Jasmine Harvest

by Jane Arbor

  “But after you’ve delivered her safely to them, you’ll come south again then? If you’ve no ties to this Sidcup of yours, you aren’t going to insist that I marry you from there, I hope?”

  She turned within his hold and linked her fingers behind his head as she teased, “What’s wrong with Sidcup? And think of the headlines we should make in the ‘Sidcup Echo,’ alongside the story that you were suing Betsy and me for our moonlight flitting!”

  He pulled a face at her, “For that crack alone, you’ll not be married in Sidcup. I’ll wait for you in London as long as you say, but then we’re going back together. You could stay with Ursule, couldn’t you?”

  “If she and Berthin will have me, I’d love that.”

  “They’ll have you. Berthin says he’s never known Ursule take to anyone as she did to you. And where shall we be married? Cannes? Grasse? Nice? Villon?”

  “Villon, please, Paul. It’s ‘your’ place, as no place in England has ever been specially mine—” Caroline broke off as a turn of her wrist showed her her watch. “Oh, Paul—Betsy! We were going to meet in the dining car. She’ll be waiting for me!”

  But when she made to rise Paul held her back. “Betsy can wait a little longer or come and look for you. Meanwhile, there’s something I haven’t got straight about all this. If, as you say, Betsy thought she already knew the size of Ariane’s opposition, why was that phoney letter such a body-blow that she crumpled under it as she did? Or don’t you know why she couldn’t take that, when she had weathered all the rest of my deliberate dalliance with Ariane?”

  Caroline hesitated. “I do know ... I think,” she said.

  “Then, my sweet, you must tell me,” he urged. “Goodness knows, it’s going to be difficult enough to meet the child, but if I’m to make my peace with her, I’ve got to know where I stand, don’t you see?”

  “Yes. Well, she said it was because she had blinded herself as to your real relationship with Ariane, and the letter proved that it was only history being repeated; that you were ... keeping Ariane in the same way as you—”

  Paul’s face darkened. “I understand. You mean, as I’d been keeping Fanchon Raguse? Betsy had heard that story, I daresay? You had too? And you were running away from that, as much as from what you thought Ariane was to me?”

  “Paul, I wasn’t,” Caroline pleaded. “If no one else’s, Simone’s faith in you over that should convince anyone there had been nothing wrong between you and that poor girl. But Betsy—”

  “But Betsy believed the worst?” He sighed and shrugged. “Well, I suppose I asked for that. I certainly did at the time. But one thing, Caro my heart, you must learn about me—when the truth is in me, I won’t be judged unheard or unjustly, so try never to do it, will you?”

  Her smile was very tender. She said obliquely, “I heard the story from other people, but I listened to Simone!”

  “Bless you. But you’ll take the truth of it from me now?”

  “If you want me to, of course.”

  “I do, though Simone was right—there’s nothing to it that can hurt you ... hurt us, or ever could have done. This was all there was to it, my darling. I daresay you’ll have heard that I’d known Fanchon since she was a kid; that she had been a maid of my mother’s? You have? Well, on the night she was killed she came to Mimosa to beg me—the only person she dared ask, she said—for a loan to help her sister who had written to her in utter distress from Paris.”

  “Oh, yes, Simone mentioned a sister. What was her name? Aricie? Hadn’t she run away from home earlier?”

  “Aricie, yes. She wasn’t cut to the same pattern as Fanchon and she went off with a married man who later returned to his wife, leaving Aricie penniless and in debt that he had incurred. She couldn’t, Fanchon said, leave the lodgings they had had without paying the arrears of rent or having her own few things impounded. So after months of silence she had suddenly appealed to Fanchon, who came to me, and I gave her enough money to get Aricie out of the red and to tide her over until she could get a job. That’s all, Caro. It was as simple as that.”

  “Except that Fanchon didn’t live to send Aricie the money?”

  “No, poor child. It was a filthy night, but she wouldn’t hear of my driving her home. All she would accept was the loan of my raincoat, and the last thing she said on earth was, ‘Please, no one, least of all my father, must know I came to you for help for Aricie. So you’ll tell nobody, Monsieur Paul?’ And I never have, until now.”

  “It was that promise to her which you were keeping when you gave only the barest facts at the inquest on her?”

  “That, and the rest—that already the wagging tongues had tried me and found me guilty, and it did something for my ego to keep them all guessing until the next scandal broke.”

  “And Aricie?”

  “Well, by good chance Fanchon had given me her address. So when the police solemnly handed my money back to me, I got in touch with her, went up to see her, gave her the cash and told her she owed it to Fanchon, not to me, to pull herself up by her bootstraps and make good.”

  “And has she?”

  “Yes. I look in on her whenever I’m in Paris'. I’ll take you to see her, if you like. She got a job as a shop assistant; married a commercial traveller last New Year and is about to produce an infant to whom, I suspect, I’m to be asked to be godfather. You wouldn’t, I suppose, care to stand in as my proxy?”

  “On the contrary, I can hardly wait to see you coping at the font!” Caroline said, then laughed softly. “You know,” she told him, “Betsy was right, in a way she didn’t mean. History has repeated itself after all. Because Simone told me that when you were little, any money you had always burned your pockets until you had given it to some one else, and since then there was Fanchon who had only to ask, and just the other day you never questioned that if Witold Czinner needed money, you would give it to him!”

  Paul nodded ruefully. “I’m afraid you’ve got to face it, Caro. I’ve always seen money as stuff that’s for spending or sharing, not for hoarding. But if you’re worried about the housekeeping—”

  “I’m not. And I wouldn’t have you different for the world,” she said, and knew as she spoke how true, now and for ever, that was and would be.

  Loving Paul, she had chosen no quiet, slow-pulse happiness, but a come-what-would adventure. Now there would be tenderness to it; now shoulder-to-shoulder unity; now fun; now conflict; now calm after storm. And Paul, being Paul, would always give it edge, color, challenge. But it was a future she now knew was the right one for her.

  He was making play with her fingers, separating them, then partnering them in twos. “Well, like it or not, we’ve got Betsy still looming, and if anything can take the moonshine out of us for a time, that interview may, don’t you think?” he said.

  “I’m afraid so, but it has to be faced,” she agreed.

  They stood up. But before Paul opened the door for her they went into each other’s arms once more, giving kiss for kiss in punctuation to yet more of the age-old ecstatic nothings which had to be said.

  As they drew apart Caroline teased, “You’re still speaking English to me, though you said you always used French for your romantic moments!”

  “Ah, but this—” a butterfly touch of his lips saluted each of her eyebrows in turn, the tip of her nose, her mouth—“this is no romantic moment. This is for ever—time-for-love that’s going on and on. However, if it will placate any bilingual gods—Je t’aime, my beloved. You’re the very beat of my heart, m’amie—‘How’s that, with more to come on request?”

  “It’ll do to be going on with—”

  They kissed hungrily again. Then, hand-in-hand and sharing laughter, they were on their way down the corridor together. As they went, the drumming of the train wheels made music for their going, and no stranger who stood aside for them was in doubt that it was a couple of lovers who had passed by.

  THE END

  bor, Jasmine Harvest