The second collection of 3 great novels by Mary Burchell

by Burchell, Mary

  "I suppose I am, Harriet.** Dilys made not the slightest attempt to hedge. "But—though I know it*s a truism to say so—time softens everything. And I know there'll be a time when I shall look back and wonder why certain things hurt, and I'll realize that the solid, material things outweigh all... all the others in the end.**

  "I suppose Brent is responsible for that bit of hollow philosophy, ** commented Harriet.

  "Oh—** Dilys caught her breath on a protesting little laugh. But it was not really a very amused laugh. Then she glanced at Harriet and said, "Roddy told you more or less everything, didn *t he? * *

  "I imagine so.*'

  "And now you *re thinking very badly of me?**

  "Of you? No—not just now,*' Harriet said, realizing surprisedly that this was true. "I don*t imagine it's nice, being pulled to and fro between the two people you really love.

  "It isn't. It*s hell," Dilys said, and, drawing the car to a standstill by the side of the road, she took out her cigarette case. "Smoke?**

  "Thank you." Harriet seldom smoked, but she thought this was an occasion when it might help conversation.

  And sure enough after she had lit both their cigarettes from a Ughter, which was obviously as expensive as her case, Dilys went on, "It's nice of you to understand that I do love them both. That I'm not just being capricious with Roddy. I love him—only I also love Brent. I always have. And, m a way, been a bit responsible for him, too."

  Harriet thought of Brent smiling that thin, cold smile of the completely calculating, but knew this was not the moment to argue that he was perfectly capable of looking after himself

  "Is he younger than you are?" she asked, in a carefully controlled voice.

  "Oh, no. About five years older. But there were only the two of us, and he was always the most wonderful older brother to me. He's always been good-looking, you know, and gay and—"

  "What Priscilla calls a lovely man," Harriet supplied obligingly.

  Dilys laughed again, that little half-protesting laugh. "Very well. I know he's almost too good-looking, and that some people think he's weak and frivolous."

  "I don t think he's weak," Harriet stated dryly.

  "No?" Dilys looked faintly surprised. "Well, he is in some ways. He used to get into scrapes that weren't exactly his fault. And then he always had very expensive tastes—we both have, come to that."

  "Dilys, dear, so have lots of people, but they have to curb them," Harriet said mildly.

  "Yes, I know. I'm not pretending that we're exactly a worthwhile couple," Dilys exclaimed, with a sort of impatient candor. "One shouldn't whine, but it wasn't entirely our fault. Our parents were really rich and terribly extravagant. Everything was on an unbelievably lavish and luxurious scale when we were children—all the time our tastes were being formed. They were killed in a train smash when I was twelve and Brent seventeen, and there wasn't a penny when all the debts were settled up. We went to an aunt and uncle who were just the other extreme. They believed in austerity for austerity's sake, and not owing a penny to a soul and saving for your old age and being buried: with

  handsome respectability, and all that sort of thing. They thought we were almost potential little criminals with our outlook, and we thought they were cruel and repressive. Neither of us was right, of course. We merely both acted according to our dispositions and upbringings. '

  She paused and blew a somberly thoughtful smoke ring or two.

  "And what happened?" Harriet prompted her.

  "Brent was pusned into a job as a junior clerk at thirty bob a week, and I went to a school where there were no expensive extras and life was very real and earnest. I hated every day of every week of every year of it. My uncle intended me to be a teacher, but I intended to be a mannequin. And the moment I was able to escape, I did. Brent, meanwhile, hadn't remained a clerk for more than a few months. You can't see him entering up letters and getting there on time and being grateful for a fortnight's holiday in the year, can you?" She laughed shortly. "He was all sorts of things by turn—or sometimes simultaneously. A skating instructor, a car salesman, a professional dancing partner, and something that is called a publicity manager, but which I know," she stated with bitter realism, "embraced a lot of odd and probably shady things. I don't know why I'm telling you all this—except that, in some queer way, you're real and decent and self-respecting. And I want you to know that, though I'm none ot those things, maybe that's a little bit because they were rather far out of reach for me."

