He was more astonished and delighted than he could say. It had never occurred to him that the message had come from her and he had assumed it was from one of the dissenting members of the parish who were invariably treated as trespassers by Bull.
He said, excitedly, ‘I had no idea you were home! I thought if you were you would be sure to attend the service!’ but she told him they had driven over from Whinmouth only that day and that Bruce, her father, was now in Biarritz and likely to remain there until spring. Then she said, more urgently, ‘Let’s not waste time, Paul! I’ve only a few minutes and Celia would explode if she knew I was here alone. I wanted to see you before you called. You got Celia’s letter?’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘and I replied to it saying I should be very happy to come.’
‘She didn’t have the decency to tell me that,’ Grace said, ‘but it doesn’t matter now.’
He could not see her in the deep shadow but he could smell her perfume and it came to him like the scent of summer hedgerows. He still held her gloved hand and she let him hold it, so that they stood there, levelled by the lych-gate step and her nearness stirred him even more deeply than when they last stood together on the terrace at Shallowford.
‘What is it, Grace?’ he asked. ‘Would you prefer that I didn’t accept Celia’s invitation next week?’
‘No,’ she said but doubtfully, as though by no means certain about this, ‘you’ll have to come, I suppose, because she won’t let go of you now if she can help it! But there is something you can do before you see her; you can tell me the truth. As far as you know it yourself, that is!’
‘The truth about what?’ he asked.
‘About how serious you were on the night of the ball. Oh, you needn’t protest, and you don’t have to sound a gallant fanfare for my daring to doubt your sincerity! I daresay you thought yourself in earnest at the time but it was a heady occasion. You were probably full of cider-cup and feeling very sure of yourself that evening!’
She stopped suddenly and he could hear her rapid breathing. ‘Do you want me to go on, Paul? Can we talk to one another honestly and openly?’
‘Yes,’ he said, feeling deflated, ‘you had best say what’s on your mind, Grace.’
‘Well,’ she went on, ‘things came to a head while we were in London. My father brought home a fat prize one night, and they both expected me to agree to marry it almost at once! You needn’t know anything about him, except that he was going bald, was well over forty, likely to become a Member of Parliament, and very comfortably off! Naturally I wasn’t forthcoming and there was a great deal of unpleasantness, not only about Basil Holbeach, but … well … about many other things! It was then that I told Celia about you. I didn’t want to but I needed her support, and I got it. Celia is mad to get me off her hands but she is neither as cynical nor as money-grubbing as my father, and neither is she more than an average snob. Besides,’—there was laughter in her voice now—‘you made a very good impression on her! She thinks you’re going to succeed down here and because her money originates from blacking she doesn’t care about your scrapyard!’
It was the first time she had referred to the scrapyard although he had long since decided that she must be aware of it, as were most people in the Valley by now.
‘Tell me where these developments lead us,’ he said, ‘and how you could be stupid enough to persuade yourself I was in liquor when I asked you to marry me! That seems to me to be the only thing that matters.’
‘Yes, it is, Paul,’ she said, choosing her words carefully now, ‘and that’s why I wanted to talk to you before you faced Celia’s batteries. I know what she’ll say and how she’ll approach the matter. She’ll say “Grace is a little wild and a little wilful” but that she’s still very young, and will steady down the moment she has a husband and babies!’
‘She’s probably right at that,’ Paul said good-humouredly but in the darkness he sensed her impatient gesture, as she withdrew her hand from his. ‘She doesn’t mean it that way,’ Grace insisted. ‘She means I should enjoy being the lady of the manor down here, organising soirées like the one Claire Derwent arranged for you, doling out blankets and logs to the poor at Christmas time, visiting the sick and trotting dutifully about the country behind Gilroy’s pack of hounds! Because she’s Celia she’s convinced that this is the only destiny for the provincial girl of good family!’
‘Well, I’m not so sure that it isn’t,’ he protested, ‘or could be if you didn’t make it sound so damned dull!’ and was surprised when she laid her hand on his arm and said emphatically, ‘Perhaps it is, Paul! For some provincial girls, but I’ve always known it wasn’t my destiny, even when I was engaged to Ralph Lovell! A woman brought up to do that sort of thing, as I was, might achieve it without much trouble, providing she was in love with the man she married.’
