The second collection of 3 great novels by Mary Burchell

by Burchell, Mary

  She would probably have agreed just as willingly to any other arrangement he cared to suggest, for she still found it almost impossible to realize that it was her life that was being arranged, and that she was the girl for whom these

  various plans were being made. She was interested in them—almost painfully interested in them—but nothing could quite present to her the finished picture of herself as the wife of Lmdsay Varlon.

  Not until she was, with the eager and kindly assistance of her nurse, putting on her wedding dress and pinning on her wedding veil, did she see with blinding clarity:

  This is it! This is the moment of decision. After this I shall never be Althea Pendray again, I shall be the wife—and one day the sometime wife—of Lindsay Varlon.

  "Are you cold, dear?" her nurse asked, because Thea had shivered suddenly.

  "No, no. It*s just excitement."

  "Of course. But don't you be nervous. We'll all be there— as many of us as possible, that is—to wish you well and cheer you afterward. Matron's been very kind and is letting all of us that can get away go. I think Mr. Varlon had a talk with her."

  "I'm sure he must have," Thea agreed with a faint smile. "Otherwise we couldn't possibly be having the wedding breakfast in the nurses' dining hall. It's all been beautifully arranged."

  "Mr. Varlon's used to getting his own way, I don't doubt,'' the nurse said approvingly.

  "I suppose he is," Thea agreed, and wondered whether he considered he was "getting his own way" over this marriage of theirs.

  She was not being married actually in the hospital chapel, but in the small country church nearby. Ancl to Thea it seemed, somehow, entirely in keeping with the strangeness of it all that she should be married in a church she had never seen in her life before.

  But it was a beautiful little church, a church that might have been built especially for weddings. And the sunlight streamed in through the clear elass windows high up, and seeped in rich colorings through the stained glass windows on the ground level.

  Several of the nurses had come over from the hospital and decorated the church the evening before, and as Thea came rather slowly up the aisle it seemed to her that the place was full of smilmg flowers, and smiling faces undei white caps.

  Really, it was sweet of them all to wish her so well, and to take such an interest in what they believed to be her romance!

  She hardly noticed the few people who were not in nurse's uniform. Presumably they were one or two of Lindsay's friends from London, with a sprinkling of newspaper people. No one she knew. Geraldine—superb in leaf green with a little mink shoulder cape—was standing in the front pew.

  This discovery gave Thea such a disagreeable and unexpected thrill of fear that for a moment her smile disappeared, her eyes widened and darkened, and she had the most preposterous desire to turn and run away from all this fantastic scene, which had suddenly become something in the nature of a trap.

  But even as her heart sa..k with a sickening little sensation of despair her frightened gaze came to rest on Lindsay as he stooa at the end of the aisle, smiling quite calmly and looking toward her.

  And then—all in one confused impression, as it seemed to her—she remembered that he had come to meet her at the station that dreadful day, that he had refused to let Geraldine turn her out, that he had solved the terrifying problem of her future, that he had been sweet to her over her engagement ring, and that here he was—prepared to marry her and look after her.

  She smiled at him and, without even knowing it, she quickened her pace, and a moment later her hand was in his and she felt astonishingly secure.

  After that, strangely enough, the wedding held no terrors for her. She even made her responses in a clear tone that the nurses insisted afterward *'was lovely to hear," and when she came out of the church with Lindsay to face a battery of cameras, she was able to laugh and look happy just exactly as a bride should.

  There was only one further moment of uncertainty and discomfort for Tnea, and that was when Geraldine came up to her afterward at the informal reception and kissed her lightly—but in some way menacingly—and said, '*Clever girl. You have managed everything beautifully."

  And then, as Thea seemed unable to find any reply to this peculiar form of congratulation, she laughed ana, taking a

  couple of letters from her handbag, said, "Oh, these came for you some little while ago. Tm afraid I forgot to send them on. They're from the States. *'

  Thea looked down at the letters in her hand.

  "Why, they're from Stephen—and Mrs. Dorley. When did they come, Geraldine?'

  "I don't remember exactly. I meant to send them on and forgot," Geraldine repeated, but still without any expression of regret for the omission. "I don't expect they're especially important, are they?"

  They probably were not, of course, but Thea was suddenly sicK of Geraldine and her casual, spiteful ways.

  "One's friends' letters are always important," she said, more curtly than she had ever spoken to Geraldine before. "Much more important than the kisses and congratulations of one's enemies, incidentally."

  And she turned away, but not before her cousin murmured amusedly, "Oh, you are feeling your feet now that you're Mrs. Lindsay Varlon, aren't you?

  Thea didn't answer that. It would have been undignified, and in any case, she had nothing to say. Besides, there were other people and other matters to claim her attention.

  For a while she kept the letters clutched in her hand, but presently, as she found it impossible to keep her one sound nand engaged, she gave them to Lindsay and whispered, "Put these in your pocket for me until afterward. Tney're from Stephen and his mother. Geraldine says she forgot to send them on."

  He smiled and nodded.

  "All right. You're not feeling tired, are you?"

