She laughed too—half vexed, half touched for some reason she could not explain.
“We’ll leave it at that, if you like.”
“But, anyway, we are engaged.”
“Why, yes—of course.” She glanced at the ring on her finger.
“And, that being so, it would not be unreasonable to kiss you.”
She looked up, more startled than she meant to be, and he said quickly and angrily:
“Don’t look at me like that!”
“I’m sorry.” Her voice was small and cold, and she looked away at once. “You—can kiss me if you like.”
“Thanks,” he said. “I’m not going to kiss the extremely cool cheek presented to me at the moment.” And, taking her by her chin, he turned her face and kissed her on the mouth as Richard had certainly never kissed her.
“You—mustn’t!” Hope cried angrily. “How dare you!”
“How dare I what?—kiss you? You said I could.”
“But not like that.”
“We didn’t discuss how I was to do it,” he retorted curtly. “I chose my own way.”
“Well, I don’t like it,” Hope flared at him.
“You’ll get used to it,” he told her, growing cooler as she grew hotter.
“You beast!” She wrenched her arm away from him. “If that’s your idea of making me like you better as I know you more, you’d better think again.” And before he could stop her she slipped away from him and ran home alone.
As she ran, she rather wondered whether she would hear him riding after her. But apparently that seemed to him too melodramatic a way of continuing the scene—or perhaps he just thought it wiser to let her alone for the moment. Anyway, there was no sound of following hoofs, and when Hope came into the garden, Bridget looked up from her digging and said:
“Hello. Didn’t you find him?”
“Find him?”
“Uncle Errol. I thought you went out to meet him.”
“Oh, yes. Yes, of course. I did meet him.”
“Well, what have you done with him?” Bridget asked not unreasonably.
“He’s just coming,” Hope said hastily. “We—we had a talk, and then I—”
“Ran away?” enquired Bridget interestedly.
“Certainly not,” Hope retorted, annoyed that Bridget should describe her actions so accurately. “What have you been doing while I was away?” she added, anxious to leave the subject of herself and Errol.
“Digging,” said Bridget, who was an indefatigable digger. “Look—I’ve just dug up this potato to see how it’s getting on. Do you think it’s really sprouting?”
Hope held out her hand absently for the potato, and Bridget immediately exclaimed:
“I say! That’s a nice ring. Where did you get it?”
There was a queer little silence. Then Hope said:
“Your—your Uncle Errol gave it to me.”
“Did he? That was awfully nice of him.”
“Yes,” Hope agreed non-committally.
“Why, goodness!” Bridget opened her mouth and left it open for three seconds. “That’s your left hand! It’s your engagement finger! Are you and Uncle Errol going to get married?”
Hope had a funny feeling that if she said ‘yes’ to Bridget she would be closing the last door of escape. But she couldn’t stand wordless before her open-mouthed little sister who was evidently dying with pleased curiosity.
“Would you—would you like it if we did?” she asked, rather feebly, she felt.
“Why, yes, of course! It’d be simply splendid,” cried Bridget. “Then this would really be our home—especially now Mrs. Tamberly’s going,” she added with innocent candor. “And you’d be Mrs. Tamberly, and Uncle Errol would be our brother-in-law and you”—Bridget paused, and then asked in a most intrigued tone, “Would you be our aunt?”
“No,” Hope said, and laughed. But somehow Bridget had made it all sound so much less melodramatic and impossible, so much more reasonable and manageable. The feeling of panic which had overwhelmed her again when Errol kissed her slowly retreated once more.
“Well?” Bridget asked anxiously.
“Well what?”
“Are you and Uncle Errol going to marry, of course?”
“Oh, yes. Yes, we are.”
“Well, goodness, I never saw anyone so calm about a proposal before,” Bridget exclaimed. And, dropping the now despised potato back into its hole, she rushed up the garden emitting a peculiar kind of hoot, which had the effect of miraculously producing Tony from the centre of a clump of bushes.