‘Very well,’ he said, gruffly, ‘you aren’t obliged to say any more, Grace, and in spite of everything I’d like you to know that I honestly appreciate your frankness and when I meet Celia I hope I can be equally candid.’
‘Oh, stop being so young, Paul,’ she burst out impatiently. ‘How many marriages of this kind, between people with money, are love matches? Not one in fifty and only then between a cow-like couple who do what they’re told because it’s so much less trouble! Of course I don’t love you! How could I? Or you me, if you’re really honest with yourself! I daresay you could learn to, and it’s possible that I might learn to, but at the moment you’re attracted to me by two factors; you imagine marriage to me would give you social security and you probably think it might be nice to have me in bed! Well, that isn’t so original—a lot of men have been that much in love with me, but it doesn’t mean we know each other, or could distil a particle of mutual happiness or usefulness from a permanent association!’
‘Good God!’ he said, ‘you make everything sound like a political tract! I think of you as the most exciting girl I’ve ever met, and I’m more attracted to you every time I see you, or hear you speak, or touch your hand! I can’t reduce love to a kind of formula, like you seem to want to! I’m prepared to take something on trust and leave something to chance, the same as I did when I spent everything I had on this place! Everyone who falls in love and gets married takes risks. What about young Will Codsall and Elinor Willoughby? He turned his back on the best farm in the Valley to marry Elinor and she faced up to a mother-in-law with a disposition as sour as Kruger’s! Can’t you ever give your instincts a chance?’
She was not, it seemed, impressed by his arguments, or by the emphasis with which he presented them but she paid him the compliment of taking them more seriously than she had taken his proposal.
‘I obeyed my instincts coming here and giving you the opportunity of unsaying what you said last time we met,’ she said calmly. ‘I’ve got far more respect for you than for most men I’ve met so far, and there are things about you that I admire, Paul. But I don’t love you, and I don’t even know you sufficiently well to know whether I could love you. I’ve always had a contempt for the traditional responses of women on these occasions, particularly when faced with the chance to make what they call a good match! I’m not really interested in being the Lady of Shallowford. I think I might have bigger fish to fry, if Englishwomen as a whole ever break out of the seraglio! Good-bye, Paul!’
‘But in heaven’s name we haven’t begun to decide …’ he protested.
‘There’s time enough,’ she said, ‘and I daren’t stay longer. If I’m missed, or seen here, it will make things ten times more complicated for me than they are! Good night and a Merry Christmas!’, and before he could stop her she had bobbed forward and kissed him lightly on the cheek and vanished. He called ‘Grace!’ softly but there was no answer, only the scuffle of her shoes on the gravel of the path that emerged lower down the High Street, opposite the hill leading to her home.
III
Celia received him in her b
oudoir, a small room off the draughty landing that overlooked the bay. It was, he had decided by then, a gloomy, badly-planned house, overstuffed with heavy mahogany furniture that contrasted with Celia’s fashionable clothes and hard good looks demanding an altogether lighter setting. She must have noticed his appraisal for she said, deprecatingly, ‘It’s your furniture, Mr Craddock! We rent it as it is—antimacassars, stuffed elk-heads, and all! If I made you an offer for the place I should throw everything out but I wouldn’t buy the house anyway, the only thing I like about it is its site,’ and she pointed to the view of the harbour framed in the sash window.
‘I hope you won’t be too disappointed at having tea with me instead of Grace,’ she went on. ‘When I dropped a hint that she paid a call in Whinmouth I expected tantrums but there weren’t any. You never can be quite sure of Grace and she seemed to prefer you and I to meet alone at … er … at this stage! Does that surprise you?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘I don’t think she could surprise me, Mrs Lovell.’
