A Nightingale in the Sycamore

by Jane Beaufort

  Virginia sat very still, supporting his suddenly rather restless head.

  “You like far-away places?” she asked, wondering how the words slipped out so calmly when her throat felt suddenly so dry. “You’ll be visiting them again soon?”

  “I expect so.” He sighed suddenly. “I’m a very restless person, you know, Virginia. I get tired of things quickly—that is to say, they’re inclined to pall on me easily. I discover a spot and think it’s heaven—and then I’m not so sure! That’s one reason why it would never do for me to try and send out roots—they just wouldn’t take hold!”

  He lifted his head from her lap, leant on his elbows, and looked full into her face.

  “It’s people like you,” picking up one of her hands and playing with it gently, “who have to send out roots!”

  “Yes,” she agreed, and felt her throat grow drier than ever.

  What was he trying to tell her, she wondered? To warn her gently that she must never think seriously of him, or expect anything from him?

  She averted her face, terrified lest her eyes would give her away when his inspection was so intent, and he went on in the same gentle voice, as if he was trying to explain something:

  “I’ve a flat in Rome, and I usually live there for part of the year—and I’ve a villa on the shores of the Adriatic. Other parts of the year I wander even farther afield, to South Africa, or the Bahamas, or somewhere where I can be pretty sure of keeping well in the path of the sun. Can you imagine me with appendages, Virginia, or even with responsibilities such as you have—Midge, and Iris, and so forth? And Bartholomew!” he added, with rather a sweet, amused smile.

  Virginia shook her head while still keeping her face away from him.

  “No, as a matter of fact, I can’t,” she admitted.

  “There has only been one occasion in my life when—well, I’ve been tempted to take on a few responsibilities! Only one occasion,” he repeated.

  “Oh?” Virginia said, rather breathlessly.

  “But even that occasion provided me with back-thoughts—wiser thoughts, shall we say?”

  Virginia said absolutely nothing.

  He gave her hand a little compelling tug.

  “Look at me, Virginia!” he commanded.

  She fought hard to disobey the request, but found it impossible to withstand the compulsion of his will as well as his voice. With a kind of quivering reluctance she looked round at him, and his eyes searched her face. He said at last, very softly:

  “You have such clear eyes, Virginia—in many ways you must be the loveliest women in the world!”

  And then he pulled her possessively into his arms, and to her lasting shame, in face of the admission he had just made, she found herself quite powerless to resist him. They dung together on the sun-warmed ground, and the touch of his mouth was a kind of bitter-sweet agony, and all her longing to touch him was yielded to as her fingers thrust themselves hungrily into the thickness of his hair.

  But, by degrees, as his kisses grew more and more violent and unrestrained a warning telegraph inside her brain insisted on making itself heard. In view of the fact that she had surrendered so easily she would never have believed that she would have suddenly found the strength of will to withdraw herself forcibly out of his arms, and sit up and demand that they return to the house, making use of the first excuse she could think of—that she had to get back to town because Iris might return home suddenly. She was pale, and her eyes were dark with the emotion that had so recently coursed through her, but he had never seen her so determined. As she rose and stood as if actually poised for flight above him in that sun-filled spot he lay looking at her with gleaming eyes under narrowed lids, and he said slowly and rather huskily:

  “Don’t be silly, darling! This is our day—the day you promised we’d have together!”

  “We’ve had it,” she said. “It’s—it must be long past tea-time, and I want to get back. In any case, you’ve got to drive me back—it’s quite a long drive.”

  He rose slowly and dusted himself with elegant movements of his beautiful hands, and he protested:

  “We can do it in less than half-an-hour if you’re in all that of a hurry.”

  “I am.”

  The glance he gave her might have been reproachful, but she felt much more strongly that it actually contained a touch of hostility and sullenness.

  “Very well.”

  When they got back to the house they discovered that Harwell had tea ready waiting for them, and Virginia consented to delay her departure, long enough to prevent Harwell—who had cut the most appetising-looking sandwiches, and provided quantities of little cakes—from both looking and feeling disappointed. And then she tidied herself in the room that had always been her own bedroom, and they set off for London.

  The return journey was not nearly so pleasant as the journey through the pride of the morning to the Meadow House. Charles was very silent and remote at the wheel, and Virginia was conscious of nothing very much apart from a slow-spreading sea of unhappiness and disillusion—the completest disillusionment she had ever known in her life; so complete that she actually felt bruised and buffeted by it, and as if she would never really hold up her head again—that was swamping feeling and thought, and even the power to think. Charles never once reached out to touch her hand during that drive, and the expression on his face was strangely inscrutable.

  Glancing at him sideways, when they were sitting waiting for a set of traffic lights to alter in their favour, Virginia was almost repelled by his mask-like look. It seemed to shut her out completely, and to do so with a kind of deliberate ruthlessness.

  Considerably to her surprise, although she had declared that she was in a hurry, he did not drive her straight to the flat, but pulled up outside his mother’s exclusive little mews-flat instead.

