Once You Have Found Him

by Esther Wyndham

  When finally the young people had gone off, she and Lord Hanbridge spoke openly about it. She told him what Romilly had told her the other morning about his repugnance at the idea of marrying a woman with money of her own, and they both sighed with regret that this might be a real obstacle between him and Erika. It would otherwise have been such a perfect marriage in every way.

  “What danger do you think he is in from the widow?” Lord Hanbridge wanted to know.

  “I can’t make up my mind—rather grave this evening I fear ... What do you think?”

  “She certainly looked ravishing, but it is difficult to believe that even at his age I wouldn’t have seen through her—but then, my dearest, at his age I already had the benefit of your wisdom to guide me,” and he took her hand and kissed it.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  IT was the first time that Poppy had been in a real Castle and she experienced a little thrill as they drove over the drawbridge. The car deposited them in the courtyard in front of the great door. As it was such a warm fine evening there was a buffet outside in the courtyard and deck chairs on the grass. Already there was a great crowd of people and cars were arriving every minute.

  There was no one to receive them, and having been upstairs to remove their wraps (Poppy was wearing the white mink stole and had lent the fox to Nicole), the girls met the men again at the foot of the stairs.

  Romilly glanced from Nicole to Poppy. “I had better dance with you first,” he said to the latter, “as you are the eldest.”

  “There is no need to,” Poppy replied coldly.

  “Oh, but I want to ... Nicole, will you keep the next dance for me? We had better make a rendezvous or we shall lose each other. Let us meet here at the bottom of the stairs.” He took Poppy’s arm and guided her to the room with deep window embrasures where the chaperones could sit out, and a minstrels’ gallery at one end. The band, however, was playing on the floor while the Castle servants were gathered in the gallery to watch.

  “It will get terribly hot and crowded in here later,” Romilly said, “so now is really the best time to dance.”

  He put his arm round her. The band was playing, “People will say we’re in love.” He was a beautiful dancer and soon she was able to abandon herself to the pure pleasure of their perfectly synchronized movements. He did not spoil it by talking.

  When the music stopped for a moment before changing to another tune he kept his arm half round her. “Do you like this?” he asked.

  “What, this tune or just dancing?”

  “Dancing with me?”

  “I love dancing and you dance beautifully,” she said.

  “It is you who dance beautifully,” he replied. “I’m enjoying this.”

  “So am I. So much.”

  “I’m glad ... I hope you don’t mind my not talking, but I always think having to talk while one dances is rather a bore.”

  “I couldn’t agree with you more.”

  “We seem to think alike about such a lot of things—perhaps that’s because we are cousins. It’s odd to think we are related, isn’t it?”

  “Very odd.” They relapsed into silence again. She wanted to forget the unpleasantness of reality. She wanted just for these few moments to abandon herself to an impossible dream. “No one can ever take this away from me,” she thought. “This dance belongs to me—Poppy. It is not Erika’s. I am experiencing something perfect in itself which will always remain, if I let it, a perfect memory.” She shut her eyes to shut out the people and the setting, and his arm tightened round her. “He is enjoying this too,” she told herself. “There will probably come a day when he finds out that I am an impostor, when he will hate the very thought of me for having deceived him, but he will never know who I am—and maybe he too will remember this.”

  There was a pause again in the music and again he did not release her entirely. “That was lovely,” he said.

  “Lovely,” she echoed.

  “I hope they go on.”

  They did. They began to play “Some Enchanted Evening.”

  “Oh, good,” he said, “this is my favorite tune.”

  “Mine too.”

  He sang the words softly into her ear as they danced: “ ‘Once you have found her never let her go.’ ”

  When the music stopped again it was for an interval. “I suppose we must go and find the others,” he said. “I mustn’t forget my manners. Will you dance with me again later on? It’s so pleasant being at ease with each other, isn’t it? Now that we understand each other ... Before our talk this morning we wouldn’t have dared say how much we liked dancing with each other for fear that either of us might think we meant more than just that.”

  “Exactly,” Poppy agreed, but it was with her lips only, not her heart.

  She had a hope that in this crowd she might be able to avoid Arthur without appearing to do so. He might not be able to find her, but when they returned to the bottom of the stairs she found him waiting there with the others and immediately he claimed her for the next dance.

  “Let’s go and have a drink first,” he said. There were several running buffets in different rooms. The tickets for this ball were five guineas each and difficult to procure but the price included champagne and as much food and other drink as was required.

  “You showed little alacrity, let alone pleasure, when I asked you to dance,” he complained as soon as he had her out of earshot of the others. “You only have three more days to go after this—and you’ve got over your worst moment when your supposed father rang you up. Don’t you think it would be rather a pity to spoil it all now?”

  “Yes,” she said in a very low voice.

  “Then you will have to play your part better than this. I am beginning to lose patience. Why should I protect you for nothing?”

