Yours to Command

by Mary Burchell

  For a quarter of an hour Sydney waited, her nerves rather taut, every sense keyed to the slightest sound from the telephone. But no ring came, and so she called Edward to her and, in the most matter-of-fact way, informed him that they were going to collect Alistair from Prep, as there was a visitor for them both.

  “Is it my uncle?” enquired Edward eagerly.

  “Your uncle is there,” Sydney said. “But there’s someone else as well. You’ll hear all about it from the Headmaster, I expect.”

  Alistair showed less curiosity when he heard he was to go with Sydney. But he was a sociable child who was always ready to make any sort of visit and thrusting his hand into hers, he prepared to accompany her.

  Arriving at the Head’s house they were immediately shown into the pleasant drawing-room, where the atmosphere was much more informal than in the study. Hugh and the boys’ uncle were standing talking near the window, and Anne was sitting, a little wide-eyed and very beautiful, in a low chair not far away.

  “Oh, come in, Matron.” Hugh crossed the room to greet the group, and it was obvious that he too intended to preserve an unemotional and matter-of-fact atmosphere for as long as possible. “I asked Matron to bring you boys over here because we have a visitor for you—” he began.

  But Alistair, who was uninhibited and blissfully unconscious of higher authority, gave a little skip of pleasure at this point, and cried, “Hello, Uncle,” and rushed over to Lucas.

  Edward blushed for his brother’s lack of savoir-faire and said, “Yes, sir.” But he looked curiously, and just a trifle apprehensively, at Anne.

  “I’m a visitor for you too, Edward,” Anne said at that moment. “Come and speak to me, darling. I’m your mother.”

  Whatever form of preparation Hugh might have had in mind was thus rendered unnecessary. And while the Headmaster frowned and Sydney held her breath, Edward slowly approached his mother. Alistair, busily greeting his uncle and enquiring after any possible presents, remained impervious to the scene.

  “Well, haven’t you anything to say to me?” Anne laughed, just a little impatiently, and took her elder son by the hand.

  “Hello,” said Edward, without any visible signs of emotion.

  “Well, that isn’t very heartwarming,” remarked Anne, patting his cheek before she kissed him. “Bring Alistair over and see what he has to say.”

  Obediently Edward went over and fetched his young brother, while the grown-ups looked on in silence.

  “Alistair, this is our mother,” Edward stated solemnly.

  Alistair stood with his legs apart and regarded Anne without favor.

  “No she isn’t. Matron’s going to be our mother,” he said rather aggressively.

  “Matron?” Anne threw an angry glance at Sydney. “I never heard such nonsense. Matron has nothing whatever to do with you, except in term time.”

  “Yes, she does,” retorted Alistair, unmoved, except that he went very red and scowled at Anne. “She lives with my uncle in the holidays and we live there too, and that makes her our mother, and I don’t want anyone else.”

  “But I am your mother—” began Anne furiously, “I tell you—”

  But she was no match for Alistair.

  “MATRON’S MY MOTHER,” he cried, and great tears started from his eyes, and suddenly his mouth became a square hole in a round face and he let out a bellow of woe that must, Sydney thought, have been heard at Park House.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  FOR a moment everyone was stunned by the suddenness and the resonance of Alistair’s protest. The quiet elegance of the room was shattered and everyone blanched a little before the onslaught.

  Then Sydney dropped on her knees beside the distressed child, no longer the well-disciplined matron but simply the loving girl who knew what it was to have one’s hopes blasted and one’s world turned upside down.

  “Don’t cry, darling,” she said, and somehow her soft tones dominated the din. “Don’t cry.” She put her arms round him and hugged him close. “We’ll think of something, I promise you. We’ll arrange something between us.”

  Alistair gave an enormous hiccough of grief and stopped crying, though the corners of his mouth were still turned down and tears trickled down his flushed cheeks. Then he gave one baleful glance at Anne and buried his face against Sydney.

