mere offer of affection and security must seem pretty dull.”
“It’s not dull!” exclaimed Sydney. “Nothing about you is du
ll to any woman, and well you know it. But to close the door, Lucas—to close the door!” She had never called him that before, but now it came quite naturally. “Don’t you remember, you once said yourself that sometimes we close the door deliberately, thinking to make ourselves safe, with no way back. And then suddenly we find, too late, that the one person who matters is on the wrong side of the door.”
He smiled, that curious half tender, half cynical smile to which even critics were not impervious, and, raising her hand, he touched it lightly with his lips.
“My sweet, you shall close no doors on account of me,” he told her. “And you shall make no quick and regretted decisions because of anything I’ve said. If you like, you may even forget everything I’ve said this evening...”
“No, I shouldn’t want to do that,” she told him quickly, and this time it was her eyes that smiled.
“Well then, at least store it away in your memory and don’t take it out again unless you yourself want to. There must be other solutions to the Anne problem,” he shrugged. “Though when I watch that slow smile of yours, I confess I can’t think of any as attractive,” he conceded lightly.
“Thank you.” She laughed then, more than a little relieved that they were somehow back on a carefree, unproblematical footing.
It was only when he had taken her back to her hotel, and she lay in bed thinking over the events of the evening, that she fully realized the astonishing fact that she had actually refused an offer of marriage from one of the most sought-after men on the English stage. She supposed some women, who paid hard-earned money just to see Lucas Manning in Yours to Command, would have thought her crazy.
The remaining two days of the half-term week-end passed pleasantly and uneventfully enough. With Lucas Manning she remained on perfectly easy and friendly terms. No further reference was made to his astounding proposal, and sometimes she almost wondered if she had imagined the scene in the restaurant, so little was their relationship changed. But one thing served to remind her that a change had taken place. Now, when they were alone, she called him “Lucas”, and it seemed perfectly natural that she should.
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