“I’m thwimming—look!” came a joyous cry from the water.
The three rescuers dived simultaneously, and Richard watched from the shore.
“Here you are, Richard—watch her,” said Rae. “We’re swimming to the other side.”
“What you want,” remarked Richard, bending down to haul out the small form, and thumping it vigorously on the back, “what you want is a coastguard service. There—that’s most of the water out. Try the top layer—it isn’t so wet,” he advised.
“Did you thee me thwim?” enquired Bianca.
“Is that what you were doing? Well, you want a bit more practice. Look at Rae and the boys, now—now you watch, they’re swimming to the other side. Now watch their legs see ’em? Out in, out in, like Alan—or you can make them go like flippers, like Rae’s doing—see that? There they go—now they’re having a race, see? No, you can’t exactly join them until you’ve in a bit of—hey, where’re you—hey! Whoa there, you what’s-your-name. Whoa, I said. Come back, you lunatic infant, you. Come—oh, Christmas!”
“I’m thwimming,” said Bianca, as she sank.
“Oh, God,” moaned Richard, plunging after her. “So am I.”
Chapter 13
Rae was up early the next morning, and Richard found her in the garden, trying to persuade the sedate Bess to gambol.
“This dog won’t unbend,” she complained. “He can’t be more than two, and he behaves like an old gentleman of sixty.”
“She isn’t more than two, and she behaves like an old lady of sixty,” corrected Richard. “Did you hear me sneezing all through the night?”
“No.”
“Well, I did. I think I’ve got pneumonia coming on, and I’ve ruined a pair of flannels and a brand-new sports coat. I wish I’d let that brat drown.”
“I told you not to let her go. She’s got the idea that the water’ll keep her up, and”—Rae leaned against a tree and laughed—“oh! I wish you could have seen yourself.”
“Glad to provide a spectacle at any time,” said Richard. “What’re you doing to-day? Let’s drive.”
“No, I can’t. It’s market day.”
“Market day? You buy and sell?”
“The boys—Hugh and Alan—sell fruit and vegetables, so I thought I’d go and help them. I went with them last week.”
“Well, what time do we go?”
“Well, I don’t think we do,” said Rae slowly. There isn’t much to interest you and—”
“I brought you down here to stave off long hours of loneliness, didn’t I? Of course I’m coming.”
They walked down to the village by a steep footpath. It was a direct route, but the going was difficult, and Richard expressed his gratification at finding Rae clinging to him for support.
“That’s right—hang on. I’m here to rescue drowning damsels and support stumbling ones. Was that Judy who rang you up last night?”
“Yes.”
“What did she say?”
“You know perfectly well what she said. And she thinks that you put the idea into Edward’s head.”
“Then she’s wrong, because I didn’t. Is he seeing much of her?”
“Not more than she can help. There isn’t much to do there if he can’t see Judy,” remarked Rae. “What’ll he do with his time?”
“Plenty. He’s writing a book.”
“A book!”
“Well no, not a book. But he’s got a nice idea of adapting nursery rhymes to suit the needs of the modern nursery. He’s bringing them up to date—stiffening them up.”
“That’s been done already—haven’t they done it in, I forget which country—somewhere on the Continent?”
“Well, if they have, they’ve pinched his idea. Our idea—I thought of it too, but he’s going to do the book, and see about the publishing before we go back.”
“Isn’t that rather quick work? I mean, won’t a publisher take—”
“Not this time,” said Richard. “We’ve got one taped. One of those big London johnnies.”
“Do you know him?”
“Well no, we don’t know him, but on the boat coming home there was a very fast piece—very fast piece indeed. Yes, very. What that girl went in for, you’ve no idea. Tck Tck Tck,” Richard shook his head in disapprobation. “Most of us used to lock our cabin doors and shove our wardrobes up against them.”
