by Anne Weale
“I daresay he was milder than he looked,” he said carelessly. “I believe he made several attempts to patch things up with my father, but none of them was successful.”
“What did they have a row about?” Carola asked. “Everyone knows there was a colossal bust-up, but no one knows why.”
Before he could reply, Doctor Burney came in and Rachel slipped away to put the finishing touches to the supper table. She took little part in the conversation during the meal, in the course of which it emerged that Daniel Elliot had travelled all over the world and had a catholic and informed taste in art, literature and music.
Although her aunt made covert attempts to subdue her, Carola had no hesitation in firing a stream of questions at him, her approval increasing when she learnt that he could pilot a plane, had been on a photographic safari in Africa, spent the previous Christmas skiing in Switzerland and seen all the, important plays and musical shows of the past two years. By the time they had reached the coffee stage it was sickeningly clear to Rachel that, far from being an uncouth product of the Canadian backwoods, Daniel Elliot knew ten times more of the world than anyone she had met.
“May I give you a hand with the washing up?” he asked her, as they rose to return to the sitting room.
“Thank you, but I’d really rather do it myself,” she said politely.
“Rachel’s the madly domesticated type. You’d probably put everything back in the wrong place and then she’d have to reorganize them. You hate things to be out of order, don’t you, sweetie?” Carola said teasingly.
Rachel smiled, wondering why a passion for tidiness always sounded such a petty, old-maidish foible. “I do a bit,” she admitted evenly. “I’ll make some more coffee. I won’t be long.”
She had dried the last plate and was setting the clean coffee cups on a tray, when a dark-haired, spectacled young man put his head through the kitchen window and said, “Coming for a walk, Rachel?”
“Oh, hello, Edward. No, I can’t tonight,” she said regretfully. “We’ve got a visitor. Come in and pay your respects to the new lord of the manor. He’s in the sitting room with the others.”
“Yes, I heard the prodigal grandson had finally turned up,” Edward said, coming through the door. “It’s all over the village. What’s he like?”
“Quite pleasant,” she said evasively, going to the pantry for some more milk.
Edward leaned against the dresser, watching her. He was tall and lanky with a thin clever face and slightly stooped shoulders. As a small boy he had never fitted into the rowdy gang of local lads, and later, when he went to .Branford Grammar School and walked away with most of the academic laurels, his few friends had been similarly quiet and studious. Oddly, Rachel, then a pig-tailed tomboy, had liked him better than the more boisterous youths.
“Is that a new dress?” he asked presently.
She laughed. “No, one of Carola’s cast-offs. You’ve seen it dozens of times.”
“You always look very nice, whatever you wear,” he said gravely. “I say, Rachel—” He broke off, fiddling with the strap of his wrist watch.
“Mm, what?” she asked, wishing the kettle would hurry up and boil.
“I rather wanted to see you tonight.”
“You sound very mysterious. What’s up?”
He hesitated. “Well ... for one thing, I’ve been promoted.”
“Oh, Edward, how lovely! Congratulations,” she said warmly. “You ought to be out drinking champagne—but I suppose that wouldn’t; do now you’re a V.I.P.”
He flushed, pleased by her enthusiasm. “I wouldn’t say that exactly,” he said modestly. “It is pretty encouraging though, and of course my income will improve considerably. That’s why I wanted you to be the first to know.”
Rachel smiled at him. “I always knew you’d do great things,” she said affectionately.
And then, because it seemed the appropriate gesture and because she had known him for so long, she laid her hands lightly on his shoulders and reached up to kiss his cheek.
Edward’s reaction to this, was to clasp her eagerly round the waist and return the kiss so heartily that she was too much taken aback to do anything but submit. When, after a moment, he released her, she was too breathless and shaken to free herself and could only stand, dazedly in the circle of his arms, trying to decide whether she had liked it.
“Oh, Rachel, don’t you see, I can ask you to marry me now,” he said huskily. “You do care for me, dearest? You will say yes?”
