by Sara Seale
When she was ready, she stood, surveying the room with curious eyes. This was no longer her room, the place that she had made her own since she was old enough to graduate from the nursery. In future her room would be in the other wing, that vast double room that was supposed to have harbored one of the Stuarts for a night. This room was already bare of most of her personal belongings. Her luggage, new and unfriendly, was piled at the foot of the bed and stamped with the letters N.S. Nicola Shand. When she came back to Nye she would no longer be Nicola Bredon.
She almost snatched the little hat Mouse was holding out to her, and crammed it on her head without troubling to look in the mirror. Mouse knew the symptoms from nursery days.
“Now, Nicky, you sit right down in front of the glass and put that hat straight,” she said and folded her arms across her diminutive chest.
“It’s not supposed to be straight,” said Nicky, but-she obeyed all the same.
“You look very nice, I must say,” Mouse said grudgingly. “Though I don’t hold with green for weddings, myself. It’s unlucky. I must say, Nicky, you might have had a proper wedding for the sake of the village if nothing else.”
“They can have all the rejoicing they want at my coming of age,” Nicky said carelessly. “Now; that will be a party.”
Mouse compressed her lips into familiar lines of displeasure. “Well, take that sour look off your face when you walk down the aisle,” she said, “or your husband won’t feel very complimented, poor gentleman.”
Nicky turned and gave the old woman one quick hug. Then she ran out of the room, slamming the door swiftly behind her.
It was all over very quickly and she was driving back with Simon between the long rows of chestnuts, their buds already fat and sticky in the rain. In another fortnight they would be in flower. She sat very straight and silent beside Simon, feeling all at once unaccountably nervous. He said very little, but just before the car drew up at the house, he took her in his arms and kissed her.
“I hope I make you happy, little Nicky,” he said gravely. “I’ll do my best.”
They stood under a great bell of orange-blossoms swinging from the famous King post and received their guests, and listened to endless speeches. Charles watched the proceedings with his usual puckish air of amusement, and old Shand, uncomfortable in such an unfamiliar gathering, did his best to be genial as befitted the occasion.
“No word from Michael?” Nicky asked Hilary Bredon once. “I wish he could have been here, but he didn’t even send a cable.”
“My letter must have missed him,” Hilary said. “I haven’t heard from him for weeks now.” He glanced at her closely. “Aren’t you happy, Nick? You’ve got a good man, you know. I told you that the first time I saw him.”
“Yes, of course, Uncle Hilary,” said Nicky quickly. “I hope you’ll come and stay with us as soon as we get back. I shall miss Charles about the place.”
Dick Lucy hurried up to wish her luck. Stella wasn’t back yet from Scotland, he told her. When they came back they must come and dine.
When they came back—How changed everything would be, Nicky realized with a faint sense of panic. Even Nye...
Simon’s voice behind her was saying:
“Time we made a move, darling. We’ve got a long run in front of us.”
With a sense of unreality she made her farewells, and presently she was beside Simon in his own car this time, and they were turning out of the lodge gates where knots of villagers still stood in the rain to cheer them as they passed. She had at last set her face toward the new life, and she felt a terrifying and overwhelming sense of isolation...
They had planned a tour of the north country and Scotland that would take about three weeks. Simon was anxious to show Nicky the country where he had spent all his boyhood, and they hoped to reach the Yorkshire moors on the first stage of their journey. They drove through rain nearly all the way, arriving at their hotel after dinner.
Nicky was desperately tired. The north seemed alien and unfriendly and the hotel, although comfortable enough, was old-fashioned and ugly, and at that time of the year, nearly empty. A sleepy waiter served them hot soup in front of a dying fire in the deserted lounge, and Simon, stretching his cramped legs thankfully, looked at Nicky’s face and burst out laughing.
“My poor sweetheart, it isn’t really as bad as all that!” he said. “Wait till you see the moors from your bedroom window tomorrow morning. You’ll forgive the hotel then for being such a barrack.”
She tried to smile.
“I expect it’s all right,” she said, drinking her hot soup with gratitude. “I’m terribly tired, Simon.”
He looked at her with tenderness. In the dim light her face seemed pale and ethereal. The heavy hair swung forward over her cheekbones as she bent her head over her bowl of soup. She seemed small and childish and rather forlorn.
“Finish your soup quickly and then to bed,” he said gently.
She put her bowl down on a table and stood up.
“I’ve finished now.”
He got to his feet and put an arm around her slender body drawing her close to him.
“Nicky.” His voice had sudden urgency. “I want our life together to be a grand thing. If I make mistakes—and I shall make them—be a little forbearing with me. All I do, I do because of you. Remember that, will you, the next time you feel you want to hit me? You’re such a dear child, Nicky, and sometimes I’m. clumsy...”
He felt her stiffen in his arms, but she made no attempt to get free, and when she felt his hands relax, she lifted her face and gave him a stiff little smile.
“Thank you, Simon. Good night,” she said, and picked up her hat and gloves.
He watched her a little uncertainly.
“You’re very tired, aren’t you?” he said then. “I won’t be long after you.”
When she had gone, he was conscious of extreme weariness himself. He had a whisky and soda and smoked another cigarette, then went slowly up the stairs.