  “I never heard such nonsense!” Anne jumped up, nervous and distracted by a scene which was not of her own creating. “If that’s how the children are trained in the Prep., I don’t think much of it.”

  “No training is required for this particular display,” Hugh assured her with a certain dry humor. “It is quite spontaneous.”

  “So was the disclosure, I suppose!” Anne shot a spiteful glance at Sydney. “ ‘She lives with my uncle in the holidays,’ ” she quoted, with contemptuous amusement.

  “She does too!” shouted Alistair, raising his head from Sydney’s shoulder. And, in spite of all that Fernhurst Prep, might have done for his manners, he put out his tongue at his mother.

  “That will do,” said Hugh quietly, and Alistair’s tongue disappeared like lightning. “I don’t think this is a very useful or edifying scene, and certainly there is no point in prolonging it. Will you please take the boys back to their houses, Matron, and then return here.”

  His tone was quite impersonal, and certainly held no trace of censure. But something in his cool, thoughtful glance made her color.

  “I should like to say—” began Lucas, apparently also aware of some disturbing quality in that glance.

  “Quite. But not in front of the children,” Hugh returned irresistibly, and even Lucas was silenced.

  So Sydney took Alistair by one hand and lightly put her arm round Edward’s shoulders to shepherd him out of the room. He glanced back once at his mother, but in incredulity rather than distress, Sydney thought, and then they went out of the room and out of the house.

  Edward was silent and thoughtful, but Alistair was immediately cheerful, being a good deal flown with his own success at having so abruptly terminated a scene which he had greatly disliked.

  “Will she go away now, Matron?” he enquired.

  “I expect so,” said Sydney, without any idea at all of what Anne’s plans might be.

  “I didn’t like her,” stated Alistair, apparently under the impression that he had not made this entirely clear.

  “She didn’t like us,” said Edward, speaking for the first time. “She was just showing off.”

  For almost any other woman Sydney would have managed to find some sort of excuse. She felt even now that she ought not to let that go entirely unanswered. But there was something so surprising and yet final about the way Edward spoke that she could think of no form of defence for Anne.

  Still keeping Edward with her, Sydney handed Alistair back into Prep. Matron’s care.

  “Not a very successful occasion,” she managed to murmur without Alistair’s hearing her. “It needs playing down rather.”

  Prep. Matron nodded.

  Sydney and Edward returned to Park House. And, as they went, Sydney wondered what she should say to the child beside her so that this scene might slide from his memory as painlessly as it was evidently going to slide from Alistair’s.

  But before she could decide on anything, Edward himself spoke.

  “We shan’t have to live with her, shall we, Matron?”

  “No dear, I don’t think so.” After Anne’s display of maternal indifference, Sydney felt she could venture to say that. “Your uncle loves you both very much and is most anxious to keep you, if it can be arranged.”

  “Why doesn’t she like us?” asked Edward, as though that fact still caused him astonishment. “I thought mothers always liked you.”

  "I don’t think you must assume she doesn’t like you, Edward.” Sydney spoke with an air of cheerful authority which she was far from feeling. “She isn’t used to you, you know, and—”

  “But if she’d liked us she would have had us with her,” Edw
ard said, having evidently grasped the essential truth of that. “And if she’d had us with her, she’d have been used to us.”

  This was unanswerable. So Sydney shifted her ground slightly and tried a harmless generalization.

  “It’s always difficult to tell just what people are thinking or feeling, particularly when it’s an unusual occasion.”

  “It was easy to tell what Alistair was thinking,” Edward remarked, and grinned with a certain degree of pride in his young brother.

  Sydney laughed, relieved that Edward could find even a mild joke in the whole incident, and then Edward laughed too.

  “I had no idea he could make such a noise,” Sydney said.

  “Oh, he can do better than that,” declared Edward, cheering up very much at the thought of the family accomplishments.