Rachel stared at him blankly. She had known for years that Edward was fond of her and that everyone assumed that they would eventually marry. In a vague wait-till-it-happens way, she had assumed it herself. But, now that he had actually proposed, she discovered that she had no notion how to answer him. Although she was twenty-four, she still thought of marriage as something in the future. To find that it had suddenly become an immediate possibility was startling, and faintly alarming.
“I don’t know, Edward,” she said lamely. “I’m not sure. It’s all so ... so sudden.”
And then, as she searched for words to explain that she was touched and flattered but that it wasn’t a question which could be settled in a split second, a movement in the doorway caught her eye and she turned her head, a wave of furious and embarrassed color suffusing her face and throat.
Calmly, his mouth twitching, his eyes brilliant with undisguised amusement, Daniel Elliot strolled forward.
“I came to carry the tray for you,” he said politely. “I seem to have chosen an inopportune moment.”
For what seemed an eternity but was actually about fifteen seconds, there was a strained silence. Anyone with a skin thinner than a rhinoceros hide, Rachel thought furiously, would have muttered an apology and hastily retreated. Daniel Elliot, whose lack of decent feeling was beyond belief, merely moved across to deal with the neglected kettle, seemingly oblivious of any want of tact.
Glaring at his broad back, Rachel felt a sudden sympathy with people who, goaded to the limit of their patience, resorted to violence. As he poured the hot water out of the coffee pot and replaced it with coffee, she felt a spasm of white-hot rage which, had she had a suitable missile to hand, would almost certainly have driven her to throw it at him.
Edward was the first to recover from his confusion.
“You must be Elliot,” he said. “My name is Harvey. I'm ... er ... an old friend of the family.”
“So I gathered,” Daniel said dryly. “Glad to know you.” He held out his hand and, to Rachel’s annoyance, Edward accepted it and gave him a sheepish grin.
“Marvellous weather, isn’t it?” he said clumsily. “Jolly different from last year. We hardly had a fine day all summer. But I suppose you’re used to heat waves. Going to settle here?”
“Possibly.” Daniel replaced the coffee pot on the tray and picked it up, waiting for Rachel to precede them to the door.
She expected Edward to find some pretext to stay behind, but he said nothing and, after a second’s pause, she stalked into the hall. Pouring out the coffee, she was conscious of his glance straying towards her while he talked to her father. Daniel was sitting on the sofa with Carola.
“You’d better go up and start your homework, Suzy,” Rachel said presently. “You should have gone straight up after supper. You were late to bed last night.”
“I haven’t much to do tonight. Just some French vocab. and a poem for Stringy’s class tomorrow. Will you hear me say it later on?”
“Yes, of course. What poem is it?”
“I haven’t decided yet. We can choose from three. I say”—Suzy leaned over the back of her chair and whispered conspiratorially—“isn’t he super!” She jerked her head at Daniel.
“Hardly up to Paul Newman’s standard, I should have thought,” Rachel said dryly, under cover of a burst of laughter from Carola and a skittish titter from Miss Burney.
“I’ve gone off Paul Newman,” Suzy said seriously.
“Oh, why? You were mad
about him last week,” Rachel reminded her.
Suzy was an embryo Carola, plunging into transports of calf love over a succession of film stars. But Rachel’s teasing was gentle, for she remembered her own adolescent raptures, most of them inspired by actors who were old enough to be her father if not her grandfather.
“Look, you must get a move on or you’ll never learn the poem by nine,” she said, breaking into her sister’s rambling explanation of why Mr. Newman’s prolonged fascination had suddenly gone sour.
“Oh, all right. Honestly, I don’t know a single other girl of my age who has to be in bed by nine-thirty,” Suzy grumbled. “You know I can’t sleep till it’s dark.”
“Never mind. You’re resting,” Rachel said firmly. “The way you hare about, I’m surprised you don’t collapse into bed at seven. There’re some bananas in the pantry if you’re still hungry ” When the child had gone, she sat back in her chair and sipped her coffee, hoping that Suzy’s fancy, temporarily free, was not going to light on Daniel. In her present mood, the thought of having his praises sung at breakfast and supper and all day long on Sundays was an added irritant.