“Do ship’s wardrobes—”
“These did—they were shoved by the strength of desperate men. Well, this piece turned out to be the daughter of this London publisher, so all we’ve got to do is go along and see the chap and bring up the little affair in the Red Sea, or the shocking bit of scandal just outside Suez—the fellow’ll drop all his other commitments and concentrate on our book.”
“I see. Is it finished?”
“Finished? No, not quite. We’ve got two quite good rhymes done, though—we knocked ‘em up between us over lunch yesterday. One’s pretty good:
One, two
Blood on my shoe;
Three four Bash in the door;
Five six
Bash it with bricks;
Seven eight—let me see—seven eight, seven eight—oh!
Blood on his pate;
Nine ten
Hark at Big Ben.
There—how’s that?”
“Terrible—it’s all about blood.”
“Well of course it is. It’s for six-year-olds, and that’s the most bloodthirsty age of all. Edward’s got a good one going about Who Killed Cock Robin?—he’s calling it Blood in the Bird-bath.”
“Well, I’ll do without my autographed copy, thank you. Can’t we get off this beastly road, Richard, Please? The stones are cutting right through my shoes.”
“Grumble, grumble, grumble—some people are never satisfied,” complained Richard. “I brought you down here to give you a sense of being alone with me—don’t you like it?”
“Not in my feet.”
“Well, we’ll cut across and get on to the main road. This way.”
The road became considerably worse for a few hundred yards, but at the end of them Richard swung Rae into his arms and put her over a low bush into the road beyond.
“There you are—nice and smooth. Come on.”
Rae, instead of coming on, stood looking about her with a puzzled look.
“I’ve seen this corner before,” she said slowly. “Oh yes! Richard, it’s exactly where that—”
She stopped and leapt for the bush, but Richard had had the same saving thought one second earlier, and was occupying the only place of safety. The bath chair caught Rae a glancing blow, and the red face became purple.
“Silly gel,” screamed the Duchess, disappearing round the next bend.
Rae sat in the hedge and looked at Richard, who was extricating himself from his refuge.
“How are you?” he enquired, looking himself over anxiously. “In one piece, I trust?”
“Yes, thank you,” said Rae coldly. “It was kind of you to push me under the bath chair.”
“Well, I thought you were making for that bush, and there wasn’t room for two—and there wasn’t time to explain, either. The instinct of self-preservation is a very strong one.”
“I know—it pushed me. Is there a lawyer anywhere here?”
“Not one that would run the Duchess in for you, no.”
“You mean, I’m just to be knocked down week after week and—”
“You don’t move quickly enough. Once you’ve been here a little while, you listen subconsciously for that whirring sound, and then you don’t wait—you leap for the hedge. After all these years away, I still retain the instincts of my boyhood. I haven’t heard that sound for—how many years? —and did you see me jump?”
“I did.”
“Well, don’t sit there—the market waits. Give me your hand.”
He pulled Rae to her feet and dusted her, and the two walked down to the village. Hugh and Alan’s sales were well advanced, and they greeted Rae wit
h their usual friendliness, and Richard a shade less cordially.
“How’s it going?” asked Richard.
“Oh—fine, thanks.”
“Rae didn’t want to bring me, so I came—I was sure you were up to something. Not giving short change I trust?”
“Of course they’re not—don’t be silly, please, Richard,” said Rae.
“There’s nothing silly about it. These two are criminal types. Any boys turned out of school and left kicking their heels are criminal types. Hurry along,” he ordered. “I don’t want to stand about with my pneumonia.”
Hugh and Alan hurried along the next garden path, and Rae pushed the handcart slowly.
“No connection between the glut of strawberries down here and the dearth at home, I suppose?” enquired Richard.
“Don’t be silly.” In spite of herself, Rae’s cheeks became flushed, and Richard looked at her keenly.
“You’re a fast worker,” he said admiringly. “I leave you down here alone for less than a week, and you get tied up with a couple of—”
“They’re nice, sensible—”
“—barrow boys. You stand in this market-place and hawk my uncle’s fruit. You—”
“It isn’t your uncle’s. And the pool wasn’t your uncle’s— it’s far more yours than your uncle’s.”
