The Unknown Mr. Brown

by Sara Seale

  “You have a most curious trick of relapsing into slightly pompous pedantry on certain occasions,” he observed, hoping to give her time to readjust her ideas, but she looked at him as if he had been guilty of some trivial irrelevance and replied without humour:

  “Then I must have caught the trick from you. After all, I haven’t had much chance since coming to Farthings of associating with men of my own age and habits of speech, have I?”

  “All right, you’ve made your point,” Robert said, and the bite was back in his voice. “I realise that it could be said that I’ve taken advantage of your rather unique situation, but there’s no need to throw it in my face. It seems I’ve misjudged both the moment and your own rather misleading behaviour, so we’ll shelve your answer until a more propitious time.”

  “My answer?”

  “Perhaps you’ve already forgotten that little item, or wasn’t it important? Never mind, the time wasn’t ripe, so we’ll let that pass, but there’s one thing I would like to know. Was I only deceiving myself by imagining a change of heart in you?” His voice softened as he asked the question, the ghost of that tender smile touching his lips, and for a moment Victoria wavered. It would be so easy to abandon resistance and shut one’s eyes both to disillusioning reality and to the pricklings of conscience, but because her conscience had never been entirely easy in regard to Kate, she could only answer him indirectly by blurting out as she had once before:

  “And what of Kate?”

  “Kate?” He frowned impatiently. “Oh yes, Kate ... It was a pity you had to find out about those roses, but if you hadn’t succumbed to temptation and eavesdropped on our conversation, you’d have been none the wiser, so don’t blame poor Kate for giving the show away.”

  She, in turn, supposed him to have purposely sidetracked her, but the casual mention of that most bitter hurt to her pride successfully silenced any qualms of conscience in regard to Kate.

  “Why?” she asked. “Why did you have to play such a pointless practical joke on me? To make fun of me by letting me believe in something that wasn’t true was not only stupid but heartless.”

  “Stupid, possibly, but not intentionally heartless,” he replied, but there was little of warmth in his voice now, only a cool note of tolerance as if he was humouring an unreasonable child and, like a child, she stamped her foot at him.

  ‘That’s no excuse and no answer either,” she flashed out. “If I could understand what prompted you—but I can’t.”

  “Can’t you? Well, no, how should you? Let’s say, then, that it seemed a pity not to endow unimaginative Mr. Brown with a little fictional awareness of his more tender obligations in view of past omissions, and you must admit, Victoria Mary, that true or false, the result was fully justified.”

  “Don’t go on addressing me in that silly manner as if my names as well as my greenness amused you,” she snapped back, sounding, at last, more like her usual self. “Nothing’s justified as it’s turned out, unless you count your success in making a fool of me, and for that I can’t forgive you.”

  “No, I suppose not,” he said, sounding suddenly tired and not very interested. “Well, I’ll just have to make the best of it, won’t I?”

  “Is that all you care?” she asked, but if he caught the tentative plea for assurance in her voice he ignored it.

  “You’re not, I fancy, in the right mood to assess degrees of emotion, so the answer had better be yes, I care to the extent of not wishing to hurt you unnecessarily, but I’m too old and seasoned not to have learned acceptance. You might with good effect apply a little of the same philosophy to your own situation when you’ve got over your disappointment regarding Mr. Brown. There are worse things in life than the loss of one’s youthful illusions.”

  “None of which explains anything,” she protested, striving to capture a shred of dignity. “It’s very easy to wrap things up in a lot of high-sounding nonsense that doesn’t mean a thing, but you owe me more than that, Robert. So far, you’ve offered me nothing definite to come to terms with.”

  “I’ve offered you marriage, but perhaps you don’t consider that definite enough,” he replied quite gently.

  “But that,” she countered quickly before her resistance could be further weakened, “was probably a hoax. It was all a hoax, wasn’t it? The roses, the surprise weekend, even the moonlight and the shooting star—everything laid on to lend enchantment where none existed.”

