by Jane Arbor
‘That was only because hardly anyone remembered a High Master but Father, and because he had been loved so much! Anyway, it isn’t so any longer. Even Lance says you’re “on the beam” now, and you must know the school thinks so too. The staff are with you as well. I can tell by the way they’ve already begun to call you by your initials instead of “Mr. Wyatt”. Amongst themselves you’re “D. W.” now, as Father always used to be “R. L.” ’
‘And you regard that as proof of my acceptance, do you? I wish I could see it as more than a wisp of straw in the wind.’ Daniel took his cup of tea and stirred it. ‘You talk of how your father was universally loved, and yet the one person who must have loved him most was the one who accepted me at once without question, out of her faith that your father’s mark on Clere was far too lasting and indelible for any successor to him to spoil. I mean your mother, who never even probed to hear why I dropped so completely out of your world after I had been sent to Canada as a child; who left me to explain myself in my own time—or never, I think, if that was the way I wanted it.’
Verity said, ‘Does she know now? If so, she hasn’t mentioned it to us.’
‘I asked her not to. I have a normal instinct for self-preservation, and it seemed to me you had a nice enough brew of hostility a-cooking without my adding fuel to your fire with a story which does me no credit at all. But I think you should hear it now.’
‘Why? You’ve told me already you could have come back to Clere earlier than you did, and if Mother didn’t press to learn more than that, I needn’t,’ Verity said a little stiffly.
‘Ah, but your mother is unique. I know she loved me as a child and I think she does still, whereas you haven’t the same motive for charity—Anyway, you know of course that after I went to Canada I was never in touch again until I came to Clere as its future High Master?’ Daniel asked.
‘Yes, and that my people were hurt. But Mother always said they could only suppose your uncle must have had his own reasons for breaking all your ties with England as he did.’
‘He had indeed his reasons, though what they were I wasn’t to realize for years—in fact, until he was dead,’ Daniel confirmed grimly. ‘Meanwhile he fed me with lies. One of them—that I was a near-pauper, thrust on his hospitality. Another—that if your people had raised a finger to offer me a home on this side I needn’t have had to cross the Atlantic in wartime. Another—and to prove this I suspect he suppressed letters both ways—that they didn’t write to me nor want to hear from me. And the cruellest of all, which he saved until I was old enough to understand it—that the friendship between my family and yours had been nothing but a cloak for an otherwise open scandal.’
Verity blanched. ‘A—scandal?’
‘A guilty association between my father and—your mother.’
‘But—Mother and his own brother? How could you have believed it of either of them?’
‘Of course I shouldn’t,’ Daniel agreed. ‘Hindsight knows that well enough. So does self-reproach. But at the time I could only defend them out of a child’s memory, and the doubt stayed to rankle long after I had broken with Uncle Hugo Wyatt for good. Meanwhile he had let me work my way through high school and college with the help of scholarships and vacation jobs, and the only one of his lies which came to roost was the fact that my father’s money was waiting for me when I came of age.’
‘But the rest? Surely, if you had looked up Father and Mother again when you did come to England, you could have sensed from their reception of you whether it was true or not? Because if it had been, they would be afraid you had heard it all from your uncle and they wouldn’t have wanted to see you back, would they?’
‘Exactly my own reasoning, while I didn’t know the extent of his malice. He had passed off his deception about my inheritance by claiming that he had wanted to make me self-reliant—which just could have been true. So as I feared the rest was too, I judged your people unheard and decided to write off the whole sorry business.’
‘Then why did you come when you had the offer of the High Mastership?’
Daniel frowned over his cigarette. ‘The sixty-four-dollar question you were bound to ask! I wish I could tell you I had had a change of heart, but it wasn’t nearly as simple as that.’
‘If you hadn’t wanted the High Mastership you wouldn’t have come?’
‘Nor even as simple as that! If I had had the offer alone, I should have told the Governors I wasn’t interested in it. But by the same post as I received it there was a letter from my uncle, forwarded by his solicitors after his death—of which I hadn’t heard—which retracted all the scurrility he had fed to me for years and begged me to try to “understand and forgive” his motives.’