At the door of their room he paused and knocked, but there was no reply. He tried the handle but the door was locked.
He called softly:
“Nicky, it’s Simon. Open the door, darling.”
But there was no sound from inside the room, and under the door there was no ray of light.
CHAPTER NINE
Nicky stood at her bedroom window the next morning, staring out on to the unfamiliar country. Below her, as far as the eye could see, stretched miles and miles of rolling moor, dark and brooding under a gray rain-washed sky. A strange, desolate country, as unlike the familiar wooded grasslands of Sussex as Nicky had ever imagined.
She shivered a little and pulled her long green housecoat more closely around her. She had slept heavily from sheer strain and exhaustion, but the morning was chill and accusing, and she knew she had to face Simon.
Almost immediately there was a knock on her door and he came in. He was fully dressed, and by the mud on his shoes, she guessed he had been up early tramping the moors. She leaned against the window frame and waited for him to speak first.
“What’s your explanation?” he said quietly.
She knew suddenly that she was a little afraid of him, but before she could speak he continued.
“Was it necessary to lock me out of my own room? I knew you were tired last night. I wouldn’t have bothered you.”
She rushed defiantly into speech. “I told you, Simon, that you could force me to marry you, but you could never force me to live with you. I don’t think you believed me at the time, but I meant it.” He stood looking at her, his hands in his pockets, and the cold morning light struck full on his face. There was a definite change. He looked older, and there was a grim set to his mouth and jaw that was very reminiscent of his father.
“I didn’t believe you,” he said in harsh tones, “because I didn’t think you capable of such dishonesty.”
“I wasn’t dishonest!” she flared, the quick color staining her cheekbones. “It
was simply a matter of quid pro quo. You forced me to keep a bargain. Well I have—to the letter.”
“You’ve never kept a bargain in your life, Nicky,” he said and his voice was cutting in its contempt. “You’d wriggle out of anything. You haven’t any conception of honor as ordinary people see it. You’re just a common cheat.”
Her hands flew to her flaming cheeks.
“You’re the first person who’s ever called me that,” she said in a voice that shook. “And you’ll be the last. I won’t stay with you.”
“Oh, yes, you will,” he said quietly. “You’ve made a fool of me once, my dear, but you’re not going to do it again. You’ll remain my wife in the eyes of the world at least. Don’t worry. I shan’t come near you unless you ask me to yourself. If you’d had the courtesy to explain your reasons last night I might have felt very differently this morning. But to lock the door on me was insulting. Do you imagine it was pleasant to have to go downstairs and ask for another room? You don’t humiliate me twice, Nicky.”
The anger suddenly went out of her. She had an unexpected impulse to go to him and put her arms around his neck and say: “I’m sorry. I was wrong. Let’s start again.” But she had done him an unforgivable injury. She had made a fool of him, and he wouldn’t easily forget that.
“I—I—” she began, but he cut in quickly:
“Well, you can go on with your cheating. At least we know where we are now. But you needn’t trouble to lock your door after this. In future we’ll have separate rooms.”
He turned on his heel and went out of the room without giving her another glance.
They spent the next week in the north, stopping several days in Halifax, where Simon had business to attend to at the factory for his father.
“You’ll have to come along with me the first time, if you don’t mind, Nicky,” Simon said. “They’ll expect it.”
Indeed they were given a royal welcome, and Nicky was taken all over the factory and finally told to choose some leather for a special pair of shoes. Here, at any rate, she sampled the rough friendliness of north-country people. And here in the north, Shand was a name as famous as Bredon was in the south. Nicky was touched and surprised at the affection with which they spoke of old John Shand.
But when Simon’s business was completed there seemed no point in prolonging their honeymoon any further. Simon said there was plenty to attend to at Nye, and Nicky agreed, with a certain amount of relief, to cut out Scotland and return home.
It had been a strange week. Simon was always courteous and considerate, but he seemed to have retired into an icy reserve that Nicky felt quite unable to break through. How, she wondered a little wearily, was this crazy marriage to end? It wasn’t conceivable that they should continue indefinitely in such mutual estrangement, but she herself was too resentful and unhappy to try and understand all that Simon might be feeling. Indeed she had no direct means of knowing what he felt. It never occurred to her that he was, of the two, more sensitive than herself. She remembered only his contempt and she was prepared to match it with an equal scorn and no surrender.
And so they returned to Nye, unheralded except for a wire to Mouse in the morning, and they drove unnoticed through the village and the great iron gates of Nye.
The chestnuts had flowered, and as the car passed beneath that spreading canopy of beauty, Nicky, though she had seen the sight a hundred times, felt the tears sting her eyes. This was home. This was Nye, the beloved inheritance. No matter that she returned with a stranger beside her. Nye was too strong for any alien spirit.
Simon, glancing at Nicky’s ecstatic face, felt his own heart lighten. Perhaps things would be easier here. But as he followed her into the familiar hall and watched her fling herself upon Mouse, he knew this would not be so. Nye was only another barrier he had built between them, and Nicky, returning unchanged to her old home, was farther from him than ever.