Celia laughed, pleasantly and genuinely he thought, telling himself that there was something individual and very engaging about Celia Lovell as she sat pouring tea from a silver pot after boiling the kettle on a little silver spirit stove. There were muffins in a silver dish and cakes on a silver cakestand. Everything she used was expensive and delicately made, and all her movements were precise, as though she assessed in advance the exact amount of effort needed to lift a plate or pinch a knob of sugar with tongs. Then, when he was comfortably settled, she came straight to the point.
‘Grace told me that you proposed marriage to her last October,’ she said, in a reasonable but businesslike tone. ‘I must admit to being surprised, as no doubt she was herself, but I was also delighted. I’m like her in one respect. I dislike fiddle-faddle and I’m glad to see you don’t seem to have much use for it, Mr Craddock! I take it that she asked time to consider but has not written to you since?’
‘That is so, Mrs Lovell,’ replied Paul, feeling like a friendly witness being cross-examined by a sharp-witted barrister.
‘Well now,’ she went on, kindly but expansively, ‘I should like you to know at once that I consider it very suitable! Very suitable indeed! In fact I think she would be a very silly girl not to accept!’ She gave him a sidelong look, adding, ‘Upon my word, I should accept, Mr Craddock!’ leaving him in no doubt but that she spoke in earnest.
Paul said nothing for there seemed so little to say. After a pause, during which they both sipped tea, she continued, ‘In the circumstances, Mr Craddock, I cannot but feel that you should know the full facts. The truth is, in some ways Grace has been causing both her father and myself a great deal of anxiety, but perhaps she told you something of this?’
It was a trap but he saw it in time. Celia obviously suspected that they had met since the family’s return and he said, smiling, ‘No, Mrs Lovell, although I have gathered she is rather uncertain about her future.’
‘She had no need to be, I assure you,’ Celia replied, quite sharply, ‘for Grace isn’t a gel who lacks admiration. Her father would have encouraged her to accept another proposal, from a gentleman in possession of considerable means but he was a good deal older than Grace and I’m not at all in favour of marriages between people of different generations, notwithstanding settlements. It was then that she came to me for advice.’
It was all, he thought, like something from an early nineteenth-century novel, with mamma using a set formula for the occasion, and in the light of what he already knew it was difficult for him to feel that Celia Lovell was free from hypocrisy. He said, slowly, ‘You said you don’t like fiddle-faddle, Mrs Lovell, so I gather from that you would prefer us to be frank with one another. Would you mind telling me how Grace has caused you and Mr Lovell anxiety? Was it a love affair?’
‘Oh, no, certainly not,’ she said, seeming alarmed. ‘No, Mr Craddock, it wasn’t that! As a matter of fact Grace has been attracted by young men and, to be perfectly honest, I don’t think she was as upset by Ralph Lovell’s death as she ought to have been! Or if she was then she didn’t show it! No, no, it was something quite different and it began when we were last in town and still remains a source of well … a rather strained atmosphere between Grace and her father. I imagine you must have heard about these dreadful suffragists?’
‘The National Union of Women’s Suffrage? Why, yes, hasn’t everyone? Is Grace a member?’
‘I really couldn’t say,’ Celia replied, obviously shocked by his implied tolerance, ‘all I know is that she has been associating with them, has even attended their public meetings! That we found distressing enough but the original group, although faddist and, to my mind, quite ridiculous, was at least constitutional! Recently there has been a breakaway movement led by a very provocative woman called Pankhurst and her two daughters, but perhaps you have read of them in the newspaper?’
Paul had but had not paid particular note of the cleavage. There had been brief reports in copies of the Westminster Gazette, that arrived in the Valley a day or two late and described lively scenes at political meetings and demonstrations. He recalled an instance of a woman climbing on to a roof at a Unionist meeting and being removed by firemen and policemen but even in his conversations with Grenfell, the subject of votes for women had never come under discussion and he was surprised to find that Celia Lovell took it seriously.
‘It sounds quite harmless,’ he said evasively and was relieved to see Celia smile.
‘I’m sure it is, so far as Grace is concerned,’ she admitted, ‘but her father took a very serious view of her involvement in this kind of thing and I must say I don’t blame him! After all, a girl who makes an exhibition of herself is hardly likely to make a good marriage and that is what I want for Grace more than anything else. Being a stepmother carries exceptional responsibilities, Mr Craddock.’
