by Joan Aiken
“You must be joking! No person of fashion would be seen at the opera on Wednesday in New York; that’s when you lend your box to your poor relations.”
“Humph,” said Nils. He gave her another long, considering look. “No, I can see that ain’t the life for you.”
“And I don’t want our life to be one long wretched struggle, either.”
“Between you and Benet, you mean?” said Nils, looking as if this were familiar territory.
“Between us both and his family.”
“That’s like us too,” he said moodily, pushing the swing to and fro with his foot. “Kirstie’s people—well, I won’t bore you with all that tale. They are a set of nine-shillings-in-the-pound skinflints. But I tell you what it is, my love, you need more time to think about the whole business, and whether you’re taking the right step. You need to get away. Why don’t you come back to England with me, when I go, stay a few months with us, maybe six or seven, and see how you get on—see how you feel about Benet then?”
“Good heavens!” Val stared at him. “Go to England for six months on my own, just after we had become engaged? What do you think Benet’s family would say to that?”
“They might be pleased as punch,” he pointed out. “Anyway, nothing to cavil at: you stay with me and Kirstie—why not? Perfectly aboveboard. Your own family. Nothing to raise eyebrows over, surely?”
He gave her a cajoling smile, and she was strongly tempted. She said slowly, “I suppose not. Perhaps—I wonder what Benet would think?”
For some reason the image of Charlotte Warren came into her mind, standing beside Benet so dejectedly, in her exquisite pink balldress, casting those timid, forlorn looks at him. Val had little doubt that, once she herself was off the scene, away in England, there would be a concerted family drive to bring Charlotte and Benet back together again.
“Oh—the devil,” said Nils, when she explained this. “What a pickle you are in. Well, look at it this way—if the fellow really loves you, they won’t be able to budge him. For all you know, he might follow you to England—had you thought of that possibility? Then you could see each other on equal terms, without all his family sitting on your feet.”
“That’s true,” she said, tempted by the thought, and then, after another moment, “In any case, perhaps poor Charlotte ought to have her chance—”
“My good girl, have you taken leave of your wits? Life’s a battle—not some kind of chivalrous parlour game—you toss me the handkerchief, I toss it back to you! ‘Pon my word, I begin to wonder if you really do love the fellow—do you or don’t you? If you don’t—and he don’t—then you’re well rid of each other.”
Val felt, and stifled, a deep, dreadful, transfixing pang at the thought of Benet lost—of Benet’s kindness and solicitude, his intelligence and unselfishness, diverted away from her, back to poor little Lottie Warren. No, of course Nils was right; one could not dispose of people as if they were parcels. But Nils was right also—if she and Benet did not love each other enough—
“Oh, I don’t know what to think.” Looking at Nils she suddenly felt a strange qualm; the moon, shining full on him now, defined the long wandering nose, the full, flexible mouth, puckered up like a clown’s at the corners, lower lip slightly projecting; the silver light just caught the tips of his almost white lashes, which gave a very curious and rather disquieting impression as if a pair of sightless eyes watched her from his smiling face. All at once she realised how exhausted she was; she pushed her hands backward through the carefully piled tower of her hair, hopelessly disarranging it.
“I’m too tired to talk any more. We must be mad, sitting out here till all hours like this. Listen—there’s St. Peter’s clock striking—five o’clock! Nearly time to get up!”
“My dear girl! What time do you rise, for heaven’s sake?”
“Seven. Come along—I haven’t even put sheets on your bed; I’ll do it now. And I’ll tell Chloe not to call you in the morning.”
“When does your old Chumley get back?”
“Not for a couple of weeks yet. How long are you planning to stay, Nils?”
“Depends how my business goes.”
He followed her in and stood soundlessly whistling, watching while she lit a lamp, carefully turned up the wick, and then replaced the glass chimney and the fringed shade.
“Nils, I’m truly ashamed of myself. Here I’ve been, pouring out all my woes, and you’ve told me nothing about what brought you over here.”