“That makes it a damn sight more serious. That garden’s going to be mine one day—a quarter of it, anyhow. That means that one out of every four strawberries is mine. And yours, if I make up my mind to marry you when I’ve gone into the matter more thoroughly. It’s odd how sentimental women are,” he mused. “If you didn’t like those two trainee criminals down there, you’d hand them over to justice at once—but they’re nice and brown and leggy and appealing, so you aid and abet them—right?”
“I like them—yes.”
“You won’t make much of a mother,” he commented. “It’s rather shaken me. If I let you out of sight with our children, who’s to know what you’ll let them do?”
“The possibility’s a bit remote, isn’t it?” asked Rae.
“One never knows, with you,” complained Richard. “I go to bed one night convinced I know you inside out, and the next day you have something in your manner—a shade—something I can’t put my finger on, and then I find I have to go back and begin at the beginning. What makes you so elusive, Miss Mansfield?”
“Simple caution, Mr. Ashton. Your own manner is a little inconsistent, you know—Alan, will you take the cart now?”
Alan took the cart, and Rae began to walk slowly up the hill, with Richard by her side.
“Why did you bring Edward down here?” she asked.
“Edward? I didn’t bring him down. He came with me, but that doesn’t mean I brought him. He’s in love; he finds out I’m coming down to be near his love, so he clings to me like a limpet and makes sure that he comes down with me.
How d’you think he’s getting on?”
“With Judy?” Rae hesitated. “I think she finds him a little—inarticulate.”
“For two reasons: the first is, of course, the effect she has on him. He tries to talk, looks at her, and forgets what he was going to say. But the second reason is a good one, too—she doesn’t give him much chance to say anything. If he ever gets her at a moment when, for any reason, she’s not discoursing, then perhaps he’ll find his powers of speech which are quite considerable, when you get him at his best. Judy’s not an easy girl to woo, would you say? She’s got all my sourness and not half my tact. Instead of letting a fellow feel his way and take things slowly, she jumps on him for dragging, and drains all the courage out of him. I don’t suppose Edward’s the sort of fellow she thinks she’ll marry; she’s probably working on an ambitious project with a strong jaw and a silver tongue—but I think she’d do very well with Edward, if she ever had the sense to look at what he’s got to offer. That’s what I like so much about you—you let me do the talking. That’s one thing. Then I like your looks, and your voice—when I hear it. And I like the way you order a drink and let me down it. I don’t know very much of what you’re thinking, but I’m beginning to learn something about your outlook on life.—You don’t, by the way, believe in free love for women?”
“I haven’t—”
“I’m glad. I always think it’s unbecoming in your sex— and they’ve invariably told me afterwards that they wish they hadn’t been so free. It’s a broad topic—would you care for my views?”
“No, thank you.”
“Some other time. Have you noticed that I’m keeping very close to the topic of love and marriage?”
“No,” said Rae.
“You should have noticed. Any girl but you would have noticed and drawn her own conclusions.” He stopped and leaning against a tree, looked at her with an unreadable expression. “I wonder,” he said, “why I can’t ever find out what you’re thinking. At this moment, for instance—tell me Rae.”
“I don’t—”
“Please!”
“I was thinking,” said Rae slowly, “how easily you—make your effects.”
“What effects, please?”
“Any effects. You want to amuse somebody, so you amuse them; you want to tease them, and you can do it to perfection. You want something from them, so you set yourself to charm it out of them—all without any perceptible effort.”
“And how, exactly, do I take that? Are you trying to say that nothing I do or say is—spontaneous?”
“I don’t know about spontaneous. I only know that you, yourself, are rather difficult to read, because I don’t think that you ever allow your real feelings to appear on the surface.”
“I wonder,” said Richard, “if any man ever had an advantage like mine and threw it away as lightly? Were we, or were we not, in love—both of us—when we were in London?”