‘And could you?’
‘Not easily. But it seems he had been in love with my mother and had needed to take out his revenge on his brother for having won her instead. They were both dead. They had escaped him, but he could still smear all my memories of my father and of your people. As I’ve told you, he succeeded, but the two letters—his and the Governors’—arriving together gave me a reprieve I’d done nothing to earn. As I saw it, it freed me to come back to Clere, if not with a clear conscience, at least not empty-handed. For I argued that if I could achieve even a fraction of all your father had done and hoped for it, there’d be my amend for all the doubts I should never have harboured. That’s how I reasoned, Verity. Perhaps I was only whitewashing myself. But I hope not.’
She said slowly, ‘Thank you for telling me. And I don’t think you were. You wanted to do well by Clere for their sake, and that I understand, probably because it’s so much my thing too—’
The smile she loved came and went. He said, ‘Trust the jargon of your age-group to express an ideal with a word like “thing”! But I know what you mean and we’re in it together, aren’t we? I know I’ve still most of my giants to face and I’m going to make a lot of mistakes, but help me, will you? Stay on my side?’
With surprise she heard a note of entreaty in his voice. Why? She echoed hesitantly. ‘On your side? Help you? But haven’t I? I’ve wanted to! I—I don’t understand?’
His face shadowed. ‘You don’t, do you? We aren’t talking about the same thing at all.’
‘Surely?’ She looked her bewilderment at his withdrawal. ‘I only meant I couldn’t see why you should think you have to ask me in so many words!’
‘And I meant I could tell from your blank dismay that you had no idea of the size of what I was asking.’
‘Well, couldn’t you spell it out and give me an idea?’
He shook his head. ‘No. It will keep.’ As he spoke he stood and, taking her Clere emblem from the table, handed it to her and folded her fingers over it. ‘For now, I think you’d better take your silver groat and go to bed, and perhaps I’ll have brushed up on my spelling when I get back from Davos.’
‘You mean you’ll explain ... ask me again? You can’t leave it just dangling!’
For a long moment his look held hers. ‘I’ll ask you again. I can’t help myself. But I could wish I didn’t need to,’ he said.
CHAPTER IX
The next morning Verity stayed late in her room, in order to avoid seeing Daniel again before he left for the airport. No one disturbed her, but she had been awake much earlier and had heard him drive away and her mother’s voice wishing him a gay ‘Bon Voyage’.
On their way to their rooms overnight she had asked him if he expected to see much of the Dysarts and Ira. He had said he gathered it might depend on the weather conditions. But if communications remained open between Davos and Klosters, yes, he hoped to see quite a lot of them—which left her to the exquisite pain of picturing Ira with him against a backcloth of towering peaks and sun-drenched snow and their meeting at night in the glamorous hotels of the resorts.
Meanwhile she could make only perplexity and worry of his last night’s cryptic withdrawal of his appeal to her. What could he want of her that he wished he hadn’t to ask? And why, oh, wh
y could men never understand that women would always rather face the truth of a dilemma rather than be abandoned to the alternate doubts and hopes of their imaginations?
Just one solution seemed loosely to fit the facts. He was planning to marry and to bring his wife to Clere, and he had been asking Verity’s continuing loyalty in the different circumstances that would create. But as he couldn’t guess how they would hurt her, why hadn’t he been frank? As he didn’t know her own secret, surely he would expect they would embarrass Mrs. Lytton more than herself. No, the threads of even that reasoning fell apart under scrutiny; and only the memory of Daniel’s flat, ‘We aren’t talking about the same thing at all’ remained to haunt her.
When she went downstairs at last she found Mrs. Lytton had corralled Lance into helping with the after-party washing-up. Rosa had been given Boxing Day off, and Mrs. Lytton, trim and groomed as usual, was doing the washing herself while Lance caused plates and saucers to dice with death by trying to dry three pieces at a time.