“It’ll keep,” he said easily, following her up the Turkey-carpeted stairs. “Business dealings. I’ll tell you tomorrow.”
She led the way into the spare bedroom and pulled a white embroidered counterpane off the mahogany bedstead. As she swiftly tossed clean sheets over the mattress, and tucked them in, he put down his Gladstone bag on the rose-garlanded carpet and, without offering to assist her, stood with hands on hips looking round the room.
“Wasn’t this where I used to sleep? It’s been done over since, though. The wallpaper’s different: very fancy.”
It was a French one, imitation watered silk, with a valanced border and tassels.
Val pulled the curtains, layers of Nottingham lace, more layers of velvet.
“I daresay Step-papa was fairly well-fixed by the time he died? He gave Ma an allowance all along, didn’t he? Did he leave you much, my love?”
“Very little,” said Val cheerfully, taking a pile of blankets from the huge mahogany closet. “He told me why he wasn’t going to; said he didn’t want people marrying me for my cash. I didn’t mind. He left a lot to endow a library in Marshfield, the town where he was born.”
“I call that thundering mean!”
“No, why?”
“How much have you got?”
When she told him her income he whistled, and said, “No wonder you think Benet quite a catch! But what about this house? Ain’t it yours?”
“It belongs to Chum for her life, on condition I can live in it. At her death it reverts to me—but that’s a long way off.”
“How peculiar,” drawled Nils. “Was she his mistress, then?”
Val burst out laughing. “His mistress? Are you mad?” She thought of little brown Miss Chumley, tart as a hawthorn berry, dry as a pebble. “Don’t you remember her? Father had the greatest respect for her. He used to consult her on legal affairs and points of literary style.”
“Well then—”
“No, no.” She wiped the tears of amusement from her eyes. “Did you think that was why Mama left him?”
“Well no, to tell the truth, I didn’t; judging from the kind of life she led when she got to London, it was some little caper on her part that caused him to give her the push.”
Val glanced at her brother speculatively and wondered what it had been like, living with their mother in London. She could without embarrassment ask him about his schooldays, but she found herself unable to put questions to him about conditions in Bruton Street, unless he volunteered any details. And she doubted if he would do that; he did not seem given to divulging unasked information about himself—or much, indeed, even when it was asked.
She wondered what had brought him to New York. Not given to sentimentality, she doubted if the ties of family affection had anything to do with his crossing the Atlantic—why, after all, should they, after fifteen years? She was certainly pleased to see him—delighted, at this juncture in her own affairs—but she did not pretend to herself that the fraternal tie was a very strong one.
Well—no doubt he would tell her when he was ready.
“I say,” he said, glancing round the room which she had now made ready for him, “I don’t suppose you’d have a drop of curaçoa about the house?”
“Mercy, no! Curaçoa? I’ve never even tasted it. There might be some madeira or burgundy in the dining-room closet—we don’t drink much wine, Chum and I, when we’re on ou
r own.”
“Sickly stuff,” he said discontentedly. “Madeira! How you can. I thought Yankees drank spirits all the time. How about cherry brandy?”
She shook her head. “No, but now I come to think, there’s probably some cognac. Chum likes to have a bottle in case of sickness.”
He accompanied her to the dining room, where she found the brandy and was about to pour him a glassful.
“Give me the decanter,” he suggested. “That’ll save you coming up to the top floor again.”
She had not been intending to, assuming that he would take his drink downstairs. But he walked off with the decanter before she could answer and called softly back over the banister, “Don’t forget to tell that woman of yours not to wake me! And you think over what I’ve said. I believe a trip to England just now would solve a lot of your problems.”
In spite of retiring so late, Val found it hard to get off to sleep and slept poorly when she did. Her mind was still running like a millrace: the lights and spangles, the satin trains, the fronds of fern and shining draperies of the ball floated and swirled inside her closed eyelids, inside her brain; she could hear old Mrs. Allerton saying, “How do you think you will ever settle down in this family?” And Mr. Dexter: “One or the other of you will have to make a radical change—we can only trust to your generosity to allow yourself to be the sacrifice.”
