One Coin in the Fountain

by Anita Charles

  But the last few hours before the wedding was due to take place hardly presented an opportunity to discuss anything at all with her guardian, and she gathered he took it for granted that she would be remaining with the Willoughbys. The afternoon before the wedding they had a rehearsal in the village church, and some idea of the beauty of the ceremony was conveyed to all of them— and most keenly to Rose—because already the setting was massed with flowers, and the organist was practising in the organ loft. Rose remembered that afternoon for the rest of her life, and even while she watched the effect of the sunlight through the stained-glass window behind the altar falling across the chancel steps, where the two leading figures stood, she had the feeling that for her it was an afternoon with an acute personal significance. But she failed to understand what exactly the significance was.

  After the rehearsal was over Sir Laurence drove himself into Rington, where he proposed to spend his last night as a bachelor, and to entertain a few friends of his own sex. It was, not exactly a stag-party, but it was something in the same nature, and left Heather free to go to bed early and prepare herself for the great day ahead of her.

  When that day dawned everyone within the house was glad that it showed every promise of being a spectacularly beautiful autumn day. And by noon that promise was assured. There was clear sky and gently falling golden sunshine, just enough breeze to lift the ends of the bride’s veil and catch playfully at the wide skirts of her bridesmaids, and just enough sparkling freshness in the air to make the sound of the bells carry far and wide. When Rose first heard them they were pealing out across the woods and meadows, and she herself was in the back of a big and gleaming car decorated with white ribbons with the other three bridesmaids and on her way to the church.

  At the lych-gate there was the usual little crowd of villagers to receive them, the usual admiring looks were shot at her and her companions, and then a beautifully turned-out usher assisted them from the car. They stood grouped in the porch while they waited for the bride, and behind them in the church the organ played softly, and Rose knew that rows and rows of relatives and friends of both the prospective bride and bridegroom were waiting with bated breath and a good deal of nervous tension for the moment when the little procession that was to form the highlight of their day would enter and sweep down the aisle.

  Rose herself felt ridiculously nervous and strung up—far more nervous, she was sure, than Heather herself was feeling, although with far more cause. She could picture her and her father left behind alone at the Manor—if they were not already on their way in the car—and Heather’s deliberate last-minute concern with her appearance. Completely satisfied with the way she looked, she would know no shyness, and it was her father who would be the most fussed. Rose had always felt inclined to pity him a little, for he was a little man very much at the mercy of both his wife and his daughter, and a prominent role at a wedding was not one he would look upon with favour. While Heather was placing a final spot of perfume behind her ears, ordering one of her golden curls that had escaped from under her chaplet of white roses, and picking up her white gloves from her dressing-table with a leisureliness that would almost certainly be maddening to the waiting man below, feeling further frustrated by morning clothes, the latter would almost certainly be taking a wistful peep at the dining-room sideboard, and wishing he might

  dare to fortify himself for his ordeal.

  But he wouldn’t dare to fortify himself with a quick whisky because Heather would already be descending the stairs and Rose—whose imagination was extraordinarily vivid today—could see her sweeping down them, in all the glory of her bridal white. Even her father would temporarily forget his nervousness and be a little overcome by the picture she made.

  But, behind them in the church, the congregation was getting restless, and hymn sheets were rustling, and there was that curious whisper running through the church which was caused by women in rustling dresses moving slightly on hard pews, and heads being turned constantly to watch the door.

  Rose, who had not so far succumbed to the desire to do so—although the other three bridesmaids were continually peeping in and whispering a little about the looks of the bridegroom and his best man, who was a close personal friend—suddenly found that she had to look in through the great Norman doorway and see how her guardian was taking this waiting — this somewhat protracted waiting.

  She hadn’t seen him since the afternoon before, and it seemed to her that there was little or no expression on his face as he stared down at the stone floor of the church, and waited for his bride to arrive. He was looking completely impeccable in his morning dress—but, then, he always looked impeccable in whatever he wore. He was naturally fastidious, and he paid his tailor a good deal to keep him looking a thoroughly well-dressed man.

