The second collection of 3 great novels by Mary Burchell

by Burchell, Mary

  "Have Jeannette or Stephen any news?"

  It had come. The question she had been expecting and for which, after all, she had prepared no answer. Entirely on the spur of the moment she said,

  "They don't say very much about themselves. These are really their first letters since they heard about the accident Geraldine ought to have let me have them long ago. They— they don't really say much more than how sorry they are."

  "I see. They hadn't yet had my letter telling them about our marriage?"

  "No."

  She wondered if the little silence meant he Was surprised that she said no more, or whether she was just imagining that. Rather hastily she rushed into further explanations.

  "They are mostly concerned about what was to happen to me when I left the hospital, and very kindly made me free of their house. They—they didn't know yet, of course, about Emma having to close the place."

  Watching him, she thought he very slightly narrowed his eyes, but because she could see no reason for his doing so, she dismissed that, too, as nervous fancy.

  "No, of course they wouldn't know about that yet," he agreed. And then, to her inexpressible relief, he changed the subject and, leaning forward, indicated various points of interest in the country through which they were passing, and told her that they would not be very much longer on their journey.

  Their arrival at their destination and the short drive to the hotel saved her from any return to the subject she dreaded, and with relief, though hardly with surprise, she discovered that the arrangements at the hotel would secure her a good deal of privacy. Probably Lin was no more anxious to enjoy her exclusive companionship than she was to be under his constant supervision.

  They were to occupy, she found, the most beautiful suite in the hotel, where she had her own bedroom; and there was a private sitting room, also, if she preferred not to go downstairs too much to the public rooms.

  "We call this the honeymoon suite," the pretty chambermaid informed her, regarding her with thinly veiled interest.

  "It's a beautiful suite," Thea said gravely, and supposed

  that few brides could have inhabited it with stranger thoughts for company than she had.

  As she assured Lin that she was not tired, they dined downstairs on the glassed-in veranda of the great dining room overlooking the sea. She preferred that to a tete-a-tete, which might lead to the discussion of awkward subjects.

  "This is a little bit like the day we lunched together and went on the river, isn't it?" She smiled at him. "We were out on a balcony then, only of course it was open. '*

  "It's a little reminiscent of that time," ne agreed, and studied her thoughtfully. "You were very carefree and young that day," he said suddenly, as though the thought had struck him so forcibly that he had to remark on it.

  "Was I?" She laughed. "Well, I'm carefree and young this evening, too," she asserted, trying to make that sound gay and convincing.

  But he shook his head slightly, though he smiled.

  "No. I'm trying to decide whether you've grown up, or whether the accident—or marriage—has made the change in you."

  "But—is there a change, Lin? Such a change, I mean."

  "A subtle one, but a real one," he told her. And then, quite abruptly: "Are you happy, child?"

  She was a long time answering that. Longer than she wanted to be. And when she finally spoke, it was not in direct reply to his Question.

  "Happy?" She looked thoughtful and hoped she looked sophisticated and experienced. "Why shouldn't I be? I have a good deal to make me happy. A kind husband, a return to health, the knowledge that—

  "I didn't ask you to enumerate the reasons, darling. I simply asked you if you were happy," he interrupted, with a slight smile.

  "Well, then-yes."

  "But not entirely carefree?"

  "That's rather a lot to be able to say of oneself, isn 't it?"

  "There was a time when you wouldn't have made that reply," he said thoughtfully. "Although, on the face of it, you would have had much more reason to make it. That's what I meant by saying there was a subtle change."

  She looked at him a little helplessly and said, "I'm sorry, Lin."

  But he Quickly covered her hand with his.

  *'There s no reason to apologize, child. I only hope that, in thinking I was solving your problems, I haven't presented you with a fresh crop."

  "No, Lin.*' But she bit her lip quickly because, unaccountably, it had begun to tremble.

  The pressure on her hand tightened.

  "Listen, my dear. I'm going to do the talking for a few minutes. You don't need to answer. You don't even need to look at me, if it makes ^ou feel less like crying to keep your lashes down." He received a swift, rather steadier smile for that. "I want you to know that nothing that was said or done today—nothing—binds you or commits you in any way. Get rid of the feeling that you 've been trapped into something strange and unmanageable—"

  He stopped for a moment, because she had turned her hand and clasped his with nervous fervor.

  "So there was that feeling, was there?" It was almost more statement than a question, and required no specific reply. "Well, you don't need to feel that way. It's true that, to all outwardf seeming, you are Mrs. Lindsay Varlon, and that a certain number of people will make much of the fact and be troublesome. But don't let that underline the situation for you. You are your own mistress, just as you were when you were in Geraldine's apartment—more so, I sup-

  f>ose. You have not got a tiresome husband on your hands, f you wish to look at it that way—you haven't got a husband on your hands at all. Does that makes things better?"

  She nodded. But almost immediately she saw that a wrong interpretation might be put on that.

  "I didn't imagine you were going to—going to take advantage of the situation in any way. Please don't think that.

  "Didn'tyou?"

  "No, of course not, Lin. I have enough confidence in your sense of decency, your—your chivalry, I suppose is what I mean."