  “Well, I hope he never does when I’m there,” Sydney said with a smile. “But I don’t imagine there will ever be an occasion to upset him like that again.”

  “Don’t you think so, Matron?” Edward looked up at her, eager for reassurance, she saw, and very willing to accept it if she would give it.

  Sydney hesitated, but only for a second. It might be taking a risk to make assertions where the facts were still not known. But this, she thought, was a moment when one might justifiably gamble on one’s own judgment.

  “I very much doubt,” she said calmly, “if you will ever hear anything more of this.”

  Edward’s face cleared like magic.

  “You mean—we won’t even have to see her again?”

  “I don’t know enough to speak positively, Edward.” Sydney ruffled his dark hair with a kindly, reassuring hand. “But my own feeling is that your uncle is going to settle it all in a way that will satisfy you and Alistair completely.”

  “Oh, thank you, Matron! I’m so glad.” Edward looked as guileless and carefree as Alistair. “Can I go to the rehearsal now? Curtis will be hopping mad if I’m any later.”

  “Yes. Run along,” Sydney said with a smile. And as the elder Manning child rushed off towards the Rec., she stood looking after him with a good deal of relief in her heart.

  Slowly and rather reluctantly, Sydney made her way back towards the Head’s house. Despising herself a little for her cowardice, she even took the longer way round, through the shrubbery, in order to postpone the unwished-for interview a few minutes longer.

  If Lucas and Anne were still there, of course, at least their presence would temper the intimacy of her scene with Hugh. But, on the other hand, Anne would be more likely to add to, rather than apologize for, her previous insinuations.

  On the whole, Sydney thought, a straight talk with Hugh might be less embarrassing than another free-for-all with Anne being as spiteful as she obviously felt.

  At that point she emerged from the shrubbery, stopped suddenly, and then instinctively drew back into the shelter of the trees. From where she stood she had an uninterrupted and fairly close view of Hugh’s house and Lucas and Anne were, at that moment, coming out of the front door.

  A car stood at the bottom of the steps, a car which Sydney had already recognized as Anne’s, and for a minute or two they paused beside it, in conversation. From where she was Sydney could not see their expression or guess the purport of what they were saying. But she supposed they were exchanging cool, possibly bitter, words of goodbye.

  It was like watching a scene on a stage. The disturber of their peace taking her leave at last; probably never to trouble them again.

  And then, just as she had come to this comforting conclusion, Sydney saw the other girl raise her hands on to Lucas’s shoulders, in an intimate, almost affectionate little gesture. There was a moment’s pause. Then he put his arms round her and kissed her. Not a light, brief, mocking kiss. But a kiss which seemed, to the watching girl, to last long enough for her world to fall in pieces for the second time in her life.

  It was the most incredible, the most dreadful moment of self-revelation. For, while she watched Lucas kiss Anne, she was aware not so much of stunning surprise, nor even of disgust that he could, after all, yield like this to her sheer physical attractions against his better judgment. What consumed her at this wholly unexpected scene was crude, simple, raging jealousy.

  It was over now, that revealing moment of embrace. Anne had stepped into the car, and for a few seconds longer Lucas stood there, graceful and handsome in the evening light. Then Sydney saw a hand wave from the car window, and he stepped back, raising his hand in that gay, half-mocking salute which she had been foolish enough to suppose was for her alone, and the car drove away.

  Still Lucas stood looking after it, but Sydney made no attempt to go to him. She stood among the sheltering trees, watching, an observer now, not part of his life, as she had supposed. Then he turned and, instead of reentering the house, he crossed the lawn rapidly in the direction of the Rec., which lay at the back of Park House.

  Sydney drew a long breath and discovered that she was cold and trembling a little. When she was sure she would not be within his range of vision, she stepped out from among the trees and walked rapidly towards the Head’s house.

  Even now she could hardly believe it! That Lucas, who had actually been present when Anne had behaved so badly, so inadequately to her two children, could, in so short a time, have come to heel and be ready to kiss her and wave to her in that intimate friendly way.