Hope was too far away to hear their actual conversation, but the wealth of gesture with which they conducted it left her in no doubt of their approval.
Rather slowly she walked up the garden path to join them, and Tony welcomed her with:
“I say, that’s a jolly good idea of yours, marrying Uncle Errol. When did you think of it?”
“He thought of it,” Hope explained not without humor, “just about a week ago.”
“Goodness, that was quick. I wonder what made him think of it,” Tony said with inoffensive frankness. “Perhaps he thought it’d make it more homelike for us.”
“Perhaps he did,” Hope said with a smile.
“Here he comes,” remarked Bridget. “You can ask him.” Hope didn’t turn round. She stood there, quite still except for a slight trembling, judging only from the children’s expressions how near he was.
“Hello, Uncle Errol,” called Bridget as soon as he was within hailing distance. “We’re awfully pleased about your marrying Hope.”
Hope waited for him to answer, but he came up beside her before he spoke. Then all he said was:
“So you’ve told them?”
“Yes. Do you mind?”
“Mind?—No, of course not. I’m rather—relieved. That’s all. I thought, perhaps—” He stopped and Tony broke in cheerfully:
“What made you think of marrying Hope? Did you think it would be nicer for us?”
“No,” Errol said gravely. “I thought it would be nicer for me. I happen to love her.”
“Goodness,” said both the children, and regarded their peculiar elders with faintly embarrassed amusement. Then Bridget added: “She is very nice, of course,” and hugged Hope kindly.
“Well, it seems a good arrangement,” Tony conceded, and then went off to do more important things. He evidently considered matters had been finally and satisfactorily settled, and that he could hardly be expected to spend any more time discussing the situation once it had received his necessary approbation.
Hope took Bridget’s hand and kept it tightly in hers as they strolled towards the house. She had no wish to be left alone with Errol again just yet.
Mrs. Tamberly was in the lounge and, as they came in, looked up with mild interest to say, “Hello, Errol. I began to think you and that black beast had really managed to kill each other at last.”
Errol simply smiled and gave the side of her cheek a perfunctory kiss which, by virtue of sheer contrast, reminded Hope uncomfortably of the very purposeful way he had kissed her.
“No, he didn’t get killed. He got engaged instead,” Bridget explained brightly, as though the two things were in some way comparable.
“Engaged!” For once Mrs. Tamberly’s languid well-controlled voice ran up to a gratifyingly high note of astonishment. “What are you talking about?”
“About Hope and Uncle Errol, I expect,” remarked Tony, coming in just then to rejoin his family, although at least half his attention was still on an extremely friendly field-mouse which he had brought in with him.
“Take that disgusting thing out of the room at once,” Mrs. Tamberly said, this time without raising her voice. “And what are the children talking about, Errol?”
Tony went reluctantly to release the mouse through the french windows, while Errol drew Hope’s arm through his and said coolly:
“I’m afraid we’re giving our family the news in a rather haphazard manner. But—
yes, it’s quite true. Hope and I are going to be married.”
Suddenly remembering in quite astonishing detail the whole of her conversation with Mrs. Tamberly at lunch, Hope found herself blushing furiously.
“Dear me,” Mrs. Tamberly said slowly, “what an extraordinary thing.”
“Nonsense, Mother.” Errol sounded faintly irritated. “I find it nothing less than natural to fall in love with Hope, and—come to that what is there so strange in her agreeing to marry me?”
Mrs. Tamberly transferred her thoughtful gaze to Hope, and remarked without rancor:
“Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you, child. And, in your own words, I hope you’ll be happy.”
Those had not been Hope’s own words, of course, but they recalled the conversation at lunch even more sharply to her mind. She wanted very much to say something light and gay and self-possessed, but could think of nothing. It was Errol’s voice which broke the silence, and it held that edge of harshness which Hope had previously associated with scorn but which some new inner knowledge now told her was nervousness.
“Of what did you warn Hope?—Something in connection with me?”