  In the sunshine that was once again streaming through the window above the altar his dark head looked very sleek, and although it was so dark there were a few burnished gleams caught up with the darkness. He had broad, well-held shoulders, narrow hips, and a kind of feline elegance. His square jaw looked very noticeable, and his lips were rather tightly compressed—which was the only sign of tension. He did not keep turning his head towards the door at the head of the aisle, although his best man did so constantly.

  Rose felt, as she allowed herself to look thus deliberately on her guardian, that she was looking at him for the last time, in the sense that he would never again be quite the same man to her. He would be someone else’s property—Heather’s—and the pleasant relationship that had existed between them for the past five years would be over—severed because Heather would wish it so.

  This might even be the last time she would actually have an opportunity to look at him! For once back at Farnhurst Manor she proposed to escape as quickly as possible to her own room.

  Her heart seemed to swell with a kind of agony for a few moments as the realization rushed over her that parting—perhaps permanent parting! —was imminent. And then the fluttering, anxious movements of the other bridesmaids around her, the way in which they suddenly took to whispering, and then talking almost loudly, gradually penetrated to her consciousness, and she realized that the bride was very late indeed.

  A couple of ushers joined them and stood talking in the porch. The people in the church behind grew ever more restless, and the bride’s uncle—a stout gentleman on the Stock Exchange—who had been supporting Mrs. Willoughby, left his pew and made his appearance amongst both bridesmaids and ushers. As he did so the clock in the church tower chimed the hour—the bride was exactly half an hour late!

  After that Rose was never exactly clear about what did happen. She only knew that she still stood there—beginning to shiver a little in her thin dress, because the sun didn’t reach them in the grey stone porch, and the breeze was very persistent there in the shadows—and that her long, elbow-length lavender suede gloves began to feel very stiff, and the bunch of half-opened yellow roses curiously difficult to hold. One or two other relatives who felt they had a right to inquire what was going on emerged from the body of the church, and finally it was decided that a car must be sent back to find out what—if anything—had happened to the bride. Everybody insisted that nothing could have happened, that she was simply but unavoidably late, and that it was just possible her car had refused to start, and the chauffeur was having trouble with it. But, whatever was causing the delay, some inquiry concerning it must be made, for the bride’s mother was already inclined to be a little overcome by agitation, and the vicar was only thinly disguising the fact that he had an urgent appointment in Rington at four o’clock. If the wedding was unreasonably delayed he might not be able to drive himself there in time.

  Besides, there were all the other arrangements . . . The reception, the departure for the honeymoon . . . !

  An usher suggested sensibly that the girls sat in one of the cars while they waited for the messenger to return from Farnhurst Manor, and when at last he did return there was no need for them to return
to the church porch. The bride’s note had only just been discovered by her father, who had not ventured to interrupt what he had believed was a somewhat protracted attention to the final details of her appearance until even his patience had worn thin, and then nothing but the note had awaited him on her dressing-table.

  There was to be no wedding. The bride—or, that is to say, Heather, whom everyone had expected to become a bride that afternoon—had made other plans, and she and Peter Hurst were now on their way by road to a destination which Heather naturally hadn’t disclosed in the brief note she left behind her.

  When Rose found herself back at the Manor— with no knowledge of how Sir Laurence had reacted when the news had been broken to him— she was glad of the glass of sherry which someone thrust into her hand. She felt cold and bewildered, numb, tired and confused, and nothing any longer seemed completely real.

  She had read of bridegrooms being jilted at the altar, but never, never had she dreamed that it would happen to her own Sir Laurence Melville.

  CHAPTER V

  THE next day she and Sir Laurence left Farnhurst Manor and drove to Enderby.