  "No." But she was, really, and in spite of the atmosphere of festivity and kindness and congratulation around her, she felt disproportionately chilled by that encounter with Geraldine.

  She was elad when her own special nurse whispered, "It's time you slipped away now. You don't want to have to change in a hurry."

  In the room that had been her private ward for so long, Thea changed into her smoke-blue eoing-away suit with the little sable collar and cuffs. AII paid for by Lin, she thought wryly. No wonder Geraldine thinks I "managed everything beautifully.'*

  And then there was nothing else to get through but the rather tumultuous send-off.

  Perhaps because he thought Thea might justifiably feel nervous about a long car ride, Lindsay nad arranged that they would drive only the short distance necessary for them to pick up the main-lme train to the coast. But even this was sufficiently far from the hospital to prevent any station farewells, and as the car drove away from the hospital, Thea leaned back in her seat and knew she could relax at last.

  He seemed to sense that all she wanted was to be auiet for a while, and he said hardly anything to her during tne short drive.

  At the station, a judicious mixture of bribery and diplomacy secured them a first-class compartment to themselves, and the pleasant conviction stole over Thea that at least her marriage was going to mean being looked after to a degree she had never before experienced.

  Leaning back in her corner seat with her eyes almost closed, she surveyed Lin through her lashes. There was something reassuring about the strong, good-looking lines of his face, although something still was not completely comprehensible about that rather full-lipped mouth, which so often wore the characteristic faintly cynical smile.

  Well—there he was. Her husband. He represented security, luxury, kindly protection.

  Was there anything else one could ask? Was there anything else one should ask, in view of the dilemma from which one had escaped?

  She opened her eyes then, and although he had been looking out of the window, he seemed immediately aware of the change. He turned his head and smiled at her.

  "Feeling better?"

  "Oh, yes.'* She smiled, too. "Tm all right,
really. It was just-"

  "I know. Rather a lot to manage at one go."

  "Something like that."

  "Well, you don't need to bother about anything more now. You've made your public appearance, and made it beautifully."

  She laughed.

  "It was a success, was it?"

  "You looked simply lovely, my dear," he told her.

  "Oh, thank you. Tm glad you thought so. I'm sure you're a very experienced j udge.''

  He looked at her quizzically.

  "Of how a bride should look, do you mean?"

  "Oh, no! Of how a successful piece of theater should look."

  There was a slight silence. Then he said, "Was that how it struck you, Thea—a successful piece of theater?"

  She wondered for a moment if he had disliked her describing it that way. She had intended to sound rather casual and worldly—to remind him that she quite realized all this was a mere expedient, a temporary solution to an embarrassing problem, and in no way bindmg on him.

  "Well, in—in a sense, it was, wasn t it?"

  He looked at her thoughtfully, though certainly without any rancor, and said, "I suppose one might calf it that." Then, before she could explain herself further, he added, "Oh, would you like your letters now?" and produced them from his pocket.

  She was glad of the diversion and took them eagerly.

  A little clumsily, because of her disabled hand, she opened the envelope that bore Stephen's writing and drew out his letter. She found herself hoping that he had not had time to receive her own letter with the news of her marriage, because at this moment she wanted no comment—approving or otherwise—on a situation that she was only just managing to handle with calm and composure.

  But a glance at the date reassured her. Geraldine had certainly delayed an inexcusable length of time before she bothered to see that this letter reached its destination, and it must have been written some while before he could have received her own letter.

  Then it would simply be his first friendly and concerned letter since he had heard of the accident. A nice soothing letter, which was just what she wanted at the moment, Thea thought contentedly as she settled down to enjoy it.

  And then it seemed to her that the very first sentence almost hit her between the eyes.

  "Darling Thea," Stephen had written, in his sprawling but perfectly legible handwriting, "will you marry me?"

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  It was several minutes before Thea recovered sufficiently to go on with the letter.

  If, while she sat there with the sheet of paper half crumpled in her hand, Lin thought she looked strange, she could do nothing about it. At the back of her mind something urged her not to give way entirely—not to show the astonishment and dismay and joy that that one sentence had created in her thoughts. But more than that she could not manage.

  It was fortunate that at the moment, he seemed interested in something that he could see out of the window, and if he was aware that she had stopped reading her letter almost as soon as she had begun it, he probably put that down to the fact that she was tired, and even a little overwrought, and that it was difficult for her to concentrate entirely on anything just now.

  Minutes passed—Thea was not sure whether it was many or very few—and then she slowly smoothed out the letter and continued to read it. With unconscious understatement, Stephen had written:

  I expect this will be a bit of a shock for you, and it seems queer to put this first before I say how sorry and worried we are about your accident. But in point of fact, Thea darling, the proposal does come first—even if only because of chronological order— for I knew I wanted to marry you long before the news of your accident came.