Why must marriage involve a sacrifice? she cried now furiously and silently at the unheeding Mr. Dexter, asleep no doubt hours past in his tidy bachelor house over in Waverley Place. We are not a lot of ancient Greeks! I am not Iphigenia, and what is more, I don’t intend to be. All right, he replied placidly out of his pillow, then you will make Benet wretchedly unhappy.
Val flung herself from side to side; she threw off the bedclothes and then pulled them back on again. At last she slept briefly and was prey to harried, frantic dreams. But the moon hardly seemed to have left her window when the sun burst in, for, sleeping at the back of the house, she preferred to let in the air, however smoke-laden, and never troubled to pull her chintz curtains. Sunlight fell in layers of dazzling silk on the new French wallpaper and woke her; she opened her eyes.
For a couple of moments she lay in a state of suspended awareness, vaguely conscious that something momentous had happened, or was about to, but unable to recall what it was. Her short sleep had been deep as death; awakening felt hard as birth.
Suddenly she remembered Nils. Her brother—how extraordinary! He lay in the room above—what a strange thing. And yet, how natural, after all; doubtless it had been thought peculiar enough by the Allertons, that interwoven, gregarious clan, that the link between her and Nils seemed so frail.
Attached to the thought of the Allertons came recollection of the ball: a prickly torment, like putting on a hair shirt. Later in the day she must pay a formal call on Benet’s mother and sister to thank them and discuss it all in dismal detail. And soon, she supposed, letters of congratulation and engagement gifts would begin to arrive, and they must all be acknowledged and thanked for, a prospect that made her heart sink.
Why not come back to England with me? Nils had said it so lightly, and it had seemed an utterly impossible scheme, not to be thought of. But just the same, what temptation lay in the idea. Had he really meant it?
Val rolled over in bed and looked at the watch her father had given her for an eighteenth-birthday present; it hung by its velvet ribbon over the mahogany knob of her bed head.
Nine o’clock.
And she had three articles on school library facilities to finish and take round to the Inquirer offices by twelve.
She sprang out of bed with less than her usual bounding vitality—even though impelled by conscience-stricken haste—bathed, pulled on a faded old blue-poplin dress, and bundled up her hair. Fortunately the articles were half done, all they required were polishing and the addition of a final two paragraphs to each. Buttoning the crochet lace collar which Miss Chumley had kindly added to the dress to alleviate its plainness—and which Val was too kind to say she thought unbecoming and fussy—she ran softly downstairs.
Old Chloe was on the lookout, and came lumbering up to the dining room soon after with a huge breakfast on a tray—melon, rice griddle cakes and syrup, scrambled eggs, coffee.
“I can’t possibly eat all that, Chloe; I don’t have the time.”
“Rubbish, Miss Val. You been dancing all night, you must be tired to your bones. You just eat it without arguing, I know you didn’t get home till three, I heard you come in. Did you have a good time, now? And who was that talkin’ with you out in the yard?”
“Don’t worry, you won’t have to tell Miss Chumley that I’ve been letting strangers into the house—not even Benet! It was my brother from England; he’s up top, sleeping in the spare bedroom. Mind you don’t disturb him; he just came off the boat last night.”
“Oh, that one?” said Chloe. “So he really was your brother? He didn’t look like no brother to me. He ain’t a bit like you, Miss Val, bar the fairness. I didn’t trust his looks, I can tell you that; brother or no, I wouldn’t do no horse-trading with that one.”
“Oh what stuff, Chloe; he’s exactly like me,” Val said, scooping out melon with one hand while she turned manuscript pages with the other.
“He is not so! You’re too honest for your own good, you are. Anybody could make a fool outa you. Now you eat up those griddle cakes; I didn’t cook them to have them go to waste.”
“All right, Chloe—don’t bully me. Go away and let me get on with this. I’ll tell you all about the ball, cross my heart, when I’ve delivered these to the newspaper.”
“I’ll bet you was the best-lookin’ there.”