  Sir Laurence was very silent behind the wheel of the car, an unfamiliar, detached figure with a curiously emotionless mask of a face. It was rather like a granite mask, Rose thought, every time she found the courage to glance at it sideways, and with nothing about it to encourage pleasantries. And as the journey was well over a hundred miles, and hardly any conversation took place while it lasted, the girl found it something of a strain to say the least.

  Not that she expected Sir Laurence to have much to say to her, or to anyone. His farewells at the Manor had been confined to his recent host and hostess—the latter all but prostrate in her own room—and he had ignored everybody else. The thing that had amazed Rose was that, at such a time, he should remember her, and insist on carrying her away with him, although she had ventured to suggest that there was no need for him to bother about her just then, because she could become the guest of Mrs. Wilson-Plunkett. But he had simply said:

  “Pack your things, and we’ll leave immediately after breakfast.”

  And there had been that in his voice that had brooked no further argument.

  Rose was so much more than merely shocked by the disastrous termination to a wedding-day that had dawned so brightly, and so secretly concerned for her guardian, that she had scarcely slept a wink the night before. The enormity of this thing that had happened had appalled her, as it had honestly appalled poor Mr. and Mrs. Willoughby.

  They were left with all the presents to return and the bills to settle for a wedding that had never taken place, and with no financial reward or assistance to be looked for from a newly-acquired son-in-law. They weren’t even sure that their daughter had so far acquired a husband, and that they wouldn’t have to continue to be responsible for her maintenance, for Peter Hurst was by no means a man of substance.

  In fact he was exactly the opposite.

  Poor Mrs. Willoughby was literally drowned in tears when she said good-bye to Sir Laurence. It was only sheer desperation that provided her with sufficient courage to ask, just before he left:

  “Of course, if, after all, Heather changed her mind—if nothing came of this dreadful elopement!— you would—take her back? Or wouldn’t you?”

  But Sir Laurence returned no answer at all to this, and cut short the embarrassing farewells. When he went out of the house Mrs. Willoughby felt sure she would never see him again.

  Rose, full of deep, feminine compassion for that stony look in his face, would have been honestly glad if he had overlooked her on this occasion. She felt that she was just an unnecessary encumbrance to him, and that it was almost indecent that she should be thrust on him at such a time. Although, on the other hand, so rigid and inhuman was the exterior he was presenting to the world that she was glad that at least she was near enough to him to prevent him doing anything rash should the sudden impulse overwhelm him.

  If it had been she, herself, who had been left standing at the altar . . . who had waited a full hour for a bridegroom who had never arrived at the church. . . . She was certain she would have wanted to crawl away and hide herself.

  But men, perhaps, were different. Perhaps they reacted differently. . . .

  When they arrived at Enderby, Thatcher, who had been sent on ahead, was there to receive them. He was looking unnaturally grave, and pointedly avoided lifting his eyes to his master’s face. Rose felt certain that this was his way of attempting to deal tactfully with the situation.

  Enderby was looking much as usual, and far nicer, Rose thought, than Farnhurst Manor. It was far more genuine than Farnhurst, for one thing, and Sir Laurence had filled it with costly treasures. There was nothing at all that jarred, and every evidence of a generous-sized bank-balance behind its owner. As she made her way up to her own room Rose wondered what it was that had affected Heather Willoughby, and caused her to behave as she had behaved. For she had sacrificed quite a lot. . .

  At dinner that night the oppressive silence in the dining-room pressed upon Rose like a living thing, and she wondered whether she wouldn’t have been wiser to have pleaded some excuse for having a tray served to her in her room. Sir Laurence seemed hardly aware that she existed, and she was too terrified of saying the wrong thing to attempt any conversation on her own. It was not until the meal was practically over, and Thatcher had received instructions not to bother about serving coffee in the drawing-room, but to bring it straight to the diningroom that the man at the head of the table seemed to rouse himself deliberately from the close abstraction that had held him for more than twenty-four hours and looked across at his ward.