  "I understand," Harriet said, more gently than she had ever expected to speak to Dilys Penrose. "Go on."

  "Well, as soon as I was able to earn my own living, I joined Brent in London. He was as pleased as I was. That's one of the really nice things about him, Harriet. If he has money, he'll spend it on me, just as lavishly as on himself. Any really worthless brother—and quite a lot of worthy ones, too—would have preferred to let a sisterly liability limp along on her own. He wasn't like that a bit. He insisted on my joining forces with him in the very lovely apartment he had by then acquired—"

  "How?" inquired Harriet with irresistible curiosity.

  "How? Oh, I don't know," Dilys replied rather impatiently. "Brent always did acquire nice things easily. He's

  the kind of man who always can get plenty of credit, and to whom people naturally give expensive presents, and most of his jobs seem to have desirable perquisites attached to them. I've some talent for that sort of thing myself, but with Brent it amounts to a fine art. Is all this shocking you very much?" "A little," Harriet admitted with a smile. "It's so far removed from my own scheme of humdrum pay-as-you-

  go.

  "I tell you—you have self-respect. We haven't," Dilys stated, with breathtaking candor. "I admire you, but your sort is dying out, you know. Ours is on the increase. Brent and I are simply the virtuoso examples of the people who think they should have something for nothing. At one end of the scale are the people who don't mind taking—who indeed are pressed to take—money earned by other people, so lone as it's passed through a government department and called 'state' something. Brent and I are the fine flower of that school of thought. We take anything that's going, without bothering to have it passed through a government department. So long as it's on the right side of the law, of course."

  "Are you quite sure of that last proviso?" Harriet asked softly. "Are you certain that Brent nas always remained on the right side of the law?"

  There was a short silence, while Dilys's color slowly faded under the golden tan.

  "No," she said slowly, at last. "No, I'm not absolutely certain. That's—it."

  "That's what, Dilys?"

  Dilys threw away her stubbed-out cigarette end and stared somberly away from Harriet.

  "If I don't marry Lin and buttress our financial position, once and for all, I'm not sure—I'm not absolutely sure—that Brent won't find himself in the kind of jam that might end in a prison sentence. That's why I can't take the risk. '

  "But good heavens! Ask him outright. Insist on a frank explanation of the position."

  Dilys laughed rather drearily. "Brent," she said, from the depths of bitter, yet still loving knowledge, "is incapable of a frank explanation of anything. Most of the time he is gay and optimistic and reassuring. But he keeps oh dinning into me that it's in my own best interests to marry Lin. And he

  was horrified—just plain, wordlessly horrified—when I first told him that I loved Roddy and meant to relinquish Lin and his money."

  "He would probably have been horrified, in any case, at the idea of your casting away what he undoubtedly regarded as gilt-edged security," Harriet pointed out dryly.

  "Yes. He would probably have been horrified, anyway. But I never can get rid of the impression that there was fear in his reaction, Harriet. Real fear. Brent isn *t often afraid, you know.*'

  Harriet was silent. She found it impossible to work up any heart throbbing sympathy on Brent's behalf But she saw that to his sister he was the gay, loved, generous-hea
rted brother, who needed her cooperation just as he had always given her his. He was identified in this touching role in Dilys's mind just as inexorably as he was "a lovely man" in Priscilla 's.

  It was difficult to argue and, for the moment, Harriet did not attempt to. She simply said rather tonelessly, "So you are quite determined to go on with your marriage to Lindsay?"

  "I suppose so."

  "Even though you don't love him?"

  "I like him. I'm even very fond of him."

  "You mean that you'11 give him a decent deal?"

  "Oh, yes."

  "But It's Roddy you love?"

  Dilys was not the kind of girl to bury her face in her hands. She merely looked bleak, and as though the warmth died out of her.