  He made a small involuntary movement towards her then thrust his hands in his trouser pockets and leaned back against the mantelshelf.

  “You must, of course, draw your own conclusions about that,” he said with cool deliberation. “I’m not prepared to make palatable concessions as a sop to hurt feelings. You must take me as you find me, my dear, or not at all.”

  “Then,” she replied with a studied politeness which she hoped would match his own coolness, “it will have to be not at all, if you really need an answer. I must apologise, Robert, for being so dumb that I mistook fantasy for fact, but it won’t occur again. I’ll go up and tell Kate she can come down now. It must be nearly supper time.”

  She turned as she finished speaking and crossed the room to escape up the staircase which had provided such disastrous facilities for eavesdropping, and Robert watched her go, but made no attempt to call her back. When, a few minutes later, Kate came down, he was already collecting his personal possessions which lay scattered about the room and paused only to say:

  “I’ll pour you a drink in a moment, Kate, then I’ll go upstairs and get packed.”

  “But you don’t need to do that yet,” she said, switching on lights and drawing curtains to shut out the depressing view of the lingering daylight. “You never do leave till late on Sundays.”

  “There are Sundays and Sundays, and I won’t stay for your cold collation if you don’t mind,” he replied, and she glanced quickly at his face, then as quickly away.

  “Oh, dear! Didn’t you straighten things out?” she said, and sounded faintly exasperated. She had not expected to return to her home to find complications leading to strained relationships and no one very interested in how she herself had spent the week-end.

  “Quite the opposite. Confusion was only piled upon confusion,” he replied, pouring her a drink, and his voice held such a touch of bitterness that her eyes became thoughtful.

  “Well,” she said, “leaving aside the question of whether or not your visit was wise, I’ll confess I find your prank with the roses a little hard to take. How did you explain that away to Victoria?”

  “I didn’t, neither am I going to explain it to you. You will just have to write it off as an eccentricity and blame that peculiar sense of humour of which you accused me earlier.”

  “And is that all the satisfaction you afforded Victoria? I wonder she didn’t up and dot you one!”

  He smiled then, but his eyes were a little sad as he handed her the drink he had poured for her.

  “It would possibly have saved a lot of heartburning if she had,” he replied, “but Miss Victoria Mary Hayes showed a remarkable restraint for the most part and I—well, I probably took up the wrong attitude and discovered it too late to start afresh.”

  “Are you serious, Rob?” she asked him curiously, not very sure what answer she wanted him to make, and he raised one eyebrow with that trick he had when he chose to be uncommunicative.

  “I’m perfectly serious in regretting my own shortcomings,” he replied, “and will you now, please, revert to your usual tactful self and forbear to plague me with awkward questions?”

  “No, I will not,” she retorted with spirit. “I’m very fond of you, Rob, and grateful for all that you do to make life pleasant for Timmy and me, but I have a responsibility to the girls I employ and Victoria in particular with all those tiresome provisos I’ve had to comply with. She’s not, thank heavens, a silly young miss with her head full of romantic nonsense, but she’s had little chance to be courted and admired in the usual way. You, after all,
are a very attractive man when you set out to charm, and I wouldn’t like to think you’ve embarked on making a conquest just for the sake of amusement. There! Tell me to mind my own business if you like, but don’t be surprised if I claim the rights of an old friend, to say nothing of a relation.”

  “A very distant one—just sufficiently connected to make our association respectable,” he said with a grin. “Are you by any chance asking my intentions, sweet Kate?”

  “Yes, I think I am. I think I hope that you are serious, for it’s high time you settled down with someone who could make you happy. You’ve waited too long as a result of overdone caution. Irene was simply typical of her own set and upbringing and the only mistake you made was in thinking you could change her. But you’re older now, and possibly not so exacting in your demands for perfection. Whether Victoria is old enough or experienced enough to satisfy you, I wouldn’t know, but the pernickety Mr. Brown has certainly seen to it that there’s been small chance of her developing a taste for riotous living, so at least you’d be spared a repetition of the Irene fiasco. There—I’ve said my piece, and if you don’t like it you’ll just have to lump it!”