“Nothing of consequence, darling,” Mrs. Tamberly assured him in a tone which dismissed him and all his affairs as trivial. “The child knows what I mean.”
The child knew so exactly what she meant that for a moment her own discomfort absorbed all her attention. Then she glanced at Errol, and suddenly personal embarrassment was too small a thing to worry about.
That he was angry she knew from the particular set of his mouth, but that too seemed unimportant. What arrested her attention and shocked her beyond belief was the expression of his eyes. Baffled and intensely wretched, they gave for one moment, Hope felt sure, an absolutely accurate reflection of his thoughts.
Without waiting to think about the advisability of her action, Hope eagerly caught him by the arm.
“It was nothing really, Errol. Your—your mother told me she didn’t think you’d ever marry anyone unless you were terribly in love with them. But then I—I don’t think I’d want anyone to marry me unless he was terribly in love with me. So it’s all right you see. It’s all right.”
She spoke with an urgency and an anxiety she could not have explained, and the face which she raised to him was bright with an artless eagerness which could as well have been Bridget’s.
For a moment he looked down at her without his expression altering. Then he slowly put his arms round her, and bending his head, very gently kissed her upturned face.
“Thank you, darling,” he said very quietly, and smiled at her.
It was such an entirely different kiss from the one he had given her earlier, such an entirely different scene from any she had ever imagined sharing with Errol, that for a moment Hope was more shaken than ever in her life before. The terrific strain of the last few days, the sudden relaxing of her tense resentment towards Errol, combined to crumple her self-control. And, with a sudden absurd and inexplicable desire to cry, Hope hid her face against him.
She heard him laugh, but with quite extraordinary tenderness, and his hand ruffled her hair with a sort of amused gentleness.
“All right,” he said, as though he knew all about her silly desire to cry. “There’s no need to be upset.”
“I’m not upset,” Hope explained in a muffled voice, while Mrs. Tamberly looked on with a certain amused, cynical surprise and remarked:
“Well, Errol, I somehow imagined you’d made quite a different sort of effect on the child. But it seems even the most experienced of us can be mistaken.”
“It seems so,” he agreed quite pleasantly.
And then tea was brought in, and Hope looked up with as cool an expression as she could manage, said something about taking her coat upstairs, and made her escape out of the room.
As she ran upstairs and into the charming bedroom which Mrs. Tamberly had said (with reservations) she was to consider her own, Hope confusedly cast her mind back over the scene which had just taken place.
‘How ridiculous of me to go all emotional like that!’ she muttered crossly to herself. ‘Clutching Errol and sniffing into his coat like—like Bridget. It’s too childish!’
But she knew that something quite irresistible had moved her to speak as she had—and then suddenly the scene had been too much for her, and her over-strained nerves had given way for a moment.
Silly, of course, but understandable.
The great thing was not to exaggerate the importance of the scene, but to behave now with practical good sense, and to present to Mrs. Tamberly’s shrewd and interested scrutiny a calm and well-bred composure which might—as in Mrs. Tamberly’s own case—cover anything and everything.
Without allowing herself to panic about it, Hope told herself that the situation in the next few weeks was going to be horribly difficult. There were her own feelings to be controlled and hidden. There were Errol’s feelings to be—to be—well, dealt with. There was the children’s peace of mind to be left as much undisturbed as possible. And there was Mrs. Tamberly to be reckoned with in a variety of ways.
As Hope washed her face and combed her hair, she decided that, at least, Mrs. Tamberly was not angry or disgusted over the match. Rather cynically amused would best describe her attitude. And Hope found herself hoping devoutly that she would not be subjected to amused but clever questioning, under the guise of friendly interest.
However, she need not have worried. By the time she came downstairs to tea, the subject of her marriage appeared to have been accepted into casual conversation as a topic of distinct but everyday interest.
The twins were reassuringly matter of fact about it, and, not unnaturally, considered it from a strictly personal point of view. To their way of thinking, Mrs. Tamberly, in getting married, was doing a peculiar, if very desirable thing. But Hope was doing what elder sisters might well be expected to do sooner or later, and was most considerately consolidating their own position by her thoughtful choice.