  “I’ve brought you back here, Rose,” he told her, “because we’ve got to decide something about your future. I’m going away almost immediately, so what would you like to do?”

  “You’re—going away?” Rose echoed, rather foolishly.

  “Yes.” He stared at her with a harsh, cool smile on his lips. “Does that surprise you so very much? Did you imagine I was going to hang on here, or in London, surrounded by all my well-meaning friends, and receive their condolences?”

  “I—I’m afraid I never thought of it—like that,” she admitted.

  “No.” The almost hostile smile remained clinging about his shapely mouth. “I don’t suppose you did. But, then, you haven’t been jilted—to make use of a good old-fashioned expression—have you? So there’s no reason why you should think about it.”

  Rose looked across the flower-decked table—it might have revealed greater tactfulness, she thought, on the part of Thatcher, if he had been content with a rather more restrained centrepiece; and to bring out such a blaze of silver as well-nigh dazzled the eyes seemed a little unnecessary for two people, dining together under such clouded circumstances— and allowed her gaze to rest with sudden quiet insight on her guardian’s face. What had happened to him had no doubt been a severe shock, and beneath that harsh mask he must be suffering a good deal, but he was also seething with an anger greater than anything he had probably ever felt before in his life. It reminded her of the anger of a mortally hurt creature, and she realized it was capable of lashing out at her at any moment. And although she didn’t in the least mind him losing his temper with her, because it no doubt helped him to vent it on someone, she did feel all at once the shadow of a bleak disappointment falling across her—she also felt suddenly intensely critical.

  For if she, a mere nineteen-year-old, with little or no experience of Life, and Mrs. Wilson-Plunkett, with a vast deal of experience of Life, had both realized that Heather Willoughby was the last woman in the world he ought to marry, surely he might have had the sense to know it himself? To be—in a sense— prepared?

  As Thatcher reappeared and set a coffee cup at her elbow, and then asked her in his perfect manservant manner whether she would like a liqueur, she waved him away with more impatience than she had probably allowed herself to display in her life before—certainly in front
of her guardian.

  “Will you allow me to say something?” she asked, very quietly.

  Sir Laurence, waiting until he was quite sure

  Thatcher had retreated behind his green baize door, sent her a coldly derisive look.

  “Certainly, my dear! Say what you want to say!” “Then I hope you don’t imagine that I wish to condole with you?”

  “Don’t you?” For the first time he noticed that she was looking rather white and strained, as if she had endured quite a lot herself since she returned from Switzerland. “Then what do you wish to do?” with great dryness.

  “Tell you that I think you’re lucky—yes, lucky!—to have escaped as you have!” She was aware that she had absolutely no right at all to say what she was saying, and that it was madness to do so, but once having started she had to go on. “Why you ever became engaged to Heather Willoughby I can’t think—it was obvious she’d let you down! Even her own god-mother knew that! Probably her parents were afraid of it—but you were such a wonderful catch that they just prayed she wouldn’t do anything foolish before the wedding! But she did! —she behaved dreadfully, and you’re sitting there looking as if you’ve lost all faith in human nature. . . .”

  Her voice died away as she saw that he had turned absolutely white, and his eyes were suddenly flaming at her—without any resemblance at all to the quiet grey eyes she had known for years. He stood up in his place at the table and she had the feeling that he might actually strike her.

  “How dare you?” he demanded, his voice trembling with a kind of cold fury. “How dare you talk to me like that?—and about the woman I was going to marry! And how dare you infer that you’ve discussed Heather and me with a talkative old harridan like that Mrs. Wilson-Plunkett . . .?”

  “She’s known Heather for years,” Rose defended the only friend she had felt she had made during her short sojourn at Farnhurst Manor. “And at least she isn’t blind! . . .” She, too, stood up at the opposite end of the table, and she knew she was trembling, and suddenly afraid—but her red hair refused to permit her to show any signs of it, or to haul, down her flag. “And I’ve no doubt there were lots of other people who were not blind, either!”