  I wanted to tell you that evening we said goodbye—oh, and several evenings before that! Now I think I was rather a fool not to. But you were always so anxious—

  pathetically anxious, darling—to stand on your own feet and to demonstrate that you were perfectly capable of looking after yourself I thought that if I asked you to marry me right away, you might have some idea that it was partly because I was sorry for you and worried about your position. Once you'd shown yourself and other people that you could make your own way independently, I reckoned you 'd be more likely to listen to me. In any case, I thought it would be giving you a fairer chance if I waited until there were no practical considerations pushing you one way or another.

  But now I wish I'd spoken. It drives me crazy to think of you alone and ill. I tried to get a transfer back home as soon as I heard (and I didn't hear until two weeks later than I should, because mother and I had been up-country and our mail had had to wait for us), but there wasn't a hope. The firm wouldn't send out another man, after having made all the arrangements for me. I suppose that's reasonable—from their point of view. But it makes it darned difficult for me, having to do all this by letter.

  Will you try to imagine that I'm saying this, Thea? And not saying it as badly as I have to when it comes to putting things down on paper. I want you to marry me, darling—and I have almost ever since I met you. Now that you're ill, I want to have the right to look after you, so there's no point in my waiting before I speak my mind. I hope what I've written before will convince you that I was willing to wait, and to respect all your desire for independence. But now someone has got to look after you, and it's got to be me.

  Mother is writing to you, too, explaining how we want you to go home to Emma when you leave the hospital, and to regard us as your family and responsible for you, financially or in any other way. I guess she can put that part of things more tactfully than I can. All I want you to feel about me is that I love you and I want to marry you.

  Write me, darling, as soon as you can—or cable me if it can be managed from hospital. But Don't Say No because I don't know what it means.

  My love to you—but no kind wishes for Lin (blast him!) until I know whether he was responsible for the accident cy not. Yours—and I mean it—Stephen.

  Very carefully Thea folded up the letter again, creasing the paper as though it were a matter of great moment that it shoula be restored to its original folds. Then she put it back in its envelope, glanced at Lin to see that he was still not bothering to observe her with any special attention, and extracted Mrs. Dorley's letter from its envelope.

  This letter was much shorter but, like Stephen's, entirely to the point.

  My dear child, I am terribly distressed to hear from Lin about your accident, and I do hope that by the time you receive this, you will have reached a comfortable convalescence. You would have heard from us sooner if we had not been away, but never mind about that now.

  Stephen has told me something of what he is writing to you, and I want you to know that nothing would please me better than to have you as a daughter. I don't intend to urge my views on you one way or another, because this is a matter entirely between you and Stephen. Only, if you do agree to marry him, I shall be very happy about it.

  What I want to make perfectly clear is that we regard you very much as "ours, and if there is any unpleasantness wifh Geraldine—or even it there is not—I hope you will regard our home as yours and go straight there from hospital. I am writing to Emma, telling her to expect you. Also, I am making it clear to her that you will draw on the sum of money I left with her for the general running of the place, if you need anything.

  You must not mind my being quite frank about the money situation. I would be very sorry to think you were put to any inconvenience or distress for lack of a little plain speaking.

  Now, my dear, whether you accept Stephen's proposal or not, please make yourself at home in our house, and I hope we shall be back sooner than we expected, to help you through your convalescence. Look after yourself and give my love to Lin. I will write to him later. Yours most affectionately, Jeannette Dorley.

  Long after Thea had finished reading the letter, she continued to look at it as though there were much more to absorb her attention. From minute to minute she put off the
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  inevitable inquiry that Lin was bound to make—however casually—as soon as she had obviously finished both her letters.

  What was she to say? How much was she to conceal from him? If Mrs. Dorley wrote to him before hearing that he and Thea were married, might she not mention Stephen *s hopes and intentions? In the ordinary way, she would no doubt keep those to herself, but she might well explain in some detail why they were expecting Thea to live in their house.

  On the other hand, if she said nothing, how much better that he should never know of this tragic complication.

  For tragic it was. Thea saw that now, with a clarity that frightened her.

  If Geraldine had been a little less casual or a little less spiteful, and if that letter had been delivered when it should have been, there was not, she knew, the slightest doubt that she would have accepted Stephen's offer rather than Lin*s.

  Stephen was her own kind. He talked her own language, saw things as she did, neither puzzled her nor caused her vague misgivings. He wanted to marry her—not just as a whimsical (albeit kindly) solution to an otherwise insoluble problem, but because he loved her and knew her for the girl with whom he wanted to spend his life. There was something right and normal about it all, as Stephen explained it.

  Thea felt as though she inhabited a world of rather rich make-believe at the moment, and was now being permitted to catch glimpses of the world of reality, which she recognized with nostalgic and frightened longing.

  To have married Stephen would have been to follow a wide, clear, straight path, knowing that sunshine and shadow would alternate in the reasonable proportion that all happily married couples might expect. To be married to Lin was like wandering in a maze, never quite sure what one might find around the next bend in the path.

  But it was done. The decision had been made. There was no going back on the words that had been said in church that morning. She was, as Geraldine so sptefully emphasized, Mrs. Lindsay Varlon. It was not for her to consider the proposal of one man while she was on her honeymoon with another. And even if, in the future—