A Nightingale in the Sycamore

by Jane Beaufort

  “You keep the place looking nicer than Harwell did,” he said. “Somehow it looks slightly different—just a little more feminine! Or is that because you’re in residence now, Virginia?” looking at her with a smile.

  “I don’t know... I’ve tried to keep it looking exactly as it was when I first saw it,” she answered, in rather a quick, small voice.

  His smile was the smile she knew and remembered, and which actually seemed to caress her a little.

  “Harwell never seemed to find time to maintain polished surfaces at quite this pitch of perfection,” moving over to his piano and touching it gently. “Some people have green fingers, and can create gardens out of a wilderness—I know you work miracles in your own garden, Virginia!—but there must be others for whom furniture will shine as it simply will not shine for a lesser personality! And you must be one of those people as well!”

  She tried to smile naturally in acceptance of the compliment.

  “I’m afraid I’ve a weakness for highly polished furniture. But, would you like me to get you some tea?” she offered quickly. “I was just thinking about making some for myself.”

  “For yourself? Not for Iris as well?”

  “Iris is out. She—she won’t be back until this evening.”

  His smile altered a little.

  “Iris is quite a gay young woman nowadays, isn’t she?” His eyes—those strangely sombre, unfamiliar eyes—flickered over her, taking note of the fact that she wore an obviously new knife-pleated skirt, and that the little pale primrose blouse that she wore with it, and which displayed so much of her charming neckline, was new also. “And you’re not quite the same Virginia, are you?”

  She looked surprised.

  “I am just the same,” she assured him.

  “Does Martin think so? But, then, he wasn’t so familiar with that lovely cloud of hair of yours as I was, was he? He never had you sitting beside his bed, with the rays of a bedside-lamp pouring all over you, and thought of cobwebs tangled up with gold-dust in your hair!” He leaned a little towards her as if the subject interested him. “Does he approve of the new short hair-style?”

  Virginia returned quickly:

  “Do you?”

  “I don’t know.” His smile was like the inscrutable smile on the face of the Sphinx. “I’ll let you know when I’ve had an opportunity to get used to it. And now what about that tea you offered me?”

  When she returned with the tea-tray she found him staring as if absorbed at the carpet, and when she started pouring the tea he asked:

  “Did you honestly enjoy last night, Virginia?”

  “I enjoyed the first part of it.”

  “You mean you enjoyed my playing?” He looked at her with one eyebrow raised, a little quizzical. “But what about the party afterwards?”

  “I’m afraid,” she admitted, with a little sigh that escaped her in spite of herself, “that I’m not very used to parties, and perhaps I’m the type to whom they don’t make very much appeal.”

  “Was that why you left early?—incidentally, without saying good-bye! Why you got Martin to take you home?”

  “I did ask him to take me home, yes.”

  “Martin’s formed quite a habit of taking you home, hasn’t he? Do you see very much of him?”

  “He—he’s very kind!”

  The quizzical look grew.

  “Is it kind to make oneself charming to you, Virginia? To want to take you about, and be seen with you, and feel that other people are admiring you, and applauding one’s good taste for discovering how much pleasure there is to be gained from your society!”

  She had the feeling that he was trying to force her to lift her eyes from her cup and look directly at him, but she knew that that way lay danger—infinite danger for herself—for her eyes, if she permitted him to look deep into them, must be all too revealing. As it was, she could feel the colour creeping up over her face and neck, and it must be tell-tale, revealing colour.

  “Virginia, why did you slip away without having a final word with me last night?”

  “I—” Virginia set down her cup, because her hand was suddenly trembling, and he disconcerted her utterly by crossing in a single stride the space that separated them and kneeling on the floor beside her low, fireside chair. He picked up both her hands and rubbed his cheek against them, and then kissed them lingeringly.

  “Oh, Virginia, you’re so sweet!” he whispered. “My trouble is that I can’t do without you!—I want you all the time! I’m fiendishly jealous of any man who looks at you!”

  He looked deep into her eyes, and she felt herself trembling as she had never trembled before in her life. He drew her into his arms, but she tried to stop him.

  “Charles, I—”

  “Charles—what?” he asked softly, against her lips.

  Here was her opportunity to say, “But what about Annette? Why does Annette play such a prominent part in your life, if you really feel that way about me ...?” But, somehow, she couldn’t get the words out. She tried desperately hard, feeling that so much depended on them, but she couldn’t. And after a few moments the urgency of his lips, as they pressed down on hers, left her with no opportunity to say anything at all, and when at last she came up, as it were, out of an ether of ecstasy—a bemused world of bliss in which nothing mattered save he and she, and their strange, almost primitive need of one another—yet another change had come over, him, and he returned to his chair and looked at her with a white, intense look on his face.

  “Virginia, I came here this afternoon to ask you to spend the whole of to-morrow with me! Will you? Darling, say yes, and I’ll drive you down to the Meadow House in the morning, and we’ll have lunch together—Harwell will manage that if I ring him and give him warning—and I won’t work in the afternoon, and we’ll have a long, lazy time together! And in the evening I’ll bring you back here.”

