by Jane Arbor
She took it, slid it from palm to palm and looked up at him. “My compact!” she said obviously. “I haven’t had it since the accident. Nurse Cutlow was using the mirror. How?”
Neil said, watching her as he rose: “I found it underneath where you’d been lying, after I had dug you clear.”
Tessa’s jaw dropped. “After you’d? But you weren’t there! Dr. Pilley—”
“—wasn’t on the scene until minutes later than good luck had me there,” supplemented Neil. “The chap I wanted to see actually came out as I was about to drive off. We were still chatting when we heard the crash.”
“The man I met at the gate!” murmured Tessa. “But? Then! And I told Judith that—that—!”
In the only face-saving gesture which offered, she allowed the compact to slide from the lap of her housecoat to the floor. But before she could hide her flaming cheeks by pretending to grope for it, Neil had retrieved it, though he did not return it at once.
Weighing it in his hand, he began: “I did hear what you told Judith—” But Tessa cut across that in an agony of shame: “Oh, don’t laugh at me! I was only half conscious at the time. I—I must have dreamt the whole thing! It never happened. It couldn’t have done!”
“And I suppose,” he queried, his tone gently ironic, “I must also have been dreaming when I called Nurse Cutlow by your Christian name? Rather forward of me, don’t you think, considering we hadn’t been introduced? Meanwhile—Tess—this for evidence that I was really there.” He dropped the compact once more into her lap and was gone.
Tessa’s first panic-stricken impulse was to ring her bell frantically and to beg anyone who answered it to bring him back. But ring as she might, she guessed he would not come. He had meant to leave her on that tantalizing note! He had actually enjoyed his gentle taunting which had said so little, implied so much! But why? Why had he cared enough to tell her—yet without telling her!—that she had not been dreaming, that she had really heard his voice calling “Tess,” not Dr. Pilley’s saying “Jess,” and that it was he, Neil, who had set that single passionate kiss upon her mouth...?
Momentarily she had to close her eyes against the blinding wonder of the answer before she dared face it or test it by saying it aloud.
“Neil loves me.” Put like that it sounded like an exercise from an infant primer. She tried again: “Neil loves me, loves me! That means that he isn’t afraid of love any more. He trusts it, believes in it And he loves me!”
Were there any pitfalls? Could that kiss have been given on impulse, meaning nothing at all? But if it had been, surely he would not have reminded her of it so pointedly? Besides, every deepest instinct told her that his “Thank God you’re alive” must have been gratitude for an answered prayer.
So—he had been able to tease her, counting that she would forgive him. And soon—before night, perhaps?—he would make some other sign. Or there would be a letter in the morning. Or a message instead of just a card with the flowers he had promised he would send her—
But there was no telephone call for her before hospital bedtime; there was no letter and at the flat there was only the florist’s box which Nurse Hatfield had taken in for her. Accompanying the magnificent sheaf of peach-shaded roses there was a plain envelope which she guessed contained only his card, and she did not open it. If he were as anxious as all that to evade Nurse Hatfield’s curiosity as to the sender, the last vestiges of hurt pride determined Tessa that she would not give him away!
Rita Hatfield grumbled: “My, you still look all in. They had no business to discharge you yet.” And her fussing was so kindly and thoughtful that Tessa was ashamed of the ingratitude of longing for the moment when she would be alone.
When the moment loomed she was afraid of it and kept Rita talking about trivialities longer than she need. But Rita had a case and must go, and the door closed behind her with an inexorable air of shutting her out, of shutting Tessa in.
Tessa looked at her watch. The same time as yesterday, almost to the minute, when Neil had tossed her compact into her lap, leaving her to his inexplicable silence since. And he was going abroad today—probably had already gone. What could she do? What?
Love and bewilderment and an anxiety for him that was almost beyond bearing prompted, “Ring up his flat; the surgery; Judith Wake; even the airport or a shipping line to confirm flights, sailings—” But pride stood firm on: “Nothing disastrous could have happened, or Rita would have known. So don’t do anything. Wait. That way, no one but you need ever know how you’ve been hurt or guess that you’ve set empty, foolish hopes upon a man for the second time.”