  “Do you really think it has been nothing?” she demanded, suddenly stung beyond endurance. “Your mere touch fills me with the most unutterable loathing. Having to speak to you at all is almost more than I can bear. I hold no particular brief for Mrs. Cunningham, but neither do I dislike her so much as to wish her you as a husband—and to think I might help her to that, poor woman.”

  “Then you wish me to go to Lord Hanbridge?”

  “As far as I myself am concerned I wouldn’t care what you did, but I am forced to do my best for the real Erika.”

  “Then aren’t you being a little unwise in trying my patience to this extent? I am not sure that I can allow you to be quite so rude to me.”

  “If I don’t tell you what I think of you at some stage I shall burst.”

  “But I helped you with that telephone call this afternoon?”

  “It appalled me to see how glibly you could lie.”

  “You are not such a bad liar yourself if it comes to that, my dear.”

  “No, I have sunk very low too. The fact that I have to associate with someone like you is proof of it.”

  “Have you quite finished?”

  “Yes, I suppose so.”

  “Then come and dance with me, and dance as if you really cared for me. If you don’t I swear by heaven that I shall have no more mercy on you.”

  She knew that he meant it; she knew she was trapped, but having been able to tell him what she thought of him had done her good. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes sparkling with anger, but she allowed him to lead her back to the ballroom like a lamb to the slaughter. “He’s right, there are only three more days,” she told herself. “I’m not going to spoil it all now. Having gone so far I must go on to the end. He’s right, the worst is over.”

  Romilly was dancing with Nichole now, and after that he danced with Daphne, and then Nicole again and then Daphne again, and still Arthur would not let Poppy go. He danced always within Daphne’s vision so that when Daphne was dancing with Romilly he too could not help seeing them. Poppy performed her part of the bargain to the very best of her ability—dancing cheek to cheek at moments, keeping an expression of smiling happiness on her face all the time, whisp
ering at moments into his ear. She loathed herself for it, loathed everything, longed to be dead.

  Between dances they went to one of the buffets or sat out of doors in deck chairs ... She wondered whether the evening would ever end. The most she could hope for was soon to be back in bed with the friendly bedclothes over her head ... Would Romilly dance with her again? Oh, if only he would come and take her away from this hateful man.

  He came during an interval in the music, and a few moments later she wished he had not. Daphne was with him/ “Will you dance the next one with me, Erika?” he asked.

  “She has promised it to me, isn’t that right?” Arthur answered for her. It was his supreme challenge.

  “Yes,” she was forced to reply, and then added, “But what about the one after that?”

  “If you like,” he replied indifferently.

  “Please,” she said desperately, trying to look into his eyes. “I will meet you at the bottom of the stairs.”

  He acquiesced with a mere inclination of the head. “There was no need to be so insistent,” Arthur scolded her.

  “I mustn’t appear rude. Even if I really was in love with you I wouldn’t be rude to him. After all he is my host...”

  Arthur let it pass.

  Romilly was dancing again now with Daphne. Poppy noticed to her secret delight that during the pauses in the music he did not keep his arm round her as he had kept it round herself, but he was talking to her a great deal and very seriously. She would give anything to know what they were talking about.

  “How much longer do you want me to go on with this?” she asked Arthur. “I am getting exhausted; I can’t keep it up much longer.”

  “No, you have done very well, and I think it has had its effect. It is for me to do the rest. I shall dance with Daphne while you are dancing with Romilly, but I shall appear bored and distrait.”

  “Then if we go home soon—after all it is getting very late—if I can get Romilly to take me home, will you have any objection?”

  “No, you can go home when you like now. I have finished with you for the moment.”

  “Thank God for small mercies. I know what that really means now.”

  It was untold relief and joy to find herself once more in the circle of Romilly’s arm, but she soon realized that he was not holding her as he had held her before, and when the music stopped he let go of her completely. As they started to dance again he asked abruptly to her surprise, “Do you wish that your young man was here?”

  “My young man?” She could not think for a moment who he was referring to, and then suddenly she understood. “Oh, you mean Lew?”

  “Is that his name? I don’t think you told me ... You had forgotten him? I rather thought you had.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You cannot have wished him to be here, surely?”

  “Why? Of course I wish it.”

  “Would you have behaved in the same way if he had been here?”

  She knew quite well what he meant. “I daresay he is having fun of his own,” she said lightly.

  “Would you like him to be having the same sort of fun as you have been having this evening?”

  “Why not?” At all costs she must treat the matter lightly.

  “It just shows that on some subjects we definitely do not think alike. I wouldn’t care for my girl to flirt with other men.”

  “Oh, flirting!” She laughed. “What’s that? Lew would understand.”

  “Would he? He must be a very unusual man.”

  ‘We trust each other.”

  “It seems a strange kind of trust.”

  “I feel light-headed here,” she started on a new tack. “It’s so unreal. Rather like Cinderella’s ball, don’t you think?”

  “It’s well after midnight,” he said icily, “so perhaps you should return to reality.”

  “I’m very willing to go home,” she answered, suddenly serious herself.