  “Well, that was quite a speech, Cousin Kate,” he said, sounding amused and slightly surprised. “I must say I admire the temerity with which you stick to your guns, and I’ll reward it this much to relieve your doubts. I asked Victoria to marry me just now, so you can put your mind at rest concerning my intentions. Unfortunately she didn’t take the same view, dismissing my proposal either as a gentlemanly offer to offset gossip or a hoax on the same lines as that unfortunate affair of the roses.”

  “So she turned you down. Well, I can’t say I’m surprised, all things considered. Why on earth, if you were building up to a romantic scene, didn’t you send your wretched floral offering from yourself instead of foisting them on to Mr. Brown, who for all we know, is still trying to work out how the mistake occurred?”

  “Now that, as they say, is another story, and not one that I’m prepared to embark upon. You will, I hope, Kate, be discreet if Victoria sees fit to confide in you—no well-intentioned persuasions on my behalf, please. This is something she will have to work out for herself. Now, I really must get my things together and be off before the poor child comes down for supper, bracing herself to sit through an embarrassing meal as if nothing had happened.”

  “Rob ...” Kate said, catching at his sleeve when he kissed her quickly in passing, “... won’t you ... wouldn’t you like to ... ? I can tell Elspeth to put supper back and retire upstairs to my room.”

  “No, I wouldn’t like, dear Kate. The moment isn’t propitious for the recapturing of magic and poor Victoria’s dream world has taken a hard knock. I won’t come down here again unless you send for me, so I’ll say goodbye now and slip away when the coast is clear,” he said, and left her, instinctively avoiding the habitual short cut to the bedrooms provided by the corner staircase.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  BUT Victoria did no confiding and Kate, remembering that disconcerting trick of cool withdrawal, if disappointed, was unsurprised. Robert, she thought had not allowed for a maturity of mind which the years of enforced dependence had fostered early.

  When they met at supper that Sunday evening, it had been Kate who appeared awkward and at a loss for conversation. Victoria might have wept in the privacy of her room, but she was composed enough at the supper-table and if she ate little, she gave no other sign of being distressed, relieved no doubt by Robert’s decision to absent himself. Kate found herself answering polite questions and giving dutiful accounts of her doings in London as if it were she who were required to be set at ease, and although she tried once or twice to provide an opening for reciprocal confidences, she was neatly sidetracked. No mention was made of Robert’s sudden departure or the extraordinary trick he had seen fit to play, but the next morning, Kate found the roses had been replaced with hastily picked oddments from the garden.

  “What have you done with them?” she asked casually, wondering whether Victoria had, on a sentimental impulse, removed them all to her own room to brood over them in solitude, but felt snubbed when she was answered equally casually:

  “I threw them away. They were beginning to drop.”

  “Oh, what a pity!” was all Kate could find to say. “They may have been dropping, but they weren’t nearly dead.”

  “They were to me. I find I don’t care for roses as much as I once did—they’re an overrated luxury if you don’t grow them yourself,” Victoria said, and began to talk brightly of something else.

  As the days went on, a sense of unease troubled them both. It seemed to Kate that that unfortunate week-end had sparked off something which affected the whole household.

  “I wish I’d never gone away that week-end. Nothing’s been quite the same since,” Kate confided in John Squires on one of her customary stops for a glass of sherry on her way home from the village.

  “In what way?” he enquired cautiously. He had never alluded to Robert’s visit during her absence but, quite apart from the fact that, like himself, she probably thought it unwise, he imagined she could well have been hurt by this show of interest in a younger woman.

  “Oh, I don’t know. Perhaps leaving home unsettled me. I’m not really cut out for the gay life and I’ve bought a lot of new clothes I could quite well do without.”

  “Haven’t they been properly appreciated?”

  “Oh, yes, Victoria is most approving and even Elspeth pays me a grudging compliment or two. It was she, as a matter of fact, who persuaded me into extravagance in the first place, but lately she’s been a bit crotchety, as though she regretted departing from her native caution.”

