“Well—yes.” Celia seemed reluctant about giving much thought to that now.
“But if you felt as you say about Brian, why on earth have you just got engaged to Larry?”
“For that very reason,” said Celia, as though the fact were self-explanatory.
“It’s not a very good reason,” Freda objected.
“Oh, in a way, it is.” Celia sighed impatiently. “I was terrified at the thought of a future without Brian—of having to watch while he made a happy life with someone else. I couldn’t even hate you, Freda.” She smiled suddenly, her affectionate, heartwarming smile. “And—I couldn’t possibly get away from you both. I simply had to find something— someone—to help me build my defences. Larry’s a dear, of course. I even thought once that I was in love with him. When he—when he asked me to marry him, it seemed almost providential.”
“Did it?” said Freda wonderingly, because she found it rather difficult to follow her sister’s line of reasoning. “But wasn’t it a bit hard on him?”
“Hard on him?” repeated Celia, with the surprise of one who saw things always—though in the nicest possible way—from her point of view. “No, I don’t think so. If I’d married Larry, I’d have done my best to make him happy and make him a good wife.”
“It doesn’t sound a very inspiring prospect,” said Freda soberly.
“It was better than having nothing to set against the loss of Brian,” retorted Celia, still strictly from her own point of view.
“Yes—I see. But it’s going to be a bad blow for him now, isn’t it?”
Again Celia showed some reluctance to consider that.
“I suppose it is,” she agreed at last, remorsefully. “But I can’t help it, Freda. Now I know Brian is free, I couldn’t possibly think of marrying someone else. We must just start disentangling things.”
“There’s a lot to disentangle,” observed Freda.
“Yes, there is. Where shall we start?” enquired Celia, sitting down with such an air of enthusiasm that Freda laughed.
Celia raised her eyebrows enquiringly.
“Was that funny?”
“It was rather. You sounded almost as though you like having to back-pedal on a couple of engagements—and leave poor Larry flat.”
“I like anything now that I know Brian isn’t engaged to someone else,” was Celia’s simple reply. And Freda had enough generosity to wish Brian could have heard that.
“Well,” said Freda slowly, “I suppose our first task is to go to our respective fiancés and tell them we’re not engaged, after all. Fortunately we haven’t started spreading the news yet. But Larry isn’t going to like it.”
“Nor is Brian, I suppose.”
“Oh, he won’t—” Freda checked herself quickly. “I mean—although he’ll mind at first, Brian will certainly find plenty of consolation with you later,” she amended solemnly. “After all, you were his first and best love.”
“Ye—es.” Celia obviously warmed to this cheering thought. Then, prompted by her natural generosity, she added thoughtfully, “What a pity we couldn’t just reverse roles, and have you console Larry.”
“Oh, no!” Freda spoke quickly, almost violently, because this lighthearted suggestion somehow brought her face to face at last with the fact that Laurence had proved beyond doubt which of them it was he really wanted.
It was Celia whom he had asked to marry him, when it came to the point. No amount of juggling with the facts would alter that. That she had accepted him for secondary reasons, and was now even preparing to go back on that acceptance, made no difference. He had proposed to her.
“No—I see it wouldn’t do.” Celia relinquished her idea with a sigh. “But it’s a pity. He’s awfully nice, you know, Freda.”
“I’m sure he is,” said Freda stiffly.
“Well,”—Celia laughed a little, perhaps at her sister’s tone—“I can’t expect you to pick up the pieces of my broken engagement for me. I must just hope some other nice girl will do that eventually.”
Freda said, “Yes,” mechanically, and immediately felt a violent loathing for whatever nice girl should undertake this charitable service.
They sat and talked for some while longer. But excessive emotion, as well as their early start that morning, was rapidly reducing them both to a state of acute exhaustion, and suddenly Celia said,
“I don’t think we’re really talking sense any longer. Let’s go to bed. Everything will look much better and easier in the morning.”
Freda was not at all sure that everything would.
But there was no sense in tiring themselves further. And so at last they bade each other good night and went upstairs to their respective bedrooms.
For some time longer Freda lay awake, watching the moonlight draw a lengthening silver finger across the carpet, while she tried to accept the fact that she had finally lost Laurence. If indeed there had ever been any question of having him.
Perhaps if she had been kinder—less aggressive—in the beginning. Perhaps if Celia had never appeared on the scene—
But that was an unworthy thought! She would not have been without Celia for any consideration at all.
Perhaps it just had to be that way. And, with a little sigh of resignation, Freda closed her eyes and slept.
The next morning she woke to a confused impression of happiness in her cottage home and anxiety over the events which lay ahead. But, as she bathed and dressed, she reminded herself that she really had no reason to feel nervous. She only had to go through the motions of breaking a non-existent engagement with Brian.
“And no one will ever bring him more welcome news than I shall this morning,” she thought, with a touch of real humour.
She and Celia breakfasted cheerfully, and then Freda said,
“Which of us makes the first move?”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, both of our so-called fiancés are up at the big house. I don’t think we can go up hand-in-hand, take them aside separately and give them identical news, do you?’
