by Anne Weale
She explained, moving across to the window to watch some other guests strolling about the garden.
“Don’t you mind? Having to give it up?” Daniel asked.
“No, not really. To make a living, I should have had to have done advertisements or something dull. This way, I can paint what I please and make some extra pin money,” she said. “How odd, your buying that one. Has it put you off it—finding out that I’m ‘the local fellow’?”
“On the contrary, I shall value it more highly,” he said gravely. “Have you ever painted this house?”
She leaned against the shutters, a fold of her skirt spreading over the low window seat.
“Yes, I’ve a whole folder of sketches. The autumn ones are the best, when all the leaves are turning and lying in drifts on the grass.”
“I’d like to see them, if you’d let me.”
“Of course.”
She turned to look at him and was startled to find him so close, the angular lines of his lean face accentuated by the vermilion glow of the sun as it sank behind the woods. The light gave his tanned skin a bronze sheen and his eyes were dark and intent.
“I’d like you to see the rest of the house,” he said quietly. “Will you have dinner here one evening?” She swallowed, her pulses thudding suddenly. A compound of excitement and apprehension tightened her nerves so that, involuntarily, she made a backward movement, forgetting the window seat behind her legs. But for the swiftness with which he grasped her shoulders, she would probably have slipped and fallen against the panes. As it was, she stood still, her breathing unsteady, his fingers seeming to burn through the thin silk of her sleeves.
“You’re trembling,” he said. “What is it? Are you afraid of me?”
“No ... of course not.” She forced her lips into the semblance of a smile. “What a very odd question!”
His hands dropped and he moved aside. “Perhaps. You haven’t answered my first one yet.”
“Oh—dinner? Yes, I’d like to come.”
“I have to go up to London for a couple of days in the early part of the week. Would Thursday suit you?”
“Of course.”
“Fine. I’ll pick you up about seven,” he said. Five minutes later, escaping from the people to whom she had stopped to talk in the hall, Rachel slipped up the stairs. The bedroom was empty and with a sigh of, relief, she sank into the chair by the dressing table.
“Now truly, Ray, be honest—don’t you see how maddeningly attractive he is?” “Yes, I see that he's fairly good-looking, but I’m not going to swoon over him.”
Remembering Carola’s disbelief in her vaunted immunity from Daniel’s charm, she made a wry grimace. I should have reserved judgment, she thought. He is attractive! Very attractive!
She opened her bag and took out her compact, dabbing the puff on the block of compressed powder with a perplexed expression. She had always faintly despised the idea of being subject to a strong physical attraction. It had seemed to her that to be drawn to someone for no deeper reason than that they were good-looking was like admiring something in a shop, not because one really liked it, but because it was showy and expensive. But the odd thing, she reflected, was that Daniel was not really so good-looking, at least not in the conventional sense. True he was tall and broad-shouldered and obviously very fit, but his features were too strongly marked, too aggressively masculine, for him to be described as a handsome man.
And yet, just now in the study, she had felt the magnetism of his personality as strongly as an electric vibration and, for the few seconds that his hands had rested on her shoulders, the sensation of having no will, no power of resistance, had been frightening in its intensity.
What do I really know about him? she thought. Almost nothing. If he were not Sir Robert’s grandson, it would be months before any of us said more than a polite good day to him. And the fact that he is an Elliot doesn’t prove anything. His father was supposed to be a wild, shiftless sort of person. How do we know that Daniel doesn’t take after him? Just because this house belongs to him, we all assume that he’s decent and honest and trustworthy. But he may be quite otherwise. That agreeable manner and his interest in the village could be assumed, a mask to hide all kinds of unpleasant qualities. He said himself that most people wear a mask in public.
She began to powder her face, trying to ignore the inner voice that insisted she was being unjust, that her reluctance to succumb to his charm was making her unreasonably suspicious. It was true that his past was still a mystery, that none of them knew anything of his life up to the last eight weeks. But,
despite this, there was already a good deal of evidence that he was not an undesirable person.