  He made an odd little grimace.

  "I wouldn't count on an exaggerated sense of chivalry, darling," he said. "There's nothmg of the Galahad about me."

  She laughed.

  "Well, perhaps not that. I've always thought Galahad an overrated Dore, in any case. But—oh, well, put it at its lowest, if you like. I know you don *t regard me in that light. **

  "What light?"

  She hesitated a moment, and then said with one of her devastating flashes of candor, "Well, I know you regard me more as a schoolgirl in distress than a desirable female."

  He laughed a good deal at that, which somehow reassured her quite astonishingly.

  "Having excellent eyesight and, I venture to think, pretty good judgment, I consider you an extremely desirable female, Thea. But that doesn't mean I shall make unwanted passes at you, simply because I happen to have you at a disadvantage. I hope this display of candor does something to clear the air, because I can't see any other useful purpose it has served."

  "It has cleared the air." She smiled at him. "And it also, as you intended, served the very useful purpose of getting me over a silly minute or two when I felt like crying—why, I'm not quite sure."

  "And now the impulse is gone?"

  "Now the impulse is gone," she agreed.

  After dinner, Thea put on a light coat and they strolled along the seashore together. He was amusing and cheerful, and told her a certain amount about his work. Nothing in their conversation suggested that they had ever changed from the easy, friendly relationship that they had maintained in the early days. Certainly no one would have taken them for a honeymoon couple.

  And when Thea finally said that she was tired and would go up to her own room now, he said, "Very well then. Good night, my dear. I shall be staying down some while longer. Sleep well. I'll see you in the morning."

  It was all very casual and reasoning—and he didn't even kiss her good night.

  So Thea went to her room and to bed,
and there she was free to study Stephen's letter once more.

  To a certain extent her conversation with Lin had cleared the position, of course. As he said, she was only technically Mrs. Lindsay Varlon, and there would be a time—quite soon, perhaps—when she would be freed by a quiet divorce.

  (Did people like Lin ever figure in a "quiet*' divorce, she

  wonderea uneasily, in passing.)

  But until that happened, what was she to say to Stephen? If only he had been there! He had written very feelingly about the difficulty of expressing his position by letter. But it was nothing to the difficulty of explaining her position.

  How could she sit down and, in cold blood, write a declaration that, though she appeared to be married to Lin, the whole thing was really a rather complicated masquerade—and that as soon as she was free from it, she would be very happy to marry Stephen? What man could be expected to regard that as a satifactory basis for a future marriage?

  And what would Mrs. Dorley's feelings be? How would she like the idea of her son marrying someone who had already been married to her brother?

  Why, in a ridiculous way, I'm Stephen's aunt by marriage! thought Thea, with a laugh of hysterical dismay. The whole thing is quite, quite impossible.

  And tne farther any hope of marrying Stephen retreated, the more desperately did Thea long for just that situation.

  Why didn 11 realize that was what I wanted? she thought wretchedly. Why did I resort to anything—anything—that would stand in the way of marrying Stephen, if the chance should ever arise?

  But everything had looked so different a month or a week or even twenty-four hours ago. That Stephen would want to marry her had been something entirely out of her powers of reckoning then. If she had hoped vaguely for it, that was the most she could do. And meanwhile, there had been the urgent necessity of clearing her hopelessly complicated position.

  / don V know what else I could have done, knowing so little as I did, she told herself wearily. Who could have expected that a proposal was on the way, when it simply seemed to me that I haan V even had kind wishes for my recovery as soon as I might? Oh, I hate Geraldine! If she had seen that I received the letter when I should, everything would be different.

  But Geraldine had not seen to it, and now the situation must be accepted for what it was. It was imperative that she should reply to Stephen's letter. Already she must appear to have delayed an inexcusable time. And it seemed to her that, whatever chance there might be of fuller explanations

  later, at the present time she had better say as little as she could.

  Thea slipped out of bed and, fetching her writing case, returned to bed and sat up for some while, staring at a blank sheet of paper and making small squiggles with her fountain pen from time to time on the outside of the writing pad. Finally she wrote:

  I'm so sorry, Stephen dear, but by the time you receive this you will already have heard of my marriage to Lin, and you will know that there is only one answer I can give to your dear and kind proposal. I can't tell you how sorry I am to have to write anything that will give you pain but—that is how it is, Stephen, and I can't alter the facts.

  There was another long pause while she considered whether she could, within the bounds of decency, hint that his proposal would have had a different reception if she had been free.

  But it was impossible.

  She had no right to try to saddle Stephen with an indefinite commitment. And she had no right to place Lin in such an invidious position. After all, he might say what he pleased about their marriage being almost fictitious, but he nad given her his name, his protection, and his support. It would be an inexcusable affront to his pride and a gross imposition on his generosity if she now made a crude effort to have another husband dangling in the oflRng.

  With a sigh she returned to her letter and contented herself with adding no more than a brief explanation of the delay in answering Stephen's own letter, and an expression of her very good wishes to him and his mother.