  “So am I. It’s getting very late as a matter of fact. We can take Nicole and Timmy, and leave Philippa and Dennis, who seem to be enjoying themselves.”

  “Oh, are they? I don’t think I’ve seen them.”

  “You don’t seem to have had eyes for anyone—much. Yes, they’ve danced practically every dance together—like you and Arthur Bingle. You must like him a great deal.”

  She could not think of anything direct to answer to this, for she could not bring herself to say that she did not like him and yet it would be absurd after her behavior to maintain that she did not.

  “Haven’t you enjoyed yourself this evening?” she asked instead.

  “Not much ... Let’s go home, shall we?”

  Although it was in the middle of a dance his arm dropped from her and there was nothing she could do but precede him out of the ballroom. Why had he not enjoyed himself, she wondered? Was it by any chance because Daphne had not been as nice to him as usual? Had Daphne’s suddenly awakened interest in Arthur made her noticeably less desirous of his, Romilly’s, company? Was that at the bottom of his ill-humor now? Was he by any chance jealous of Arthur? Was that the real reason why he was so concerned for Lew? She found this idea extremely disagreeable.

  They found Nicole and Timmy and suggested taking them home, but they begged to be allowed to stay on. “I know a chap here who will give us a lift,” Timmy said.

  Poppy went up to get her stole. Romilly meantime had summoned their car, which was waiting when she got down again, and they drove off in silence.

  “What is this?” Romilly said at last, stroking her white fur.

  “White mink.”

  “It costs the earth, doesn’t it? Poor Lew.”

  “Why poor Lew?”

  Having to keep you in things like this, or worse still to see you buying them for yourself ... I suppose he has to woo you with orchids, poor chap. My girl will be wooed with a bunch of violets.”

  It is the person who gives, not the flowers themselves,” Poppy found herself saying. “A bunch of violets from you—I mean a bunch of violets from the person one loves—would be worth all the orchids in the world.”

  “As a novelty?”

  No, not as a novelty,” she cried passionately.

  He was startled by her tone. “You are an odd girl,” he said.

  “Why? You said this morning that I was a puzzle to you? Why is that?”

  “There seem to be two sides to you—two people in you. A girl who can talk like that about a bunch of violets and the girl who was dancing with Arthur Bingle tonight ... It’s difficult to reconcile them.”

  “Don’t most of us have two sides to our natures?” she asked. “The man who danced with me when we first got to the ball tonight and the man I danced with last—they don’t seem to be the same person either.”

  “Touché, he said, and laughed for the first time for what seemed to her an age. “I’m sorry if I seemed a bit of a spoil-sport. You must forgive me. I’m afraid I am a romantic—an absurd, old-fashioned thing to be. I believe in the only girl in the world and all that kind of nonsense, but why I should try and inflict my ridiculous standards on others I can’t imagine. As you say, what is flirting? ... I’m sorry, Erika. I’ll keep my ideas to myself in future.”

  “Please don’t.”

  “Yes, I was abominably rude to you. I had no right to criticize.”

  “Please don’t feel that. Haven’t you the right of a cousin—almost of a brother?”

  She could not see, but she sensed that he shook his head. “One cannot change human nature,” he said. “My dream girl doesn’t exist and the sooner I realize it the better. I suppose every man has his ideal...”

  “And every woman too,” she put in softly.

  “Yes, every woman too, and the nearer our ideal is to reality the happier we are. It is a mistake to set too high a standard. It can only lead to disappointment. We should take the women we care for as they are and neither try to change them nor wish they would change themselves ... That’s what I am going to do in futu
re.”

  Her intuition told her that he was thinking of Daphne. “I shouldn’t do that if I were you,” she said quickly. “I think you ought to stick to your ideal. You may find her one day. You probably will.”

  “No, she doesn’t exist outside my imagination.”

  “But just think if you accept the second best and then your ideal does turn up—think how dreadful you would feel then.”

  “Have you ever seen the moon reflected in a deep, still pool?” he asked. “I remember seeing it once when I was a child and trying to grasp it in my hand. I really thought I could. Well, waiting for one’s ideal is just as foolish as that ... I shall be a fool no longer.”

  “What has made you suddenly come to this conclusion?”

  “Do you really want to know?”

  “Realizing that even you are like all other women.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you. I can tell you this as I never wanted you for myself, but I almost envied your Lew because he had found you. The only thing wrong with you seemed to be your money, but that is just a personal idiosyncrasy of mine ... And now I don’t envy him any longer.”

  “That is a very harsh thing to say.”

  “It is, isn’t it? It is beastly of me. I’m being unforgivably honest with you. I don’t see why you should forgive me. But do you know, at the same time, I am very grateful to you?”

  “Why?”

  “Because you have revealed to me the full extent of my own folly. From now on I cease to be an idealist and therefore I shall be a much happier man.”

  “I am sorry, desperately sorry. There is no greater harm that I could have done you.”