  He looked at Virginia rather mockingly, she thought, before he helped her to alight.

  “I particularly want to see my mother to-night,” he said, “and I don’t think she’s ever thanked you properly for looking after me so well, has she? At least, I’ve never presented you to her, and explained how much she really owes to you. Somewhat belatedly I wish to repair the omission, so come along!”

  But Virginia hung back, curiously loath to meet Lady Wickham in his company.

  “Your mother may not feel like seeing me to-night,” she protested. “She’s something of an invalid, isn’t she? And it’s hardly fair to take advantage of her like this.”

  “Rubbish!” he exclaimed. He took her by the arm and led her firmly up the flight of stone steps which led to the flat. “My mother is only an invalid when it really suits her to be. To-night she’s probably going out to dine somewhere, and is probably titivating herself at this very moment. Don’t be shy, Virginia,” in that mocking tone, “she ought to approve of you very strongly, and at least she can give us a drink.”

  But Virginia knew with deadly certainty that Lady Wickham approved of her in a very limited way, and she was just as certain that she would not be pleased to see her without previous warning—especially if she really was going out for the evening! But when Charles pressed the bell, and the maid answered his ring, it was discovered that Lady Wickham was not yet making preparations for going out anywhere, but although she was obviously delighted to see her son, the same feelings of pleasure were not aroused by the sight of Virginia.

  “Oh, yes, we have met,” she said, as Charles made a very formal introduction, “and I have already thanked Miss Summers for allowing you to be nursed in her house, Charles, darling.”

  The way she said “nursed in hex house” allowed Virginia to understand clearly that she hoped she had taken little part in the actual nursing.

  She stood leaning on her slender ebony-cane, and the lights glowed softly in her rose-pink drawing-room, although it was still daylight. The striped-satin couches and fragile chairs, the white skin rug before the fireplace, the quantities of flowers, all gave it an extremely luxurious and feminine loo
k, and there was a quality of elegance about it that made Virginia, in her simple frock and cream coat that had been stained by the grasses beside the river, feel very much out of place.

  She felt, rather than saw, Lady Wickham’s alert eyes travel to the quite noticeable stains on her coat, and the memory of her afternoon beside the river brought an almost guilty blush to her cheeks.

  “I suppose you’ve been down to collect a few of your things, Miss Summers?” she said, when Charles explained that Virginia had had lunch with him at the Meadow House.

  “I—” she was beginning when Charles smiled as if he was secretly enjoying himself and prevented her reply.

  “No, as a matter of fact, I asked Virginia to have lunch with me, and afterwards I played her some of the music of Summer Symphony. It’s coming along, isn’t it, Virginia?”

  “It’s wonderful,” Virginia replied, knowing the reply was inadequate, but finding it difficult to give utterance to even those two words and look and sound natural at the same time.

  “Don’t think I’m being in the least critical, darling,” Lady Wickham said, as her son poured sherry for all three of them, “but wouldn’t it have been wiser to have kept on your flat and worked on this new score there? At least I could have seen something of you sometimes, and so many of our friends are always asking about you. To some it seems a little strange that you should hand over the flat to Miss Summers.

  Not,” smiling stiffly, “that I don’t perfectly understand the arrangement.”

  “Do you understand the arrangement, Mother?” Charles looked at her with that puckish smile curving his lips, and in his eyes a look of growing amusement, as he settled himself amongst the cushions of a couch. “I couldn’t very well stay on with Virginia at the Meadow House—our friends might have thought that even stranger—and as it was the one place in which I could work with ease, and with few interruptions, I persuaded Virginia to yield it to me and Ho move into my flat. But in a few weeks from now,” looking very coolly at Virginia, “she’ll have the Meadow House back, and I shall be moving on.”

  “Will you, darling?” Lady Wickham sounded instantly relieved. “Are you thinking of returning to Rome in the autumn? I may possibly decide to come with you for a time ... Although the Marquese de Valarez is thinking of sending her daughter to London—you’ll remember Diane? Such a charming girl!—in order to study dress-designing, or something of the sort, and I half promised that you would keep a kind of eye on her while she was here. You know, take her about, and that sort of thing ... Nothing to bore you, darling, because she is so delightful, and almost as lovely as her mother, who was the loveliest woman I’ve ever met!”

  “The prospect fills me with indecision,” Charles murmured, on a note of sleepy indolence. “I may even decide to postpone my return to Rome, if she’s as lovely as all that! My recollections of her are a little confused, but I’m probably thinking of the wrong one.”

  His mother looked at him keenly, as if not certain whether or not he was serious, and then said a little doubtfully:

  “Well, dear, you must do as you think—but I know you hate London in the winter-time, as, indeed, I do, too!” with a faint shudder.

  Virginia consumed her sherry without tasting it, and then looked at Charles.

  “If you’ll forgive me,” she said, “I would like to go back to the fiat now. But of course I can see myself there. I don’t want to interrupt your visit to your mother.”