“N—o. It does sound a bit crude,” Celia agreed. Then she glanced out of the window and exclaimed,
“It’s settled for us. Brian’s coming down the slope from the lawn now.” And she jumped up, as though she would run to meet him.
“Then you’d better make yourself scarce,” Freda said firmly.
“I had?”
“Yes, of course. We can’t break our engagement with you looking on.”
“Oh, no—I forgot. What shall I do, then?” She looked helpless for a moment, as though she simply could not think beyond the fact that she wanted to throw herself into Brian’s arms. But Freda, more resourceful, seized up a basket and thrust it into her hands.
“Go and do the shopping,” she said. “You don’t need to wait for a hat or coat on a morning like this.” Celia obediently made for the front door. But she paused on the threshold to ask,
“What shall I buy?”
“Oh, I don’t know! It doesn’t matter. Buy bread—anything. But go now.”
“All right. Be kind to him, Freda. But be final.” And, with a flashing smile, Celia went out of the front door as Brian’s knock sounded at the back.
Freda stood up and ran a faintly nervous hand over her hair. Then she went out into the little kitchen and admitted Brian. A pale, agitated-looking Brian who, without bothering to greet her, muttered, “I had to come. Something frightful has happened.”
“What, for heaven’s sake?” She had sudden visions of Laurence lying dead from a motor accident or an accidental shooting.
“Celia—and Laurence. They’re engaged.”
“Oh, yes—I know.” In her enormous relief, she brushed that off almost casually, forgetting how the same news had shattered her the previous evening.
“But we must do something—” he was still speaking almost in a whisper, and she asked sympathetically,
“What’s the matter? Have you lost your voice or something?”
“No, of course not. But”—he gestured towards the other room—“I don’t want Celia to hear.”
“Oh, that’s all right. She’s out shopping.” Freda now led the way into the sitting-room. “We can talk as much as we like.”
“Then”—he followed her eagerly—“we must discuss what we’re going to do.”
“What did you think we could do?” enquired Freda, feeling that, as his scheming had put her through so much anguish, he should in his turn have a few uncomfortable moments.
But her kind heart misgave her when she saw the utter misery in his eyes. And, leaning forward, she touched his arm lightly and comfortingly.
“It’s all right, Brian. The engagement is off.”
“Which engagement?” He passed his hand over his eyes in a bewildered sort of way.
“Both, as a matter of fact,” she said, and laughed.
“Both?” He seemed unable to take that in at first. Then, as though almost afraid to repeat the word, he said again, “Did you say both? Do you mean Celia isn’t engaged to Clumber?”
“That’s what I mean,” stated Freda, with soothing exactness.
“But he told me about it himself, not half an hour ago.”
“Yes, I dare say. He doesn’t know yet that it’s over. Celia hasn’t had time to tell him.”
“Celi—” Again Brian passed his hand over his eyes in that bewildered gesture. Then, in a voice which shook with mingled indignation and relief, he demanded, “What on earth are you two girls playing at?”
“What are we playing at? I like that! What were you playing at only last evening?”
“Oh, yes—I know. I was the first one to start this nonsense.” Brian spoke almost humbly. “I’m frightfully sorry, Freda. I must have been mad ever to think that faked engagement could do anything but make mischief. I do apologize. I had no right to involve you in anything of the sort. But do take pity on me now and tell me what has happened. I don’t think I can stand much more.”
“All right. Have some coffee and relax.” Freda poured out a cup of steaming coffee from her vacuum jug which was one of her treasured new possessions, and pushed it across the table to Brian.
He accepted it mechanically, and drank it with an eagerness which told Freda he had not had much breakfast.
“It’s quite simple, really,” she said slowly—for suddenly this part of the tangle seemed to be unravelling itself. “Celia, who really loves you devotedly—”
“Are you sure of that?” he demanded eagerly. “Dead sure. We cried on each other’s shoulders about it last night,” Freda asserted convincingly. “Celia, thinking she’d not only lost you for ever but would have to spend the rest of her life watching you be happy with someone else, had just come to the conclusion that she must find some sort of refuge when Laurence asked her to marry him.”
“The idiot! Why did he want to do that and spoil everything?”
“I suppose,” said Freda coldly, “he has as much right as anyone else to propose to the girl he loves. He’s the only one I’m really sorry for in all this.”
“Well, yes—yes, I suppose you’re right.” Brian looked slightly ashamed of himself again. “When did all this happen? Surely not on the way home last night? There wouldn’t be time.”
“No. It seems they went for a moonlight drive, started talking about our engagement—and suddenly he asked Celia to many him. At the time it seemed sort of a barrier against the disaster she was facing. And anyway, she does like him very much, and—”
“Don’t enlarge on that,” Brian interrupted. “I can’t bear it.”
“All right. For what seemed to her good and sufficient reasons, she accepted him. Then she came home—and told me.”
“What on earth did you do?” enquired Brian curiously.
“I burst into tears,” said Freda simply. ‘I couldn’t stop myself. And when she couldn’t understand, and said I was a lucky girl to be engaged to you, I said I wasn’t engaged to you, and that I’d made a ghastly mistake and was going to tell you so in the morning.”