“No I wasn’t—not by a long way,” said Val shortly and returned to her rewriting, taking occasional forkfuls of griddle cake, while her coffee grew cold and the pages piled up round the table.
Immersed in her task, she was oblivious to the passage of time. When the front doorbell rang, two hours later, she did not even hear it; the first intimation she had of any arrival was voices just outside the dining-room door.
“Well, I’ll tell her you’re here, Mr. Allerton, but she’s awful busy just now,” Chloe was saying defensively, and then she heard Benet’s voice, “Oh, I think she’ll have a minute or two for me, Chloe; after all, we are engaged now, you know!” and Benet walked into the room.
Rather startled, full of mixed feelings, among which joy did not predominate, Val stood up, scattering papers. He came round the table and kissed her.
“Good morning, my dearest! How did you sleep? Soundly, I hope, after all that dancing?”
“Like a top, thanks,” she lied. “I hope you did too? But Benet, I thought it was this afternoon that we were to meet?”
She was very conscious, annoyingly so, of her faded dress, untidy hair, inky fingers, the relics of breakfast on the table; even more so of those final paragraphs still unwritten. Surreptitiously she pushed a couple of sheets over a patch of crumbs and glanced back at the sentence she had just begun. Half past eleven . . .
“Yes, my dear, I know; our walk in the park. But unfortunately I’ve been summoned to Boston to advise a client; old Pendleton thinks that I would be the best man for the job, curse him! So I have to catch the half-past two train. That’s why I have come now, hoping I can persuade you to come out to lunch with me before I leave.”
“Out to lunch?” she repeated in dismay.
“Yes, at the Amsterdam Hotel—properly chaperoned! With my cousins the Warrens, who are staying there—Lottie is so anxious to know you better.”
“Benet, I’m afraid I can’t possibly. For one thing I’m not suitably dressed; and I just haven’t time; these reports I’m working on have to be round at the Inquirer by noon. Please give my apologies to your cousins. Another day, perhaps. I really am too busy right now.”
He looked disconcerted and v
ery much cast down at her decisive tone.
“Surely you can take a couple of hours, on the morning after you have announced your engagement? Lottie will be so disappointed! I’d not have thought it would make much difference if they had to wait for your little piece until this afternoon?”
“I’m afraid it does, Benet. They have to go to press,” Val said patiently. “I’m very sorry.”
“My cousins are outside in the brougham,” he said. “Don’t you think if they came in they could persuade you? Shall I call them?”
“Mercy, no, Benet! The room’s in a mess, and so am I—”
For the first time in their relationship she felt exasperation with Benet, as he stood there so large and impervious to argument, his fresh kind face hurt and puzzled, wearing without any concealment its look of chagrin.
He said, “You see I’m going to have to stay in Boston for at least two weeks. If you don’t come now, it’s going to be such a long gap till I see you again, my dearest! There’s a whole series of hearings scheduled, it may take even longer—”
“Oh, dear, that’s too bad. I’m really sorry,” she answered mechanically, thinking, How would he like it if I were to walk into his law office and expect him to drop whatever he was engaged on and come out with me on the spot? How lucky men are! They have so many strongholds they can retreat into—clubs and offices and libraries where women aren’t allowed. Whereas anybody can stroll into any woman’s room.
As if to give point to her thought, the door opened and her brother Nils ambled in.
He was unshaven, bleary-eyed and shock-headed. The silk dressing gown he wore was a handsome one, but it was frayed and soiled, and had plainly been subjected to years of wear. So had his carpet slippers.
“Oh, hallo, my dear, is that coffee I smell?” he said, yawning cavernously. He dumped the empty brandy decanter and glass on top of her pages of manuscript. “Brought these down,” he pointed out virtuously. “Let’s have a cup of that coffee, like a love, will you—doesn’t matter if it’s cold; I’ve a mouth like the Tyburn River this morning.” Without waiting for permission he poured himself a cup of the cold coffee, and then, drinking it, noticed Benet for the first time.