  He was bending forward, gripping her hands tightly, and she felt like someone under compulsion.

  “Darling, darling Virginia, say yes! You wouldn’t deny me, would you, when I’ve set my heart on our having a day together? The Meadow House isn’t the same without you.”

  “But—but, won’t I interfere with your work?” Her eyes were heavy as well as wistful as she lifted them to his face.

  “I’m entitled to a day-off. I’ve been working very hard, and things are going well. I’ll play you some of the music of Summer Symphony if you’d like to hear it.”

  “You know I’d love to hear it!”

  “Then you’ll come?”

  He bent forward swiftly and kissed her mouth.

  “Beloved, of course you’ll come!” And then he stood up, and drew her with him. “And now I must go, because I’m dining with my mother and a few of her friends to-night. Not the sort of thing I look forward to—” he looked as if he was frankly bored at the very idea—“but there are times when one has to do one’s duty.”

  “Was your mother very proud of you last night?” Virginia could not resist asking, as she accompanied him to the door.

  He looked down at her in faint surprise. “Was she? I don’t know! Yes, I expect she was.” He shrugged his shoulders slightly, and then as he looked at her his look grew almost fiercely intense. “Were you, Virginia?”

  Virginia’s eyes started to glow as if a lamp had been lighted behind them.

  “Terribly proud,” she admitted. “Proud just because I knew you!”

  “My darling!” His voice was hoarse, and he caught her to him and held her with passionate closeness. “Until to-morrow, dear one'—dearest one!” he breathed into her hair.

  But when he was gone, and she was alone in the hall, Virginia felt as if the magic had departed with him, and only cold doubts were left behind.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Nevertheless, she dressed with the utmost care the following morning, and she was relieved when Iris flew off at an early hour to meet Meg somewhere. The two girls were having a day on the river, on one of the river ste
amers, and in the evening Meg’s brother was taking them out to dinner, and he was also producing a friend to make it a foursome.

  It was a late August day, and already there was a nip of autumn in the air, or so Virginia decided as she dressed. It was coming in at the window, a fresh and sparkling quality in the atmosphere that imparted a feeling of vigour and alertness, although it was accompanied by the perfume of petrol fumes, and the unmistakable smell of London streets. But, down by the river—down where the Meadow House stood bowered in poplars, and dreaming of its past—the atmosphere would be quite unsullied and quite delicious, and, later in the day, when the freshness had been soaked up by the warmth of the sun, the river mist had evaporated, and the kingfishers darted like sapphire brooches, it would be a different world. A world of enchantment.

  Charles called for her shortly after ten o’clock, and she was ready and waiting for him. She wore a cream-coloured coat over a summer dress, and he assured her that she wouldn’t want the coat for long.

  It was going to be a wonderful day.

  Virginia sat beside him at the wheel of the car, and she felt almost deliriously happy. She felt excited, too, as if she was setting off on an adventure—the kind of adventure when it was enough to be unaware of what lay beyond it, or even how it was going to draw to a close. Like going for a long country walk and reaching bend after bend, and hoping that round the final bend there might lie something... And yet not really caring if the walk itself was ever justified.

  Charles occasionally touched her hand as they drove. His fingers were warm and vital, and she wanted to curl hers round them and cling to them. But she resisted the temptation.

  The Meadow House, when they arrived, looked exactly as it always looked at this season of the year—season of mists and fruitfulness, with the orchard boughs heavily laden with fruit—except that the garden was not quite as well tended as it was when Virginia herself was working in it at every available opportunity. Harwell, being extremely dignified, could hardly be expected to bend and pull out weeds, as she realised, and the man she employed to do occasional work concentrated most of his attention on the kitchen garden.

  But the house itself looked very welcoming, and Virginia’s favourite pieces of furniture were shining almost as well as they did when she was there. There were flowers in every vase, and the dining-table looked very attractive, already laid for lunch. Pablo Enrico had flown to Paris for a few days, and, as Charles had promised, there were only the two of them for lunch—discounting Bartholomew, who stalked in, after Harwell, with the fish course.

  Charles drank a toast during the meal. “To us!” he said. “And to our day together!”

  Virginia felt lapped about with a kind of half-sensuous happiness. She sighed once when she watched Harwell removing dishes and preparing to bring in fresh ones.

  “It’s so nice to be waited on in my own home,” she said. “It’s an experience entirely new to me.”

  Charles looked at her thoughtfully, and smiled faintly-

  “I always said you should be waited on, Virginia. You may be willing to do all sorts of things, but you weren’t ever intended to do them. Not with your looks, and your gentleness.”

  “I haven’t any looks to speak of, and if I strike you as gentle, you’re probably being deceived. I’m not in the least gentle with Midge sometimes when I find it necessary to scold him—or with Iris either, for that matter.”

  “You spoil both of them,” he said.

  “I don’t really, only they happen to be my own particular family.”

  Charles leaned a little towards her across the table. He looked at her with quiet, reflective eyes.