  It was a scrappy and unsatisfactory effort, she knew, but it was as much as she could achieve in the circumstances. When it was finished, she sealed it up in its envelope immediately, so that she would not be tempted to revise it or to depart from her stern resolve to accept the results of her )wn actions and not to dodge them at the expense of someone else.

  Once she had mailed the letter—which she did at the first opportunity the next morning—and it had gone beyond hope of recall, she addressed herself with complete determi-

  nation to the business of making something normal and reasonably happy out of her new hfe with Lin.

  It was not as difficult as she had feared. For one thing, the honeymoon weekend, which had started with so much emotional upset, slipped away quite uneventfully. She and Lin caused a certain amount of interest and comment amon;^ the other visitors at the hotel, but as they spent most of their time either out of doors or in the privacy of their own suite, she was not made to feel too mucn as though she were living in the public eye.

  The next day they went back to London, and Thea saw for the first time the place that was now to be her home.

  Lin's large, comfortable flat was not a luxury place in the sense that Geraldine's apartment was. It was not nearly so modern or so much like a showplace at a housing exhibition. Occupying one floor of a large Queen Anne house near Westminster Abbey, it had lofty, beautifully proportioned rooms, with long windows to the floor, which enchanted Thea.

  The furnishings, without being all strictly in period, had that ripe and mellow air belonging only to things that have been accumulated with thought and loving care over a long period, by someone with taste and imagination and sufficient money to indulge both. Beside it, the furnishing of Geraldine*s apartment appeared like the work of one afternoon, supported by a blank check and little else. And as Thea looked round it on that first day, she thought—as she had never thought in Geraldine's apartment—/yee/^af/ home here.

  "I suppose it's rather a typically bachelor place." Lin also looked around, as though in some way he saw it for the first time. "If you passionately want to change things—"

  "Oh, but I don't, Lin!" She was shocked at the very suggestion. "I think it's a wonderful place. Besides ...." She stopped, not quite sure that what she was going to say was tactful.

  "Besides?" he queried, smiling at her.

  "Well, I was going to say that I'm really iust a—a sort of temporary visitor here, and it would hardly be for me to suggest changes."

  "Oh, Thea—" He gave a half-vexed little laugh. "Don't describe yourself like that!"

  "But it's true, isn't it?**

  "We don't know about that," he said, with that sudden obstinate thrust of his lower lip. Then, as she looked slightly startled, he took both her hands and smiled down at her. "If you talk that way, I won't feel I can make love to you, and I'm quite sure I shall want to if you persist in looking so lovely in all your new clothes,'' he told her lightly.

  She wished she knew what to make of him when he spoke in this half-laughing way. He couldn't mean seriously what he had said, and yet....

  She compromised by saying, "Well, however long I stay here, I'm sure I won't want to change anything. It's beautiful flat, Lin. It has real personality."

  He responded immediately to her change of subject, taking her round the place and pointing out various things to her and explainmg how they had come into his possession.

  Finally he introduced her to the discreet-looking middle-aged couple who looked after him and the flat.

  "Donkins and his wife have rooms downstairs in the basement," he explained. "But they give up twenty-three and a half hours out of the twenty-four to looking after us, Isn 't that right, Donkins?''

  Donkins smiled austerely and said, "After ten at night w don't come unless we're summoned, madam. But there's , bell in the kitchen that rings downstairs in our flat, so we're always available."

  "I see. Thank you, Donkins. But I shall try not to trouble you any more than Mr. Va
rlon does," Thea said.

  To herself she was thinking: So that means Lin and I an quite alone here at night. Well I suppose that's all right. . suppose—I don *t mind.

  But she did mind. She minded quite ridiculously. Anc that night, on an impulse that caused her some shame anc that she found impossible to explain to herself, she ver) quietly locked her bedroom door.

  As THE FIRST WEEK of her married life slipped away, Thea was not particularly surprised to find that everything waj made remarkably easy for her. Apart, that was to say, from her own personal misgivings and flutterings, as she rathei

  contemptuously termed them in her more common-sense moments.

  Without any embarrassing discussion, Lin saw to it that she had an extremely generous allowance, which she could spend exactly as she pleased; and as for the running of the fiat, it was perfectly obvious that Donkins and his wife knew more about this than she ever would, though they made a polite practice of deferring to her as though the decisions were really hers.

  Lin was out on most days and some evenings, though he was usually available if she wanted him for any special reason, or to accompany her anywhere. Quite often he took her out in the evening, either to dine and dance or to a theater.

  Everything went very smoothly, and a second week had gone past before Thea woke up to two unpalatable discoveries. One was that she was living an entirely useless and lazy life and was bored because she had nothing to do. The other was that, in some strange way, she and Lin were farther away from each other than they had ever been in the days when she had been living at Geraldine's apartment instead of his.

  Not that they were on anything but excellent terms— though it was true that nowadays he seldom found reason to kiss her, and never with the tenderness and warmth that he had occasionally shown when she was ill in the hospital. It was just that they never seemed to break through the agreeable, too-perfect crust of formal amiability. Something had gone out or their relationship, and Thea wondered with remorseful anxiety if the fault were hers, and if so, what she could do about it.