At sight of Verity he threw the tea-towel at her. ‘Here—this is dames’ work, not mine. You finish. Someone has sighted a school of grey seals offshore three mornings running, so I’m off down there. See you,’ he said, and went.
Mrs. Lytton turned from the sink. ‘Darling! You didn’t mind my not waking you when Daniel went off? But now you’ll want breakfast. What shall I get for you?’
‘Nothing to eat, thanks.’ Verity looked into the coffee-pot. ‘You’ve left some. I’ll heat it and have it when we’ve coped with this lot. Heavens, did we really use all these crocks last night? Doesn’t it make you wonder whether paper plates and throwaway beakers haven’t got something, after all?’
‘Oh no, darling! Why, it’s not civilized not to lay a meal table with as good linen and glass and china as one can afford. Besides, even washing-up has its reward when you’ve got it all piled up and shining and ready to use again.’
‘Mother, you’re the best looker-on-the-bright-side I ever met!’ Verity teased her fondly.
‘Well, that’s my horoscope—that I can always count my blessings,’ Mrs. Lytton agreed. ‘But talking of coffee, Daniel tells me you made some, and the two of you had a little party of your own last night.’
‘It was tea, not that it matters. He was on his way back from the San. just as I came down to look for the Clere badge he gave me. He found it for me on the rubbish-heap outside, did he tell you?’
‘Yes. You were lucky. But I teased Daniel that if I heard of any more late-night kitchen rendezvous, I might suspect him of lying in wait to waylay you. He laughed and said not to worry; when you chose, you were too elusive for a successful ambush. I said, “Elusive? Verity? Oh, do you think so?” And he said—’
Verity cut in, ‘It was only the second time. The first was weeks ago. The night Nash died—’
‘Yes, I know, dear.’ Mrs. Lytton paused. ‘He says he told you the story of why he lost such complete touch with us for all those years and why he came back in the end. I asked him why he had decided to tell you. He said because you had taken him on his face value long enough and he wanted you to have some background to see him against. I told him I was so very glad you knew. But, Verity,—you don’t believe there was a word of truth in ... that about Dick Wyatt and me, do you?’
‘Mother dear, of course not!’
‘And of course one can’t blame Daniel. He couldn’t have remembered any of us well enough to know for certain that it wasn’t true. Poor Daniel! And what awful harm jealousy, run riot, can do! But it’s all water under the bridge now, and I know he’s going to prove my first instinct was right—that if Robert had known him as a man, he would have chosen him for Clere before anyone else. I only wish—’
Mrs. Lytton swished suds and rinsing water round her sink, dried her hands and changed the subject.
‘There, that’s done. Now for your coffee, dear. By the way, the post isn’t in yet, is it?’
‘No post today. It’s Boxing Day,’ Verity reminded her.
‘Tch! I’d forgotten that. Oh well, there’s always tomorrow.’
‘As if we’re likely to get anything then but one or two overdue Christmas cards! Or were you expecting something special?’
‘No—Well, that is, yes, perhaps. I thought there might be a letter or at least a postcard for me from Switzerland.’
‘From the Dysarts?’ asked Verity, surprised. ‘There couldn’t be time. They only went over on the twenty-third.’
‘No, from that Mr. Tabor. You know how he confided in me when we met in Norwich? Pumping me about Ira Cusack and—Daniel? I could only tell him the little I knew then, but well—I did telephone him before Christmas at Viking Vision to tell him, for what it was worth to him, that Ira was going out to Klosters for the holiday and when. You see, it seemed to me such a pity—’
‘But Daniel said last night that he expects to spend quite a lot of time at Klosters himself,’ said Verity.
‘So he told me too. But that’s rather the point, dear. That was why I said this word in season to Guy Tabor—Only fair, I thought, to give him his chance against Daniel and let the best man win. If the actual best man in my opinion must, which I couldn’t wish at all, goodness knows! Because, charming though a little pathetic as Guy Tabor is, he isn’t in the same street as Daniel for personality, is he?’