  "Dilys! "exclaimed Harriet with energy, "it's ridiculous! Do you realize that you propose to sacrifice Roddy's happiness and your own—and quite possibly Lin's, too, to your vaguely defined fear that Brent s faults may catch up with him at last? It's wrong! It's wrong!"

  She spoke almost with passion, although, in that moment, she had forgotten her own share in this, or the way in which her own fortunes might be affected. What moved her was the sheer injustice of it alt.

  Dilys moved uneasily. She must have heard the same sort of protests again and again from Roddy, but he was too personally concerned for his arguments to carry much

  weight. Harriet must appear to her as a completely disinterested party, and the emphasis with which she spoke could not fail to have some effect.

  "It isn't as simple as that,'* Dilys said, with a quick sigh.

  "But it is! You're just drifting on a sea of false arguments put up by Brent," Harriet told her. "If you don't yourself mind facing comparative poverty—or, at any rate, less prosperity—with Roddy, it's simply crazy of you to sacrifice yourself for this sort of brother worship." She nearly added, "And such a brother!" but wisely refrained.

  "It's not brother worship," Dilys said impatiently. "I don't worship Brent. I've really no illusions about him. Only we've been through good and bad times together, and he's always shared anything good he has had with me."

  "Which doesn't prevent his being willing now to sacrifice your happiness to his—his convenience," Harriet retorted impatiently.

  "He doesn't see it like that. Arid it isn't quite like that. Oh, I'm heartsick about Roddy, of course, when he's there and so unhappy and so dear. But I've had to get over other bad times and bad losses in my life, Harriet, and one does get over them. I know I'm being weak and drifting a little, as you say. But every step of the way would be difficult if I gave up Lin now. To begin with, he'd be desperately unhappy. He—he's terribly fond of me, you know."

  "Oh, you do really care a bit about his feelings, too?" Harriet said, rather bitterly.

  And for the first time, Dilys looked at her as though she really saw her.

  "It's true, then—what Brent said!" she exclaimed. "You love Lin yourself He is the one you're really worrying about Your voice was quite different when you spoke of him."

  "No—" began Harriet. And then she stopped.

  Why should she not be frank, too? Dilys had been completely—indeed, rather appallingly—revealing about her feelings and reactions. In a sense, she was almost entitled to equal frankness in return. Besides, half-truths and concealment had already caused enough trouble.

  "Very well," she said slowly. "I do love him."

  And she experienced the most delicious sensation of

  mingled alarm and relief now that she had put it into words at last.

  There was a long silence—longer than any that had gone before. And, at last, Harriet gave a nervous little laugh and said, "Not that it really makes any difference, of course.*'

  "But I'm not so sure," Dilys said slowly. "I'm not sure at all. Perhaps—it does."

  Harriet felt her breath coming unnaturally fast.

  "What do you mean?" She spoke almost m a whisper.

  Dilys frowned, fumbled for a second cigarette and then closed her case again without having taken one, after all.

  "I never thought of it that way before," she said, as though speaking more than half to herself. "I always shrank so from taking even the very first step—having to hurt Lin dreadfully by telling him that I didn't love him. Even the first step was so difficult. I just couldn't face the others, which were even worse. But now—"

  "What do you mean—now? There ... there isn't any difference, just because I love him. The real position—/owr position—isn 't altered."

  Dilys didn't answer that. She said abruptly and almost brutally, "Is Lin fond of you?"

  "No! I mean ... he's engaged to you and—"

  "And therefore wouldn't be thinking of any other girl in those terms," amplified Dilys impatiently. "Yes, I know that. But suppose I were not there. Suppose he felt lonely and let down and in need of some sort of consolation. Wouldn't he turn, quite naturally, to you?"

  Dilys's words so exactly expressed her own undefined hope—th^ thing she had never (fared to put into words, even to nerself—that Harriet felt a peculiar little shiver of something almost like guilty fear run down her spine.

  "How ... should I... know?"she stammered.

  "Of course you know!" cried Dilys sharply. "You must know. So much depends on it. Is he quite indifferent to you or—or—" She stopped, as though unable herself to express the exact degree offeeling that she almost hoped existed in Lin.