‘Yes,’ said Paul, ‘I can understand that, but it seems to me …’
‘Do let me give you some more tea, Mr Craddock!’ she said, and he had the impression that this was to give her time to think as a barrister might drop papers when his witness was facing an awkward question. She poured tea and handed him the cakestand. When they were settled again she said, mildly, ‘Do go on, Mr Craddock, and I hope you feel that you can confide in me. I most earnestly want to help in any way I can.’
‘I’m sure you do, Mrs Lovell,’ he said, sensing that he had now got the measure of her, ‘but in the case of a girl like Grace I can’t help feeling that the best way to help is to do nothing. I believe myself to be in love with her, and I’m sure that, in time, I could make her very happy here. However, I haven’t any fatuous illusions about her being in love with me at this moment, and in this day and age surely a girl as intelligent as Grace should be allowed to make her own decisions.’
She was now regarding him with admiration and he almost blushed for her, so artless were her tactics in contrast to those employed over the first cup of tea. He noticed something else too and it disturbed him a little, a glaze of ruthlessness in the alert, brown eyes and also the frank sensuality of the mouth. ‘By God,’ he thought, ‘I’ll wager she can be worse than Arabella Codsall when she’s roused! No wonder Bruce is keeping out of the way in Biarritz!’ But again he was confident of handling her and the knowledge pleased and excited him, for he found his natural diffidence slipping away and he felt more assured than he recalled feeling in the presence of a woman. ‘Where is Grace now, Mrs Lovell?’ he asked and she replied, ‘I’m expecting her any moment, I thought we could have our little talk and then … well … I can find something to do and you could talk to her before you left. For that matter you could stay for dinner if you liked and …’
‘No!’ he said and stood up so abruptly that for a moment she looked at a loss. ‘I don’t think that would be a good idea, Mrs Lovell. It seems to me that it might … well … stampede Grace one way or the other! I think it would be wiser if I left
before she returned, although I don’t mind if you tell her about this discussion. There’s no hurry, however, I’m not likely to fall in love again at short notice.’
He said this as a joke but it was only after a moment’s deliberation with herself that she could accept it as such. Then she was her assured self again, laying a long, elegant hand on his arm. ‘Do you know, I think I underestimated you, Mr Craddock! I always thought of you as a kind, mildly ambitious young man but I also thought you had a great deal to learn about women.’
‘I have, indeed,’ said Paul, smiling, ‘and I daresay it will take me a lifetime.’
‘Nonsense!’ she said, now almost caressing his hand, ‘you already understand Grace better than the rest of us. I don’t suppose she is half as complex as we imagine and I’m sure that the time will come when she will look back on this votes for women nonsense and laugh about it! There now, let me show you downstairs, and when Grace comes I’ll tell her I’ve been flirting with you, and that you would like her to ride over to Shallowford tomorrow.’
‘On a horse, not on a bicycle,’ said Paul, and Celia, again, looking at him with approval, said, ‘We really do think alike, Mr Craddock! And it’s been a pleasure to talk to you! I can only repeat what I said, I think she’s a very lucky girl!’, and she swept out in front of Paul and along the passage to the head of the staircase.
Paul was admiring the skill with which she handled her voluminous, lilac skirt, and the effect of a wan shaft of sunlight on her light brown hair, when the front door opened and Grace walked into the hall. She was wearing the bicycling costume she had worn when she called at the house to shelter and looked, Paul thought, even more windblown than on that occasion. Her defeated expression touched him so that he cursed Celia Lovell for not whisking him out of the house before she returned. They stood in embarrassed silence for a moment and it would have been hard to say which of them was the more dismayed. Then Celia flashed one of her brittle smiles, saying, ‘Mr Craddock was just leaving, Grace dear. I tried to get him to stay to dinner, but he can’t, he’s very busy it seems. You are sure you won’t change your mind, Mr Craddock?’
Long Summer Day (A Horseman Riding By) Page 27