The way in which he has restored the Hall to its original Regency elegance was proof of his taste. The fact that he had invited the whole village here tonight, and greeted old Ben Tubbitt as warmly as anyone, was another point in his favor. Even the way he talked to Suzy—not with an air of patronage, but with the same attention and courtesy which he gave to her seniors—suggested that he was kinder and more perceptive than many men.
Voices on the staircase put an end to her conjectures and, after retouching her mouth, she went downstairs and joined her father who was talking to a farmer and his wife.
“It’s getting on for ten, Daddy, but nobody looks like leaving for a while, so I think I’ll run Suzy home and see if Aunt Flo is all right,” she said presently.
“Yes, very well, dear,” her father agreed. “I daresay people will stay fairly late. It’s not every day that the village has a fling of this kind. I’m glad I’m not footing the bill.”
Rachel found Suzy, who was beginning to yawn, and they slipped outside to the doctor’s station wagon.
“I suspect you’ve been sneaking cocktails,” Rachel said with amusement as they turned out of the gates and Suzy gave another enormous yawn.
“I did have a glass of something which tasted awfully strong,” Suzy admitted. “Weren’t the eats super? Did you have one of those little pastry buckets with chicken all mashed up inside?”
“The vol-au-vents? Yes—delicious!” Rachel agreed.
“I had five,” her sister said smugly. “Weren’t the waiters nice? There was one little man who kept coming round my way, specially. I think he could tell I was hungry. Poor Mrs. Harvey! She got in an awful mess with a pastry thing with cream in it. She kept taking little weeny genteel bites and then suddenly all the cream sploshed out on her dress. She looked absolutely furious.”
Miss Burney was sitting up in bed with a battery of inhalants and cough drops and paper handkerchiefs beside her when Rachel looked in with a glass of hot milk. She was so eager to hear a full account of the proceedings that her niece had not the heart to hurry away, and by the time she did leave it was almost half-past ten.
Cars and groups of people on foot were coming down the drive as she returned to the Hall, and it was evident that the party was beginning to break up. Thinking that the hall would be full of people saying their goodbyes, Rachel parked the car and walked round the side of the house to re-enter by the door which led from the rear terrace to the back of the hall. She was turning the corner by the terrace steps and had halted to remove a piece of gravel which had worked its way inside one of her sandals, when she heard voices and was surprised to see Daniel and Carola coming across the lawn from the direction of the woods.
By the time she had shaken out the pebble and fastened the strap, they had reached the broad flight of steps in the centre of the terrace. She was just about to call to them when Carola tripped and fell.
Afterwards, Rachel did not know why she had not immediately run forward to help. But something held her back and, standing there in a patch of shadow, she saw Daniel bend down to help her sister, his voice low and concerned. Carola answered and Rachel caught the word ‘ankle,’ the rest being lost as a breeze rustled the creeper on the wall of the house. Then Daniel picked Carola up in his arms and carried her up the steps. At the top of th
e flight, he paused for a moment to adjust his hold and, at the same moment, Carola slipped her arms round his neck and raised her face to his. Then a cloud passed across the face of the moon and the garden was no longer bright and silvery, but dark and mysterious.
When Rachel hung up her dress that night, she found a small tear in the velvet hem. It must have caught on a rose bush as she stumbled her way to the front of the house again in that sudden fall of darkness. But, when she walked through the front door to find her father, there was nothing in her manner to reveal that, inwardly, she was taut with self-disgust. Even when, some minutes later, Carola appeared with a tell-tale color in her cheeks but no sign of a limp, Rachel managed to go on chatting as coolly as if nothing had happened.
Daniel was at the door when they left, and after seeing the narrowed glance he gave Carola, and the way her sister’s thick lashes fluttered as she thanked him, it took all Rachel’s control not to snatch her hand away when her turn came. But she forced herself to maintain a smile and to keep the ice from her voice.