  The temptation, in that moment, was so tremendous that Harriet was never afterward able to say, even to herself, what finally prompted her reply. Did she answer what she truthfully believed—or what she thought would make Dilys

  act in her own best interests? Or did she simply snatch at the incredible, breathtaking chance of happiness that seemed to dangle before her for a few confused moments?

  Perhaps it was something of all of these. Perhaps one never acts from one simple, unadulterated motive. At any rate, when she spoke, she spoke in a clear, steady voice, which brought conviction even to herself.

  "If you were not there, Dilys, I think he would love me. '*

  In that moment she believed it. It had to bc^ true, for she wanted it so much. But, almost as soon as she had said the words, the fearful responsibility of their implication began to weigh on her.

  She started to sa)^: "At least—'* with the idea of some feeble qualification in her mind. But Dilys cut across her words, speaking for the first time with firmness and decision.

  "Then I think I know what to do," she said. And started the car again.

  " What are you going to do?'' exclaimed Harriet, almost fearfully. "You mustn't attach too much importance to what I said. It's only that—"

  "I'm not quite certain yet." Dilys seemed unable to let her finish anything before she cut in with her own impulsive thoughts and decision. "I'll have to think it over from quite a different angle. You were right, when you said I was just drifting on a sea of false arguments. I'm glad we had this talk, Harriet."

  Harriet felt cold with apprehension and hot with a sort of heady excitement. At one moment she was glad that someone—if only herself—had been able to oppose by a few simple and fair arguments the selfish half-truths with which Brent had been filling his sister's mind. At the next, she was horrified to think that she had deliberately interfered in Lin's affairs—an interference that might cost him the fiancee to whom he was undoubtedly devoted.

  If she had not known all the characters in the drama—if they had simply been A, B and C—it would have been so easy to consider it with academic interest and say, quite positively, what course would make for the most hqjpmess all around. But, when one knew the people, how different it was! The interfering friend was the curse of almost any emotional problem. Even the most disinterested advice

  could cause the most dreadful trouble. And hers had been anything but disinterested.

  She began to wonder now on what possible grounds she could have claimed that Lin might love her if Dilys were not by. And she shuddered to think how pitif
ully thin was the evidence to support such a claim.

  She began to remind herself that there had been some solid truth and good sense in Dilys's original arguments. That, once she had given up Roddy, she might well have made a reasonable success of marriage with Lin.

  A dozen times during the remaining ten minutes of their drive, Harriet was on the point of reopening the argument But what could she say?

  Should she entirely withdraw her claim to being able to rouse Lin's ardent interest in her and admit that she was building simply on irrepressible hopes and a knowledge that he found her a pleasant influence in his home? To do so would be to tip Dilys's wavering mind almost certainly in the opposite direction. And then they would be exactly where they had been, with no satisfactory solution for anyone. Except, of course. Brent.

  No. That she would not do.

  But what point was there in raising any other question? Since she had taken up that positive stand, she could reopen the argument only either to strengthen it or to repudiate it Anything else would just be talking around in circles. And of that Dilys had evidently had enough.

  She had said—Harriet glanced at her surreptitiously—that she must think things over once more in the light of their conversation. She certainly looked just now as though her thoughts absorbed her.

  Perhaps that was the only thing to do. To let her think things out for herself once more, without any further interference, either helpful or harmful.

  Their arrival in Barndale prevented Harriet following any other course, for the present at any rate. But she quieted her anxieties by promising herself that, on the way home, there would be another chance for discussion and, by then, Dilys would probably have reviewed the situation and come to some sort of decision.

  However, she was mistaken. Even this chance of retriev-

  ing the situation—if, indeed, it required retrieving—was denied her.

  When Harriet arrived, laden with shopping, at the agreed meeting place, Dilys and the car were there, to be sure, but, sitting beside her, was another slim, smart, elegant girl, very much her own type, and they were both smoking and talking and laughing as though neither of them had a care in the world.