  But Charles stood up at once.

  “I’ll take you back,” he said.

  Lady Wickham looked at Virginia as if she resented her remembering her own affairs just then.

  “Good-bye, my dear,” she said, stiffly. “And, thank you again for all you did for Charles!”

  Outside in the car Virginia felt as if all conversation had frozen up inside her, and she made no attempt to talk to the man who drove her. He, for his part, was inclined to send sideways glances at her every now and again, and they were rather thoughtful, speculative glances, but she did not see them. She stared straight ahead through the windscreen.

  When they reached the flat Charles said:

  “Aren’t you going to invite me in, Virginia?”

  But she made an excuse, carefully avoiding meeting his eyes while she did so.

  “I’d rather you didn’t, if you don’t mind. I’m in rather a rush ... I,” she added, “I’m going out this evening....”

  “I see,” Charles said quietly, looking up at her as she stood beside the car. “A special date, Virginia?”

  She kept her eyes glued to the entrance to the block of flats.

  “Reasonably special.”

  “I see,” he said again. “I thought it was Iris, you had to hurry back for.”

  She looked round at him then, and the expression on her face was strangely like the expression of someone who had decided to renounce something for good and all—something that had once been very important.

  “Iris,” she told him, “was only an excuse!” And then she added quickly, “Thank you for a very pleasant day!” and fled away towards the flat entrance.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  A few days later Iris came back from some local shopping and, setting down her basket on the kitchen table, said to her sister:

  “Who do you think I ran into just now?”

  Virginia, engaged in making an apple flan, looked at her rather vaguely.

  “I haven’t any idea. Who was it?”

  “Colin—Colin Cameron. He was up in town to collect some special medical reference book, and he was parking his car when I spotted him. He hadn’t much time to spare to-day, because he’s got to be back early, but he asked me to have lunch with him the next time he comes up to town. Me. What do you think of that?”

  There was a kind of dazed triumph in Iris’s eyes, and Virginia looked at her smilingly.

  “It must have been your new outfit, darling, and the fact that you look a little more adult. But why shouldn’t Colin ask you out to lunch?”

  “Because he used to be crazy about you!—Or, at least, I thought he was.”

  Virginia shook her head, brushing a strand of hair back from her brow and leaving a floury mark on her forehead.

  “Colin was never crazy about me, Iris,” she said with complete seriousness. “He once thought he’d like to marry me, but that phage passed ... She could remember the passing very clearly, on the occasion when Colin had discovered her with her hair tumbled about her face after lying in Charles’s arms in the big chair near the window of the drawing-room at the Meadow House. That had been an evening she herself was never likely to forget, and it had crystallized any doubts Colin had ever had about her for him. “And I think when he saw Annette he decided that what he really liked was a little more glamour. You’re the glamorous member of our family!”

  Iris laughed disbelievingly.

  “I thought he used to despise me. But men are strange,” she added thoughtfully. “He told me I was looking very nice.”

  “Well, that was extremely noticing of Colin.”

  “But, to ask me to lunch...”

  “Do you want to have lunch with him?”

  “I don’t know.” Iris watched Virginia pricking the bottom of the flan case, and then filling it with apples before she slipped it into the oven. “I really don’t know. But it could be amusing.”

  “What about Meg’s brother?—the young ten from the Middle East?”

  “Oh—” Iris shrugged her shoulders dismissingly—“I don’t think I like him very much, after all.”

  Virginia laughed with a queer feeling of somewhat acid amusement.

  “How I wish I were like you, Iris,” she confessed, with a sigh which tore itself up from the roots of her being. “In and out of love with beautiful ease, and no ill feelings or any sort of unhappiness left behind when one affair ceases! It must make life extremely uncomplicated. On the whole, I think you and Colin would probably suit one another very well, if only you could get together often enough t
o convince one another of the fact. I don’t say you’d make the perfect doctor’s wife, but you won’t make demands of your husband when you get him.”

  “And will you?” Iris inquired, in rather a subdued tone, watching her rather curiously. “Will you, Virginia?”

  “I?” Virginia stopped scraping the sides of the rolling-pin, and looked at her with a small, mask-like face. “I don’t suppose I’ll ever have a husband. But if I do, I’m almost certain to turn into a kind of doormat for him to wipe his feet on when he feels like it, and I wouldn't have the courage to make demands. I don’t think I’m built that way,” with another sigh.

  “If you married Martin he wouldn’t let you turn yourself into a doormat,” Iris told her sagely.

  Virginia’s eyes grew wistful.

  “I like Martin, but what makes you think he’d want to marry me? In any case—”

  “Yes?”

  “Oh, nothing! Run away and lay the lunch table, there’s a dear.”

  “I will in a minute,” Iris promised. “But, you do like Martin, don’t you, Virginia? He’s terribly nice—and terribly rich!” with a gleam of avarice in her eyes. “He told me once he thought I’d an extraordinarily sweet sister.”