For the first time in her life, she wished that she and Carola did not share a bedroom. The secret smile which played about her sister’s pretty red lips, the snatches of tune she hummed as she prepared for bed, the more than usually prolonged attention she gave to her face, all added to Rachel’s irritation. She had to clench her teeth to stop herself exclaiming, “For heaven’s sake, stop preening yourself! You haven’t made a conquest. He’s just amusing himself —as he did with me.”
When, finally, Carola climbed into bed and switched off the light, Rachel cut short her chatter about the party by saying that she had a headache. But as she drew the bedclothes up to her ears and closed her eyes, it was not her head which ached, but her pride. It was shaming enough that Carola should so brazenly invite Daniel’s kiss. But that she—four years older and more sensible—should have so nearly succumbed to his casual, meaningless charm—that was intolerable!
For more than an hour she tried desperately to blot out the events of the evening, but the mental picture of Daniel’s teeth gleaming whitely in the dimness as he smiled down at her sister’s upturned face seemed indelibly printed on her mind. No wonder he was amused, she thought bitterly. Two of us, in one evening! Indeed, in angry retrospect, it seemed to her that the episode in the study had been almost as humiliating as the unseen kiss on the terrace.
“You’re trembling. What is it? Are you afraid of me?”
She remembered the hint of irony in his tone, the flicker of derision in his eyes as he had let her go and moved away.
I hate him, she thought fiercely. I hate and despise him!
When Rachel woke up next morning, she felt tired and irritable. Her father, noticing her pallor and the shadows under her eyes, said she looked as if she was catching Miss Burney’s cold and advised her to swallow a couple of aspirins and hop back to bed. But she protested that she was perfectly all right.
During the morning, as she pegged out the linen and swept and dusted the bedrooms, she thought out the note with which she would cancel her arrangement to dine at the Hall on Thursday. But when, soon after lunch, she sat down to write it, the phrases which she had composed failed to satisfy her, and after crumpling several sheets of paper and tossing them into the waste basket, she decided to postpone the task until later.
After supper, she had a bath and washed her hair, going into the garden to dry it, and planning to go to bed early. She was trying to concentrate on a book in which all the characters seemed to manage their lives with superhuman skill, when Edward came up through the kitchen garden, a parcel in his hand. Suddenly Edward was the person she most wanted to see.
“Hello. Has your cold gone already? Sorry I look such a sight. I’m having a lazy evening,” she said, smiling.
Edward sat down. “I hope you don’t mind my coming, but I thought that if you were going to catch any germs you’d have got them from your aunt by now,” he said. “I hear I passed my cold to her. I’m frightfully sorry about it.”
“Never mind. She was cross at missing the party, but I don’t expect she’ll hold it against you for long. Have you been to work today, then?” Rachel asked.
“Yes. I had to. There was a board meeting, so I had to be on hand,” he explained. “I got you a small present.”
“Oh, Edward, how nice of you! Just what I need to cheer me up,” she said gratefully, “it’s been one of those wretched days when the sink gets blocked and cakes won’t rise and everything seems to have a snag. What is it?”
He put the parcel on her lap. “Open it and see.”
Rachel tackled the string with impatient fingers. What a nice, safe, reliable person he was, she thought affectionately. And what a stupid pernickety creature she had been to quarrel with him. What if he was slightly solemn and pompous at times? Nobody was perfect—least of all herself!
Inside the wrapping paper was a red and white box filled with cotton wool, and, lifting the upper layer, she discovered a pretty silver bracelet.
“Oh, Edward, it’s sweet! Thank you very much,” she said delightedly, reaching across to squeeze his arm.
He covered her hand with his, and pressed it.
“It’s not what I really want to give you,” he said quietly. “Have—have you thought things over, Rachel? About us, I mean?” He looked down at the grass, flushing. “I’m not much good at making romantic speeches, I’m afraid, but I love you very much. You must know that. I—I’d do anything to make you happy.”
“Dear Edward,” she said softly, her mouth tender.