Mouse was scolding Nicky. “A nice thing, I must say, running home a week after you’re married, and nothing prepared,” she grumbled. “What were you thinking of, sir?”
“The weather was bad, and Nicky was homesick, I think,” Simon said with a smile.
Mouse snorted. “Homesick! On her honeymoon! You mark my words, sir, if you start giving in to Nicky now you’ll have endless trouble with her. And I ought to know.”
She said no more but gave him a long shrewd look as she saw the sudden weariness in his face.
“That theory doesn’t always work out,” he said and stooped to pat-one of the dogs.
“The village had planned a welcome,” Mouse said crossly. For some obscure reason she felt she wanted to shake Nicky. “Everyone will be disappointed, but what’s that to you?”
“Oh, Mouse!” Nicky sounded a little tearful. “Don’t be so cross. There’s still my coming of age. Aren’t you pleased to see me back? Say you are at once, you horrid old woman, or I’ll do something dreadful to you!”
For a moment it seemed as if Mouse was not to be cajoled, then her little beady eyes began to twinkle and she struggled against a smile:
“Oh, get along with you! I’ve had enough of your nonsense. Go upstairs and change your shoes; you look cold.”
And as he watched Nicky run laughing up the stairs, Simon thought how simple his marriage would be if he could adopt nursery tactics as successfully as Mouse.
It was a strange homecoming. Simon, tired and depressed, all the high hopes of his marriage quenched, was conscious that first evening of being a guest in his own house. Nicky’s complete change of manner on her return home, hurt him. He thought that their disastrous honeymoon had most likely left more on him than on her, for she at least had expected nothing, whilst he had hoped for so much.
Nicky felt a little strange herself. It was odd to see Simon sitting in Charles’s place at the head of the table and listen to him giving orders to his servants. Striving after justice, she told herself that she had no right to resent his authority after all he was doing for Nye, but she knew that she would resent it in the days to come.
She looked at him several times at dinner with swift uneasy glances and wondered what he was thinking. He was very silent and his grave, rather severe face was impossible to read. She had no means of understanding the discouragement and depression that had seized him. She only thought that he seemed cold and withdrawn, and she was relieved when the meal was over and she could curl up with a book by the library fire. But when bedtime came she went with a faint sense of panic to the big room where she had never slept before, and looked at the two beds standing side by side turned down in readiness. She was still standing by the fire fully dressed when Simon came up.
The room seemed very quiet. Nicky, as she saw Simon standing just inside the door watching her with an expression she didn’t understand, knew suddenly that the situation was no longer in her hands. She had thought quite simply that the consequences of her marriage depended entirely on herself, but she knew now that if Simon chose to enforce his bargain she was powerless. He had shown himself all along to be a man who did not give in easily. He had held her to every agreement. There was no reason to suppose that in fairness to himself he would indefinitely put up with the situation.
She wasn’t aware that the defiance of that first morning had gone out of her, that she was looking at him with an unconscious plea to his generosity. His voice was gentle as he said:
“Aren’t you going to get undressed? It’s quite late.”
“Yes,” she said. “In a minute.”
He came and stood beside her in the circle of firelight.
“Listen to me, Nicky,” he began quietly. “The village is sufficiently interested in us to discuss us well with the servants. It didn’t matter particularly what the staff did and thought in strange hotels this last week, but I’m not going to have gossip in a place where everyone knows us. I’m afraid that means you’ll have to put up with me in your bedroom. Oh, don’t worry,” he added with a trace of weariness in his voice. “I shan’t troub
le you.”
All at once Nicky wanted to weep. She knew a forlorn impulse to feel his arms around her.
“Simon—” Like a child, she slipped a hand into his and he could feel her long fingers nervously flexing and unflexing between his.
Misunderstanding her unwonted gentleness, he said with a weariness that touched her:
“My dear, surely you don’t think there would be any pleasure for me to force you into something you so clearly hate?”
Her eyes filled with tears. “I didn’t think it mattered to you,” she said, and he gently released her fingers.
“Have I deserved such a harsh opinion from you?” he asked a little sadly, and she held her fingers to a mouth that suddenly trembled. She didn’t want to cry.
“No,” she said. “Perhaps I don’t always understand.”
“Perhaps neither of us do,” he said. “Perhaps that’s a thing we shall both learn in time. And, Nicky, one thing I do ask. It would upset my mother terribly if she thought things were not right between us, so will you try not to hate me too badly when she’s about?”
“I don’t hate you, Simon,” Nicky said a little desperately, but he only smiled and went into his dressing room and closed the door.
But she did hate him many times in the weeks to come. The work on Honeysett’s cottage began almost at once, and Nicky watched the process of demolition with a sore and angry spirit. The subject was never mentioned between them, and although Simon tried to get her to cooperate with him over other improvements and alterations to the estate, she refused to take an active interest.
At first he made a point of consulting her, before making any drastic changes, but she held so resolutely aloof from all his suggestions and plans that in the end he gave up trying and went his own way. He didn’t realize that his own reserve made it difficult for her to be natural with him. He only knew that the early promise of their engagement had never fulfilled itself, and by the end of that cold wet April he knew he should never have married Nicky.