That rankled more than anything. She had believed in Rex; Neil had cruelly allowed her to hope. Was it, she questioned bitterly, something wrong with her, that she trusted too blindly where she ought to measure and judge and doubt?
The tiny envelope which had accompanied the flowers contained, as she had expected, only Neil’s card, without any greeting at all. She had just squared it against the envelope, meaning to destroy both, when there was a ring at her outer door.
Opening, she found Judith Wake there. Judith panted: “Heavens! What a night—and an even worse day!” and balanced a capacious handbag on one bent knee while she fished in its depths for a letter which she handed to Tessa.
She warned: “Don’t ask me to come in, for I can’t. For more than twenty-four hours Neil and I have been tracking down non-existent locums without cease until I snatched our last hope off the incoming London plane at the airport with one hand while I bundled Neil on to the outgoing Amsterdam plane with the other. I’ve got him in the car below now.”
“You’ve got—Neil?”
Judith laughed. “Sorry—personal pronouns mixed!—and no wonder. No, it’s the locum—and captive for a month, I trust. Neil is safely on his way, but I had to promise I’d deliver that”—pointing to the letter—“without rail tonight. No, my dear, I can’t come in, even for a minute. Surgery in less than an hour. Besides, you don’t really want me. Do you?”
Her smile was warm, a little conspiratorial, kind. On a great sigh of relief and happiness Tessa realised that Judith knew.
The letter said: Tess—I could have said more. I could even have given you a chance to reply to this. But it doesn’t put the question I mean to ask you when I come back, because I want you to have this month for time to know—surely and for ever—what your answer is to be. Write if you must, though I’d rather you didn’t. Such first things as we have to say should be said face to face.
Meanwhile, another puzzle for you! Do you remember a certain morning at Usherwood? Concerning something—just eight words—of what passed on that occasion, may I, with apologies to your lady godmother, offer the clue, ... ‘Where angels fear to tread.’ Do you understand? Neil. Did she remember? Did she understand? Of course she could complete the adage with “Fools rush in”! Mentally promising him a scolding, she bubbled with laughter at his wry turning of Lady Catterick’s tart gibe!
“Because he is in love with you himself.”—Neil was telling her that it had been true after all. Even then!—and yet at what pains they had both been to assure each other obliquely that they had known it for nothing but the vapourings of a foolish woman put on the defensive and hitting out at random!
Tessa knew that she had needed the pretence as a bulwark for her pride. But why, if he did love her, had Neil not admitted it then? Before she slept that night she knew. Judith’s story offered the clue. He had been afraid, perhaps as much for himself as for her, that she loved Rex still, still hankered after the “might-have-been.” Well, she would do as he asked and would not write. But the one thing she longed passionately for him to know was that he need never be afraid any more.
Viewed in its entirety, the month of Neil’s proposed absence appeared like a whole desert of time, an eternity. But its days labelled variously for Tessa as “Schools Duty,” “Ante-natal Clinic,” “Visits to Cases” and “Off Duty,” had the effect of breaking it up into endurabl
e periods and more than half of it had gone when one morning she had a telephone call from Camille.
Almost without preliminary greeting Camille said: “I’ve got to see you, Tessa. When can I?”
“Well—” Tessa hesitated. “I shall get back from my last case today at about six, I dare say. But I couldn’t go out to Usherwood then, of course.”
“No, no I didn’t mean at Usherwood,” said Camille urgently. “At your flat or anywhere where we can be alone. Certainly not here. Rex mustn’t know.”
Puzzled, and conscious that her tone lacked cordiality, Tessa said: “All right. If you must, come to my flat. Will you have a meal with me?”
“No, thank you. I must talk to you, that’s all. Besides, I must be back here for dinner, or Rex will want to know where I am.”