“Anything—anything you want,” he said vehemently. “That row we had the other evening: it was stupid of me to be so pigheaded. I don’t really care a jot about living in Stafford Avenue. I can’t think why I got so worked up about it. If I lived in a palace, I wouldn’t be happy without you there.”
Rachel’s eyes filled with tears, and suddenly, with a choked murmur, she slipped to her knees on the grass and buried her face in his pullover.
“Oh, Edward, you are such a dear,” she said in a muffled voice. “I’ve been so horrible to you. I don’t deserve to have you love me. I can’t think, why you do.”
He slipped a hand under her chin and raised her face. “There’s nothing to cry about, silly,” he said gently. “Here, have my handkerchief.”
Ashamed of her outburst, Rachel sniffed and mopped her eyes and managed a watery smile.
“I’m sure nobody else would look at me twice with my hair like a bush and no make-up and everything,” she said shakily.
He took her hand and kissed it. “You are going to say yes this time, aren’t you?” he asked anxiously.
She looked up at him and, in that moment, a dozen memories of their growing up came back to her. Edward helping her to slog for her G.C.E. Edward taking her to her first dance and never noticing her teenage gaucherie because he was shy and uncertain himself. Edward understanding the crushing blow of her mother’s death.
She drew a deep breath. “Yes, Edward, I’m saying yes this time,” she said softly.
“Oh, my dear ...” He put his arms around her.
‘I suppose I really shouldn’t kiss you till my cough’s gone,” he said wryly. “But ... oh, hang it all...!”
CHAPTER FIVE
THE following morning, Rachel put on a freshly laundered dress of turquoise cotton and set out to catch the bus to Branford. Before leaving, she had written the note to Daniel, explaining that she would be unable to dine with him on Thursday as her fiancé’s parents had arranged a small family celebration. And that, she thought, as she popped the letter in the pillar box, is that, Mr. Elliot!
After doing some shopping and having a long gossipy coffee with a married school friend, she met Edward for lunch, and afterwards they went to buy an engagement ring. Rachel would have preferred an old-fashioned ring, but Edward said that he did not care for the idea of her wearing one which was second-hand. He seemed so taken with a cluster of diamonds on a platinum hoop that she agreed it was lo
vely and stifled her feeling that diamonds were cold-looking stones.
When they emerged from the jeweller’s shop, it was time for him to go back to his office. So, disinclined to go home, Rachel took herself to the cinema with an enjoyable sense of playing truant.
The engagement party at the Harveys’ house went off very well. Mrs. Harvey had invited one or two relatives who lived the other side of the county. Rachel did not like any of them, very much, but, as she reminded herself, everyone had some dreary relatives.
As yet, no mention had been made of settling the wedding date. It seemed to be generally assumed that they would be engaged for at least a year.
After Mr. Harvey had taken the relatives to catch their bus and her own family had said goodnight, Rachel stayed behind to help her future mother-in-law wash up. Edward also offered to lend a hand, but his mother shooed him away to read the paper, saying they could manage much better without him.
“I’m so glad you aren’t one of these modern career girls, dear,” she said, carefully measuring soap powder into the basin. “I don’t believe in young wives going out to work, although they all pretend it’s to help get the home together. The time to do that is before marriage, in my opinion. Herbert and I were engaged for four years, and when we married our house was completely equipped. And we certainly never indulged in hire-purchase. I don’t approve of it at all.”
Privately, Rachel thought that this was rather a narrow view since, when Mrs. Harvey was a bride, everything had been considerably cheaper. To equip a house hilly nowadays would entail a wait of far longer than four years for most couples. But she kept the thought to herself.
“Of course you are very fortunate in that Edward already has an excellent position,” Mrs. Harvey said, with satisfaction. “But, even when that is not the case, I don’t believe a woman can run a home efficiently and do outside work. Frankly, I’ve no time for this new idea that men should help in the house. When Herbert gets home in the evenings, I have his slippers and his paper waiting for him, and he changes his suit and sits down to rest. It’s a man’s duty to keep the home together, and a woman’s duty to run it for him. Once you try to alter that, the trouble begins.”