“You didn’t say anything about the whole thing being an invention?”
“No. I kept my head enough for that. She thinks you really asked me to marry you and that I really said ‘yes’, and regretted it almost immediately.”
“You are the dearest and most ingenious of girls,” Brian declared.
“I didn’t feel so at the time. I just felt a perfect fool,” Freda confessed with a smile. “Anyway, one confidence prompted another, and Celia then told me that she nearly died with horror and misery when you and I announced our engagement—”
“I thought I couldn’t have been mistaken!”
“There’s nothing to be complacent about,” Freda told him severely. “You’ve caused a great deal of trouble, one way and another.”
“I know, I know. I’m not really complacent about it. I’m just so unspeakably, rapturously relieved,” Brian said remorsefully. “But I still think it was the only thing that would have brought Celia to her senses.”
“Perhaps you’re right. But the whole thing is pretty hard on Laurence.”
Brian tried to look as though his rival’s defeat weighed upon him—and failed. Then, after a moment, he asked, almost diffidently,
“How do things stand now, Freda?”
“I’ve told Celia that I’m going to break my engagement, and that I’m pretty sure, after the first shock, you will tend to seek consolation with her.”
“You darling!” Brian leaned across and kissed her lightly, in a brotherly sort of way. “How soon do you think I can seem in need of consolation? Will she find it precipitate if I start confiding in her right away?”
“No. I should think she will find the greatest difficulty in keeping herself from rushing into your arms.”
Brian got up and began to pace about the room, eagerly and restlessly.
“How long will she be, do you think?’
“Not long. She only went for—for a loaf of bread and a few things like that.”
“And if she came back and found me here—”
He paused. And, half humorously, half regretfully, Freda suddenly realized that she had become an unwanted third in her own cottage.
“All right.” She got up with a little laugh. “I leave the field free.”
“Where are you going?” he enquired, but with no more than academic interest.
“Oh, I suppose I can go out and do some gardening.”
“Or perhaps”—Brian gestured vaguely—“you could go for a walk?”
Evidently, thought Freda amusedly, he didn’t think the garden sufficiently far away to banish the object of one engagement while he contracted another. Well, perhaps he was right! And as she heard the slight click of the front gate, she said,
“Good luck, Brian. I’m going now. I think I hear Celia returning.”
He made a slight gesture—which might have been farewell but was more probably dismissal—while his eyes remained on the front door, which would open any moment now, to admit the girl who really mattered to him.
And so Freda slipped away, and as she passed through the kitchen and out to the garden, she heard Celia’s voice exclaim, on a note of quite convincing surprise,
“Why, hello Brian! Where’s Freda?”
She didn’t wait to hear his reply. And, deciding that the garden was indeed not quite far enough afield, she went out through the little wicket gate and up the slope towards Crowmain Court.
Not that she intended to go all the way up to the big house. She had no possible reason for appearing there at this time in the morning. But she could strike off to the right, so as to reach the main drive, and from there she could turn back on her tracks to the front gate and walk along to the village.
I’m not quite sure what I do after that, thought Freda amusedly. I can’t buy another loaf of bread. But I can always find something to do in the village.
As she walked rather slowly through the sunshine, however, her brief amusement faded and a n
ostalgic, almost melancholy, mood took hold of her. She thought how often she had climbed this slope to visit Miss Clumber, as a child—and how much had happened since then.
“But I’m a lucky girl,” she told herself without conviction. “I have a home of my own now—and a sister—and almost a brother. If only—”
She hardly knew what to add to that “If only—” She thought she would be almost satisfied if only she could still be uncertain about Laurence’s real attitude. Even not to know is sometimes better than to have one’s worst fears confirmed.
Or perhaps, thought Freda, it’s best to know and face facts as they are. I know now that Larry was never really interested in me. And I’ve got to make my life on different lines because of it.
She passed through the belt of trees which bordered tie main drive. But, as she stepped out into the open once more, and before she could turn down towards the front gates, she saw that Laurence Clumber was coming down the drive from the house. He was only a matter of yards away. It was quite impossible to avoid him. And, even as she hesitated, he waved to her, in obvious good humour, and called, “Hello! Have you just missed Brian? He went over to the cottage to see you.”
“Yes, I know. I’ve—seen him.”
“Have you really?” Laurence had come up with her by now, and stood looking down at her in some surprise. Perhaps at the brevity of the meeting between her and Brian. “Where are you off to now, then?”
“I’m going to the village—to shop.”
He didn’t ask her why she had chosen to come this most roundabout way to the village. He just fell into step beside her. And, as she struggled to find some harmless remark or two, he said,
“Has Celia told you our news?”
“Your—news?”
“Yes. We’re engaged. Didn’t you know?”
“I—I—” she stammered into silence. For suddenly it was born in upon her that of course he had no idea of what had happened. He thought he was a happily engaged man. And, all the time, his Celia was probably busy getting herself engaged to someone else.
Someone had to tell him—now—before he could pass on his news to anyone else in the village. And there was only one person who could do it.
My Sister Celia Page 17