  It was true then, what he had hinted in the beginning, that although he had no illusions about her, he still could not entirely resist the physical attraction which she exercised upon him. He was just the victim of a very lovely, very unscrupulous woman.

  But not a victim for whom Sydney felt any pity. He was just weak. Weak enough, in the final event, to put his own personal feelings before the interests of the two nephews he was supposed to love and want to protect.

  What did he suppose would happen to them now? And, at the thought of Edward’s eager, reassured little face, Sydney felt fresh anger and distress. She had assured him that his uncle would find a solution to make him and Alistair happy. Not that she had had any idea what this might be, but she had felt confident that Lucas Manning would somehow find a way to protect the interests and happiness of the two little boys for whom he had so determinedly assumed responsibility.

  Now it looked as though they might, after all, be thrown to the wolves of personal desire and self-interest. If Lucas could really go kissing and approving Anne after such a scene, she thought angrily, it could mean only one thing. In the end he would do whatever Anne demanded, and the children would almost certainly find themselves restored to her indifferent care when she became their uncle’s wife.

  “It’s monstrous, after all his protests!” Sydney told herself, stabbed afresh by the thought of all that this must imply. And she mounted the steps to Hugh’s front door in a state of suppressed anger which was no good preparation for conducting a rather delicate interview with her employer.

  She was admitted to his study this time, not to the more informal drawing-room. And Hugh, sitting behind his big desk, looked very much more the remote Head than the man who had spoken warmly of the past and defended her ‘so unhesitatingly’ to Marcia. But he said quite pleasantly, “Come in, Sydney. The others have gone—which is perhaps just as well. How about the boys?”

  Determinedly calming herself, Sydney explained, not without humor, how she had left Alistair in very good spirits and apparently quite unharmed by the emotional scene in which he had taken part.

  “I’m not so sure about Edward.” She frowned thoughtfully. “When they are a few years older everything makes more impression, of course. But I think I was able to reassure him, temporarily, at any rate. A good deal depends on—on future decisions, I suppose.”

  “I suppose it does,” Hugh agreed rather drily. “Manning and the boys’ mother will have to fight it out between them and give us a clear-cut decision for the future. I have no intention of having any repetition of this afternoon’s scene.”

  “I hope
the children’s best interests will be kept in mind when the decisions are made,” said Sydney, in a tone of misgiving which seemed to surprise him.

  “Have you any reason to suppose they won’t?” he enquired.

  “Only that—that when there are these family disputes it’s so often the children who come off worst.”

  “True.” Again he gave her that speculative glance. “You know a good deal about these children, don’t you, Sydney, and the general set-up which surrounds them?”

  “Y-yes.”

  “You haven’t been altogether frank with me about your own part in the picture, I think. But that—”

  “I hope,” she exclaimed indignantly, “that you didn’t attach any importance to Anne’s absurd insinuations.”

  “I shouldn’t attach importance to any unsupported statement of that young woman,” Hugh replied calmly. “You need not be afraid of being hastily misjudged by me, Sydney. I think it should be enough for you that I defended you from Marcia.”

  “Oh, Hugh—I’m sorry! Did—did that precipitate the break between you?”

  He paused, as though considering that for a moment, then he smiled slightly.

  “I suppose it did. But, though it’s not for me to enlarge on the subject, I won’t deny that the break was far from being an unmixed disaster.”

  She was silent, relieved to have this assurance, but curiously untouched by it. She thought that she ought to be transported with joy—trembling and eager now for whatever he should say next. But somehow she was calm and completely unshaken.

  Something fundamental had happened to her in the last few hours. Something which had broken the spring of her passionate concern for Hugh. Instead of waiting breathlessly for his every word, she found herself thinking critically that he was altogether too self-controlled, measuring out his phrases with far too much care, as though the situation were an academic, rather than a personal, one.