Against her will, Tessa was intrigued all day by the apparent urgency of an errand which Camille was so anxious to keep secret. She had sounded desperate for help or advice, but why should she not turn to her mother or her stepfather? By the time she was due to arrive, Tessa found her own will hardening against becoming involved in any secret which must be kept from Rex by Camille.
But she was not prepared for the change in the girl. In the very few months since they had met Camille had lost the piquant, kittenish appeal which had been her chief claim to charm. There were newly etched frown-lines between her brows; her lips had thinned to a querulous line and the quicksilver mannerisms had become a restless fidgeting which betrayed the extent to which she was living on her nerves.
What could marriage have done to her? Or—Tessa’s heart sank—was it not marriage so much as marriage to Rex? Judging that Camille would have no use for small talk, she said as evenly as she could: “I can see there’s something seriously wrong, Camille. And you came to me, I suppose, because you thought I could help. I don’t believe I can, but—”
Camille lit a cigarette held between fingers which shook. “Do you suppose,” she demanded, “that I should have come if I hadn’t known that you could? Just you. No one else.”
“I see. Then hadn’t you better tell me how? Is it—Rex?”
“But of course it’s Rex! And don’t say virtuously that you cannot ‘interfere.’ For that is what you do—all the time!”
“I? Interfere between you and Rex? Why, I haven’t seen him, and have spoken to him only once on the telephone since you were married!”
“What of it? You’ve come between us all the same. He is still in love with you, even though he married me. He can’t love me because of you!”
Coldly angry now, Tessa said: “You can’t believe that, Camille. And if Rex told you so, he is lying.”
“Bah, he did not say so! Is a man ever as frank as that, when, as you say over here, he wants to have his cake and eat it also? I should still have known, even if I hadn’t overheard him telling you on the telephone that it was only after a quarrel with you that he decided he ‘had better marry me.’ That was pleasant for me to learn—no? But it fits in with all that Maman has said of him since—that he married me only for what he could gain for himself by doing so.”
“It wasn’t like that at all! On the telephone Rex was speaking about the last night we had met, and, though you may not believe it, we didn’t quarrel at all.”
“But doesn’t ‘showdown’ mean in English ‘quarrel’?”
“It could. But in this case it meant ‘ending’—even ‘agreement.’ In fact,” added Tessa, “on that drive back from Stratford, Rex and I probably understood each other better than ever before. By then I was past being hurt that he was in love with you, and—”
But she stopped short of the admission that, with the glow of his first kiss still warm on her face, she should already have known she loved Neil. She added instead: “Why should you be surprised to hear that everything finished for Rex and me that night? Hadn’t you assured me only that morning that there was no room for both of us in his life?”
“Then—I only wanted you out of the way. He hasn’t let me think that he loved me. Any more than I’ve been able to believe it since he married me. He did that for nothing but his own selfish ends.”
“Camille, no!” The girl’s very choice of phrase had rung like a quotation from her mother, and Tessa saw only too clearly the pattern of pinprick criticisms with which Lady Catterick must have tried to destroy a marriage she had not arranged and so did not approve. Her willingness to believe that it had been a love match must have been very short-lived.
Camille insisted stubbornly: “He has never forgotten you.”
“But when he married you, he loved you! I’m as sure of that as—as I am that he could never have cared for me so well.” On that impulse of a need to shake conviction into Camille if necessary, Tessa snatched the cigarette from her fingers and imprisoned both her hands. “Listen—it was in his own interests that Rex first wanted to know you. But if you won’t believe that he didn’t marry you until he loved you, you are going to spoil one of the most disinterested, unselfish and sincere things he has ever done.”
For the first time Camille’s lip quivered. “But we quarrel so! All the time—and often about nothing at all. And when I taunt him about you—”
“Camille, you don’t?”
“It always comes round to that. And he has never yet denied that he is still interested in you.”
“Would you expect him to, in the heat of a quarrel? Male vanity alone—Why don’t you ask him to tell you the truth at some time when you are good friends again?”
“Lately we are never quite good friends,” said Camille revealingly. “There is a sort of poison running through everything.”