She played with a loose thread on the arm of the chair, wishing she had a valid excuse to slip away and be by herself for a while. It was certain that, before he left, Edward would find a means to catch her alone and repeat his interrupted proposal. How was she going to answer him?
Rachel’s difficulties in life had nearly always been caused by the fact that her nature was a troublesome mixture of dreamy idealism and clearheaded common sense. In everyday affairs, the common sense side predominated, but on matters of greater moment she was liable to let her emotions run away with her. Where love was concerned, she was torn between the view—based on other people’s experiences—that happy marriages were rarely the outcome of a grand passion, and a deep-seated romantic conviction that love was seldom made up of such sensible components as a common background and shared interests, but was a kind of recurring miracle which either happened or did not happen, a lucky chance given to some and denied to others. This feeling that love was a gift from the gods, and not merely the result of wise judgment on the part of the couple involved, was supported by her parents’ experience.
Richard Burney had been a penurious medical student when he had met Angela Brandon, the spoiled and frivolous daughter of a wealthy stockbroker. Half an hour after their introduction, they had known themselves to be in love and, three months later, ignoring the objections and disapproval of both their families, they had married and gone to Italy for an idyllic honeymoon. Her mother had often talked to Rachel about their early struggles; the dingy furnished rooms where they had set up home, the nagging worry about money, the mingled excitement and dismay when they had found that a baby was on the way. For the first five years after their marriage, Angela had had to make ends meet on what had formerly been her quarterly dress allowance because Richard refused to accept any financial aid from his father-in-law. Then, gradually, they had got on their feet, and by the time Carola could toddle, they were beginning to afford small luxuries.
But even when things had looked blackest, even when they were beginning to wonder if they would ever achieve security, their love for each other had never wavered. When Angela had been weary and fretful, conscious that housework and babies had sapped much of the careless vitality she had once possessed, Richard’s tenderness and understanding had given her fresh energy and renewed determination to win through this testing time. And when Richard had suffered periodic bouts of depression, nagged by the feeling that he had had no right to take her away from the ease and pleasure of her old life, Angela’s enchanting smile and the passionate certainty with which she had whispered that he, and he alone, was all her happiness, had swiftly dissipated his gloom. For twenty years, they had continued to adore each other, and on the day of his wife’s death, Richard Burney had sat by her bed, his shoulders suddenly bowed, his strong kind face a mask of anguish. Without her, the core of his existence was gone.
Remembering how gay and happy they had been together, Rachel’s eyes filled with tears and she hurriedly blinked, them away. The fact that her, father and mother had been ideally suited was of little help in her present dilemma. She knew that she was not wildly, crazily in love with Edward in the way that her parents had been. But then she had known Edward for so long that the circumstances were quite different. Perhaps if she had met him at a dance or found him watching her at a party, then she might have felt the same tingling excitement which her mother had once described to her. But unless it hit one like a cyclone or a streak of lightning, how was one to recognize love? Was it love that she felt for Edward, or only a friendly affection?
“You’re awfully quiet tonight, Ray,” Carola said suddenly when Daniel was speaking to the other men. “Don’t you feel well?”
“Yes—yes, of course,” Rachel said quickly, mustering a smile. “Oh, bother! There’s the phone. Who’s ill now, I wonder?”
But, for once, it was not a summons for her father, but a request to speak to Carola. Asking the caller to hold on, Rachel went back to the sitting room and told her sister that someone named Peter Brooke was on the line.
“Oh lord! What a bore!” Carola said, frowning. “I wish you’d ask before you tell them I’m in, Ray. He’ll hang on for hours and I’ve been trying to avoid him.”
“Sorry. I thought he sounded rather nice,” Rachel said. She was not sure whether her sister’s lack of enthusiasm was genuine or for the benefit of their guest. In either case, it would not take her long to dispose of Mr. Brooke if she wanted to do so.