“It’s going to be terribly nice with you here all the time,” Bridget told her hospitably. “You won’t go to the Laboratory any more when you’re married, will you?”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Hope began quickly. But Mrs. Tamberly stared at her in astonishment.
“Darling child, you won’t want a job when you’re married to Errol.”
“But—” Hope saw a new and terrifying life engulfing her and everything familiar to her.
“You can do exactly as you like,” Errol said calmly, helping himself to thin bread and butter with great deliberation.
“But, Errol, that’s ridiculous,” protested Mrs. Tamberly, with much more energy than she usually displayed. “No man in your position would expect his wife to work for her living.”
“I don’t expect Hope to do that.” Errol smiled. “I think I can make shift to keep her. But if her work at the Laboratory interests her so much that she doesn’t want to give it up immediately, then she is quite at liberty to follow her own inclinations, so far as I am concerned.”
Mrs. Tamberly looked quite vexed at what she considered a ridiculous point of view. But Hope said, “Thank you, Errol,” in a voice that shook slightly, and her quick glance at him said a great deal more.
“Anyway, she wouldn’t be giving it up immediately,” Bridget pointed out. “I suppose you’ll be engaged for a bit, won’t you? People usually are. When are you going to be married?”
“Quite soon,” Errol said, in exactly the same quiet, noncommittal tone he had used for saying that Hope might do exactly as she wished about keeping on her job at the Laboratory.
In this at least, Hope realized with a slight start, the choice was not being left to her. Errol meant their marriage to be arranged and settled before there was any chance of a retreat. As clearly as if he had said it, she realized that he was willing to make the marriage as easy for her as possible—but go through with it she should.
“We hadn’t really got as far as discu
ssing wh-when we’d get married, had we?” Hope said carefully.
“No. But”—he turned to her with a smile which surprised her by its brilliance—“you agree to a short engagement, don’t you?”
With the feeling that, although the situation was entirely in his hands, she must make some show of having a say in the matter, she asked:
“What do you call a short engagement?”
“A month?—six weeks?”
“Errol! The child won’t even have time to get a decent trousseau together,” exclaimed his mother.
A month! thought Hope. Six weeks. And then:
“She can buy the rest of her trousseau afterwards,” Errol said calmly.
“I think a month or six weeks is a good idea,” Bridget declared. “That’ll take us nicely into next term and then Tony and I can come home specially for the wedding.”
“Oh, have we got to go to it?” Tony asked without enthusiasm.
“Of course! I shall be a bridesmaid,” Bridget told him. “And you can be a page, I expect.”
“I will not.” Tony was quite emphatic about that.
Hope laughed—a little nervously, only everyone took it for excitement—and said Tony would not be expected to be anything so embarrassing, but she hoped he would come to the wedding.
“Oh, all right,” Tony said grudgingly. “But get it over early in the term, will you? My week-ends get awfully booked up after Whitsun.”
“It seems that everyone is in favor of an early date,” remarked Mrs. Tamberly. “And I must say I feel it’s sensible. Then you won’t have to struggle with a housekeeper, after all, Errol. For Hope will be coming here almost as soon as I leave.”
“But if I keep on my job?” began Hope.
“Well, then, it will still be your business to struggle with the housekeeper,” Mrs. Tamberly pointed out, not without malice.
And Hope tried to imagine herself coping with a housekeeper, the house—and Errol.
The point was not pressed any further. Hope thought that Errol, having established the idea of an early marriage, was perfectly willing to leave such a detail as the date to her.
She hardly knew whether she was soothed or agitated by everyone’s cool acceptance of the idea of her marrying him. Until today it had seemed to her such an utterly fantastic notion that its sheer strangeness was almost frightening. No one else seemed to see it that way, however, and inevitably Hope was influenced by the general feeling.
Away Went Love Page 11