“Who can say? We each liked what we saw, but how much did we see? When we saw a little more, we—loved a little less.”
“I made one appalling mistake—I thought that what I felt for you wasn’t—could be—the real thing. It was too swift and too smooth—I thought that we’d both been swept off our feet. I decided to make a test that’s all.”
“You gave yourself time to think. And you gave me time to think, too.”
“And that was the mistake. But if I didn’t consider your feelings then, I’ve thought about them ever since. I wonder about them all day and half the night. I try to find out what you’re thinking, and how I stand with you, and I draw a blank—a whole series of blanks. I love you and you once loved me. If I hurt you, I’m sorry, but nobody as sweet and as gentle as you could allow—could—”
“I don’t think you understand,” said Rae gently. What happened was my fault—not yours. I should never have—”
“Rae,” he broke in. “I love you. Will you marry me—”
There was a long silence.
“No, Richard,” said Rae, at last. “No, I won’t.”
Chapter 14
Throughout the following week, Richard proposed daily to Rae, who daily thanked him and declined. He made love to her with a warmth which she made no attempt to resist, she drove with him, walked or swam, danced night after night in the long, bare playroom. He outlined his plans for their marriage, his eyes on hers with a challenging gleam, and Rae listened with an answering gleam of amusement in her own.
They spent many hours at the farm. Mart accepted Richard with a casualness equal to his own; they approved greatly of one another. Rae sat on a kitchen chair, and Richard perched himself on the edge of the big table, performing efficiently such tasks as Mart gave him, and sampling each batch of cooking as it came out of the oven. Bianca made him a present of her favourite kitten. Mr Selwyn came in time to regard him as one of the permanent members of the staff. Reeny treated him with serene detachment, and marched him severely into meals. Only Hugh and Alan were depressed; they had lost in Rae a valued companion, and the date of their return to school loomed horrifyingly near.
At the Lodge,
the affair—which Richard made no attempt to hide—was watched with interest by the three older members of the household. The General, from merely approving of Rae, came to have a far warmer feeling for her. He liked his nephew, but strongly disliked his love-making; there was an impish light in Richard’s eye that would have put any girl on her mettle, and the General’s heart warmed as he watched Rae’s calm, easy handling of the situation. He wondered whether she was in love—her face was not easy to read, and she was not a girl who said very much; the old man, glancing from her quiet self-possession to the handsome, challenging form of his nephew, found himself wondering where she got her coolness.
Lady Ashton watched with more uneasiness. She had, long ago, thankfully folded and put away the mantle of motherhood. She had found the role exacting but she had performed it, in her own estimation, faithfully. She had provided a house in which the children had enjoyed every freedom—she had sent them to the best schools and entertained their school friends; she had equipped them expensively and seen to their comfort. She had remained in England with them when she would have preferred to stay abroad with her husband. At his death, she had resisted her friends’ urgings to marry again. Nobody had come forward with an offer of marriage, and Lady Ashton would as soon have thought of remarrying as of taking up tennis or hockey or any other of the strenuous sports of her youth, but she had remained a widow, and now felt that it had been for the children’s sake. She had done much, but she was very glad to have to do no more. Their behaviour was something she always felt unable to control; each of the four children had what was beginning to be called a difficult temperament, and their mother felt that nothing could be done to change them. Estelle and Bruce had grown more satisfactory as the years passed, but Judy had never lost her regrettable tendency to insult those who bored her, and Richard—Richard was charming, but one had never been sure when he was serious.
Lady Ashton wondered whether he was serious now. It he was, it was a pity his eyes still had the look in them that had baffled her throughout his boyhood. If he was not, this extraordinarily public wooing must be causing Rae a great deal of discomfort. One ought perhaps to say something to him—to insist on more orthodox conduct. Lady Ashton had an uneasy vision of the discomforts of insisting, and decided to ask Blanche’s advice. Blanche was sensible and clearheaded; she would know what should be done.
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