Rachel sometimes thought that being so attractive was as great a disadvantage as being born plain. Carola had had so many eager admirers in the past four years that she was inclined to disdain any young man who did not possess all the qualities she considered essential in a potential escort.
Edward and her father were still engrossed in conversation, and as she moved to collect the coffee cups, Miss Burney said, “I’m going up to fetch a hanky, dear. Now, why don’t you show Mr. Elliot the garden? I’m sure he’d be most interested in your pretty rockery.”
"Oh no, Aunt Flo—”
But, ignoring her niece’s protest, Miss Burney took advantage of a break in the men’s talk to say brightly, “I was just telling Rachel that you might like to see our garden, Mr. Elliot. Of course it can’t be compared with your grandfather’s splendid grounds—which must be in a sad state of neglect by now, I fear—but it really is rather charming. Rachel has green fingers, you know. She’s never happier than when she’s tending her flowers or preserving the fruit we grow. One rarely finds such a domesticated girl nowadays.”
“No, indeed,” Daniel said blandly. And, before Rachel could voice an adequate excuse, “I should be delighted to see the garden. Will you excuse us, sir?”
“By all means.” Doctor Burney, unaware that his daughter was willing him to join them, turned to say something to Edward.
Outside the french windows, Daniel paused to light another cigarette.
“You’re furious with me, I suppose,” he said lazily.
Rachel raised her eyebrows. “Furious? What on earth do you mean?”
“Don’t take it too hard. At least I was sufficiently discreet not to distract his attention at the vital moment. You’d have been even more cross if I’d butted in before he’d popped the question.”
Rachel’s nails dug into her palms and she had to choke down a scathing retort.
“Do you often eavesdrop on people’s private conversations, Mr. Elliot?” she asked frostily, after a moment. It was useless to pretend she did not understand him.
“Not unless it’s unavoidable—as it was in this case,” he replied evenly. “I didn’t skulk down the hall on all fours, you know. If you hadn’t been so ... absorbed in what Harvey was saying, you’d have heard me coming.”
“Possibly—but you didn’t have to stand there watching us,” she retorted, with a scornful glance.
/> “I was too fascinated to move,” he said satirically. “I can’t say I was particularly impressed by Harvey’s technique, but you seemed to find it adequate. I take it that, in spite of your ‘this is so sudden’ routine, you’re going to accept him?”
Rachel drew in a breath, her mouth compressed. “Oh, really! You’re quite insufferable!” she exclaimed hotly. “If you weren’t my father’s guest, I’d ... I’d...”
Words failing her, she walked swiftly across the grass to the mulberry tree. She was trembling with anger and embarrassment. He gave her a few moments’ grace and then followed. Short of running out of the back gate or dashing back to the sitting room, she had no means of escaping him.
“Would you feel slightly less hostile if I told you I’d decided not to sell the Hall?” he asked casually.
She stared at him. “Have the contractors changed their minds and withdrawn their offer?” she asked sarcastically.
“No. I’ve made up mine.”
“What are you going to do with it, then?”
“Live there. Shall we sit down?”
She hesitated, then dropped into a deck chair and watched him seat himself. “What’s made you decide to stay?” she asked presently.
He shrugged. “You could call it an impulse, I suppose. I have them occasionally.”
“Impulses wear off,” she said coolly.
He grinned at her. “Thinking it would be better for the place to rot than to have me around?”
“You over-estimate yourself, Mr. Elliot. Whether you go or stay is a matter of complete indifference to me,” she said sweetly. “But won’t you find it rather tame here after all your exploits abroad?”
He laughed, but for a second there was a flicker of steel in his glance and she had an unpleasant feeling that, if he chose, Daniel Elliot could be a dangerous adversary.
“Why do you dislike me so much?” he asked softly. “Just because you thought I was going to sell out, or because I butted into your big scene? Or do you take dislikes to people now and then?”