  “You value family life, don’t you, Virginia?” he asked. “I mean, if you could choose, you’d rather have a home, and a husband, and a family, than any vicarious excitement?”

  She felt herself flushing almost painfully as his eyes dwelt upon her and seemed to be reading her secret thoughts.

  “Well, yes,” she admitted, at last, “I suppose I would.”

  He suddenly pushed back his chair almost impatiently, and stood up.

  “Let’s have our coffee in the drawing-room, shall we,” he suggested. “I want to play for you, Virginia, as I promised I would.”

  For nearly an hour she listened to his music, and forgot everything but the sheer delight of his playing. As Pablo Enrico had once said, when Charles played a door was opened, and if one had the wisdom to pass through there was nothing but a world filled with enchantment waiting to be wandered in for a blissful period of time. But all too soon, when his hands lay suddenly idle on the keys, the door was closed, and she was back in the world of harsh realities, where enchantment, although it existed, was not the same kind of enchantment. It was just as if a cold wind was suddenly blowing round her, and she remembered that Annette le Clair might suddenly walk in on them if she felt so inclined, or someone else might arrive unexpectedly to ruin the rest of their day together. And it might be a very long time—if ever—before they had such another day. Charles was sparing her this one, these magic hours, because it was his whim to do so—but such a whim might never take possession of him again.

  “Well?” he asked, when the silence in the room had lasted for nearly a minute.

  “Well?” she repeated, feeling a little foolish.

  He crossed the room and sat down beside her on the chesterfield.

  “What are the prospects for Summer Symphony? Is it going to be a success?”

  “You know, far better than I do, that it’s going to be a tremendous success,” she answered soberly.

  Charles regarded her almost searchingly.

  “You think that?”

  “Doesn’t—Annette?”

  He made an odd, impatient movement.

  “We’re not concerned with what Annette thinks at the moment. It’s what you think!”

  Virginia sighed, and then wished she could catch back the sigh, because it probably gave away a great deal.

  “But Annette is going to play the leading part—the music is being composed for her! Isn’t it?”

  He made a faint, shrugging movement with his shoulders.

  “And I, like everyone else who will eventually hear it, can only think it wonderful! As I really do, Charles. I think it’s—more than wonderful!”

  His eyes glowed. He produced his cigarette-case and, when she refused, lighted one himself. Then he put a hand under her elbow and drew her to her feet.

  “Come along,” he said, “let’s go and enjoy the river.”

  They wandered out across the garden, in the mellow sunshine of afternoon, and found their way to the sleepy silver ribbon that twisted and turned between its lush banks. There, Charles dropped down on to the springing green turf, and pulled Virginia down beside him. But he didn’t put his arms round her, or attempt to make love to her. Instead he put his head in her lap, and sighed as he gazed away across the river.

  “This is peaceful,” he said. “I like this.”

  Virginia looked down at his dark head, resting in her lap. She knew an almost irresistible urge to touch his hair, to run her fingers through it lightly, feeling the crisp darkness springing back on to her sensitive fingertips—-closing over them as if it knew instinctively that they belonged. And then at the thought she felt herself blushing hotly, although Charles could not see her face, because nothing of Charles belonged to her.

  The tiny half wave that dipped down over his left eyebrow—except on occasions such as the night he had appeared on the platform at the Arcadian Hall, when it had been held securely in place by hair cream—attracted and held her gaze so powerfully that she felt almost mesmerised by it, and her fingers literally tingled to touch it. But she rigidly refrained, and Charles made absolutely no movement.

  The river whispered near to them, a curious, contented, complacent sound, recognisable to all river dwellers as soon as it falls, however softly, upon their ears. There was only a slight breeze, and the trees on the opposite bank were barely ru
ffled by it. A moorhen passed upstream, a brood of young following in its wake like a flotilla of infinitely tiny ships, and as it passed the mother made a faint “chirrick,” which was echoed by “quark” from somewhere on the other side of the placid strip of water. And then there was a sudden splash as something unseen dived into the water, and the spreading ripples gleamed in a dazzling way in the sunshine.

  Charles murmured lazily:

  “A living river by the door,

  A nightingale in the sycamore...”

  “Yes,” Virginia murmured back. “I often think of that, too, especially at night, when the nightingales are singing.”

  “Only we haven’t any nightingales at the moment. This is the broad light of day.”

  He moved his head a little and looked up at her.

  “Do you find it very lonely here in the winter, Virginia?”

  “Sometimes it’s a little lonely,” she admitted.

  “But you wouldn’t want to leave it—not for good, I mean?”

  “Oh, no, not for good.”

  His cairngorm eyes studied her very attentively, although it was such a warm and drowsy afternoon. ,

  “I shall miss it all when I leave. And when I’m in far-away places I shall think often of this sleepy stretch of river, and the Meadow House with its slightly drunken thatch—I suppose you realise that it badly needs re-thatching, Virginia?—and your herb garden where the scents are enough to make you feel a little drunk also on a summer morning! And I shall think of you, too,” he added, as if as an afterthought