Fleetingly Verity wondered how the great Svengali of Viking Vision would care to be described as ‘a little pathetic Aloud she asked, ‘And how did Guy Tabor take your word in season? Was he grateful to you?’
‘Was he! He said he was dropping everything—being who he is, I suppose he can—and flying straight out. He should have been there when Nicholas and Jane and Ira arrived. So that’s why I hoped I might hear what success he had had with Ira before Daniel got there too. But, oh dear’—Mrs. Lytton shook a rueful head—‘I can see by your look that you think me the most arrant meddler. But it’s simply that, even if Daniel—I mean, we can’t want him to marry Ira, can we? Whoever else he doesn’t?’
At that Verity realized the dreaded nettle must be grasped, uprooted. Choosing her words, she said,
‘Mother, have you ever, as far as you know, given Daniel to think or even suspect that you would be happy for him to marry me? Because that’s what your “Whoever’s” and “If only’s” mean, don’t they? Please, Mother, don’t hedge, will you? Because I’ve got to know!’
‘Well, darling—Oh dear, this is difficult!’
The blue eyes clouded with distress. ‘You know the last thing I’d want would be to embarrass you with him. But yes, I confess I have wished so very much it might work out that way that perhaps I have said or hinted too much sometimes. Not that I’ve ever bored Daniel about you, I’m sure, and I never have reminded him of that silly plot of Cleo’s and mine, after I had promised you I wouldn’t.’
Verity said wearily, ‘That was nothing. He knew about it, I found, and we laughed it off since. But the rest! I was afraid of it. I didn’t mean to tax you with it, but surely you must see that you couldn’t engineer Daniel into caring for me, any more, I’d say, than you can hope to steer Ira into marrying Guy Tabor with this ruse of sending him out to Klosters?’
Mrs. Lytton stood her ground. ‘I don’t know about that, dear. Lance would tell you that if you’re too close to your subject you don’t see it in proper focus, and when people have only worked together as those two did, one may be able to help by giving them a fresh background or even a rival or two. And that’s how I thought it might be with Daniel; that I mustn’t let him overlook you before it was too late. The wood and the trees, you know—But you’re saying that’s only wishful meddling, aren’t you, dear? That you wouldn’t want Daniel, even if he cared for you? I mean, you’re only embarrassed by all this? You’re not—sad?’
‘Sad?’ But Verity’s whispered echo was no question. It was a playing-for-time, a pitiful floodgate, not proof against her mother’s swift tide of sympathy.
Mrs. Lytton opened her arms and Verity ran into t
hem. ‘My pet, you are unhappy? Don’t cry so! Or do—if it helps. Dear, I’ve been so blind! You’ve fallen in love with Daniel and I never guessed. Tell me—’
Half an hour later she was making plans. ‘Of course I knew Daniel wouldn’t need me here after he married. But whether he does or not, you won’t want to stay any longer than you must either, will you? If you give in your notice as soon as he gets back, you could leave at half-term. Meanwhile I must find somewhere else to live, and you’ll have time to look for another job for the summer term.’
That went ahead of Verity’s thoughts. She wasn’t ready yet to see her misery in the bleak light of dates and of decisions which would have to come. Besides, she had kept as her own secret Daniel’s plea for her help, and until he told her what he wanted of her, she couldn’t plan already to desert him out of hand.
She sighed. ‘I’m sorry, Mother. I’m afraid it does look as if we may be back at Square One, but—’
‘You mean when we thought, four months ago, that we must leave Clere then? Not quite, darling. Now we know it’s going to be safe in Daniel’s hands; Lance has found his level again, and though you can’t believe it yet, you’ll realize one day that even unhappy love is never wasted. Meanwhile, there’s more to living even than love, you know. There’s still friendship and books and music and out-of-doors and work and being needed—’
As the telephone rang Mrs. Lytton broke off and used its intrusion to make her point. ‘You see, darling? That’ll be somebody wanting ... asking ... telling ... needing one of us. So be my brave girl and go and answer it. For that’s life going on regardless. It has to—while we pick up the pieces of our hearts.’