  “And the attentive cousin—wasn’t he impressed?”

  “Robert? Well, there was scarcely time for him to notice new clothes. He went back before supper. There—well, there had been a little disagreement with Victoria over something and he thought it better not to stay late.”

  “I see. It might have been wiser if he hadn’t stayed at all in the circumstances. Did you mind, Kate?”

  “Not really,” she answered evasively. “I did think at the time it might have caused awkwardness if it got to the ears of that tiresome Mr. Brown, but it was probably only due to a slight sense of guilt.”

  “Why on earth should you blame yourself?” he exclaimed angrily. “Farmer should have known better than to upset you with thoughtless behaviour.”

  “Oh, I don’t really—only to the extent of having Victoria removed from my employment as a result of any carelessness on my part. You’ve no idea how fussy those pompous solicitors are, but Robert didn’t upset me for that reason.”

  “Oh, I see.” He did not enquire for the true reason, having no wish for his suspicions to be confirmed, but Kate, mistaking his reticence for censure of Robert, found herself on dangerous ground. He had not sworn her to secrecy in the matter of his rejected proposal, but she felt it was premature to discuss his prospects when so much lay unresolved.

  “I don’t think you do, John dear, but it wouldn’t be fair to Robert to discuss his affairs at this juncture, so just forget my little burst of discontent,” she said, and wished as she saw the familiar expression of patient resignation in his steady blue eyes that she could have sought his counsel and understanding for the doubts which still troubled her.

  “This weather’s enough to breed discontent in the hardiest of us,” he replied, taking his cue and thankful for the never-failing excuse of the weather’s vagaries, and she smiled at him gratefully.

  “Yes, it is, isn’t it?” she agreed, getting up reluctantly to go. “The week-end I was in London was so hot that I thought nostalgically of the country, and now this! Timmy incidentally, hasn’t been himself lately. I think he got a bit of a chill and hasn’t shaken it off. I was sure he was running a temperature then, though Robert said it was only spleen.”

  “And Farmer was probably right,” John said briskly. “We don’t see eye to eye on many m
atters, but we do share the opinion that you fuss too much about the boy.” She was used to his plain speaking and respected his medical skill, but he had never before accused her quite so openly of maternal foolishness.

  But, John, he’s all I have! I can’t help being overanxious at times,” she said, and stood looking at him a little helplessly with hurt brown eyes, but he became suddenly too impatient of the strictures which clouded his own situation to offer the usual soothing assurances.

  “It’s no fault of the child’s that he’s all you have,” he retorted bluntly. “Being a born mother, you’re simply suffering from frustration. You should marry again and have other children to keep you busy and happy in the way you were meant for.”

  “Well!” she said a little blankly, and found to her surprise that she was blushing. “If anyone but you had said that to me, John, I’d—”

  “You’d what?”

  “I’ve really no idea! I think I’d better return home before you offer me any more surprising advice.”

  “I could offer advice that might surprise but probably wouldn’t please you,” he said soberly, “so I won’t risk our valuable friendship by being too outspoken. Do you want me to come up and run the rule over Timmy to prove your anxieties groundless?”

  “Yes, if you would. I’m not really so anxious as all that, but it makes a nice excuse for your company. Besides, Victoria and I need cheering up,” she said, and returned to Farthings feeling suddenly gay and indifferent to the weather, and rather pleased that she had spent more than she should on some becoming new clothes.

  But if Kate contrived to ignore the discomforts of the rest of that chilly June, Victoria found the grey skies and perpetual drizzle a discouraging if fit complement to her own disturbance of mind. She became morbidly conscious of a sense of guilt. However trivial Robert’s attentions had turned out to be, the fact remained that she had been ready and willing to receive them because for her he had ceased to be the enemy of old. She did not blame him now for having misled her or for that ridiculous proposal which she supposed was his way of offering amends, but taken all together with that pointless practical joke involving Mr. Brown, the whole sorry affair was reduced to bitterness.