“Mightn’t it be of your making?”
“Some, perhaps. But—” a shudder ran through her slight frame, “I should not dare to ask him. If the truth is what I fear, I couldn’t bear to hear it until I had tried—everything else.”
Tessa’s hand dropped to her side in a gesture of despair at such ostrich reasoning. She said wearily: “And was coming to me—‘trying something else?’ If so, what?”
“This.” Camille sat forward eagerly. You, and only you, could convince him that it is all over between you, and that it is no use hankering for you when it is finished for ever, so far as you are concerned. Will you then see him and tell him so, or show him in any way you can that you don’t care for him any more? You could even pretend that you are in love with someone else.”
“I could,” said Tessa drily. “But that wouldn’t have any effect if he does still care.”
“You think he may?” flashed Camille jealously.
“No, I don’t. Let me finish. Your plan that I should turn him down or laugh him out of it wouldn’t help at all. And if you have imagined the whole thing, what would you have gained?”
“I have not imagined it. If he loves me as—as I have come to love him, we should not quarrel so bitterly and then I should know,” said Camille piteously. “So will you see him arrange to meet him somewhere alone—and leave him in no doubt that he has no hope with you? Then he might really turn to me.”
Tessa shook her head with distaste for the contrived intrigue of the whole idea. But when it occurred to her that a private talk with Rex might produce some conviction which Camille would accept from one or other of them, she said: “All right. I’ll see him. But I won’t meet him alone.”
“Why not? Are you afraid that you are not free of him?”
On a little exultant note Tessa said: “I am quite free of him. And I’m not afraid that he could touch my life at any point, ever again. But he is your husband and I won’t make a rendezvous with him. If I ask you both here for dinner, you would have to come too. You would, wouldn’t you?”
Momentarily Camille’s eyes avoided hers. “Yes, I’d come,” she said. “But you’d talk to him alone, wouldn’t you?”
“All right, if that’s what you want. Tessa had already resolved to ask Hilary to join the party. Her presence would ease a difficult situation and the interview with Rex woul
d look less pointed if Camille were not left alone whilst it took place.
They arranged that, in order to keep Camille’s secret, Tessa should openly ring up Usherwood and invite her and Rex for an evening in the following week. At the door Camille said shyly: “You are kind, Tessa. I was afraid that you might hate me still.”
Tessa said: “At the time I only hated what I thought life had done to me. Now I’m glad—” Impulsively she kissed Camille on the cheek. Later she was to be grateful that they had parted good friends.
Confided in, Hilary’s distaste equalled Tessa’s and her disapproval was more forthrightly expressed.
“Of course I’ll come, if it will help you,” she agreed. “But of all the mad schemes! And what has Camille Lejour ever done for you, that she should expect you to don your shining armour on her behalf?”
Tessa said simply: “For one thing, she cured me of my infatuation for Rex.”
“Nonsense. You’d have seen through him yourself in the end, without any help from her.”
“But perhaps not until it was too late. Supposing, at any time during the three years we were going about together, he had asked me to marry him?”
“Oh, you’d have said ‘Yes,’ I know.”
“Of course I should. And then, married to him, have had to face the fact that the rest of our lives stretched out before us as an endless, dreary mistake. It’s because Camille is already seeing their marriage like that that I let her persuade me this meeting with Rex may do some good.”
“How can it?” demanded Hilary bluntly.
“If he really doesn’t love her, it can’t, and it could turn him against her all the more if he ever discovered how he had been decoyed into it. But Camille regards it as so much of a magic elixir that I hadn’t the heart to refuse to see him. Besides I’m approaching it from the angle of my conviction that Rex did and does love her, and that their quarrels can’t possibly arise from any belated yearnings of his for me.”
“I shouldn’t be too sure of that,” warned Hilary. “He didn’t have any scruples before about keeping a foot in two camps. But the thing which gladdens my heart is that, for some reason not yet entrusted to friend Hilary, I’m sure you could already resist any act of enduring passion which he might try to throw.”
