He was silent for a moment. Then he said in a more reasonable tone,
“Well, you won’t rush into a hasty marriage, will you?”
She thought of what Reid had said to Caroline that very afternoon.
“We haven’t made any definite decision yet.” That much she had to concede him. “But no one has a very long engagement nowadays. I don’t expect you mean to yourself, do you?”
He looked faintly restive once more at being sidetracked on to his own affairs.
“We haven’t decided either,” he said rather curtly.
“Well, then, couldn’t we both agree to leave our affairs in a pleasant state of uncertainty for the moment?” They had reached the side gate of Cranley Magna by now and she turned, smiling, to face him. “Are you coming in?”
“Not tonight. I expect you’re right about leaving our affairs uncertain for the moment. At any rate, your affairs.”
“Oh, no, Oliver!” She laughed. “I didn’t mean it in that sense. What I meant was that neither of us seems likely to rush into an irrevocable decision in the next twenty-four hours, so let’s agree not to question each other closely.” She held out her hand in a friendly way, but with an air of decision.
He took her hand a little doubtfully, as though he still hardly knew what to make of her in this new mood.
“No hard feelings about my interference?” he said, with a wry smile.
“None at all, Oliver. I’m a good deal—touched that you should care enough about me to feel so anxious.”
“Good lord, Leslie! You know how much I—well, anyway, I wouldn’t have any unhappiness come to any one of you girls if I could prevent it.”
“I know you wouldn’t.” Her tone was still friendly, but a shade colder that time. And she withdrew her hand with a definite “Good night.”
But as she turned away he detained her a moment longer.
“Leslie—”
“Yes?” She turned back, a little surprised.
“What did you mean, exactly, when you spoke of the—the way Caroline looks at other men?”
She experienced a disagreeable little shock. Perhaps at being pinned down to her own unwise wording. Perhaps, at the discovery that his final thoughts ran, after all, on Caroline.
“I—nothing very much. I spoke hastily.”
“But you must have been thinking of something definite when you said that.” He looked obstinate and, she thought, vaguely disturbed.
“I’m sorry. I suppose it was a rather—catty remark. It would be nicer—and just as true—to say that she has very beautiful eyes and knows how to use them to advantage. I didn’t want to imply any more than that.”
He smiled, not entirely satisfied, she saw. Then he said,
“She can’t help attracting people, of course.” And, with a friendly wave of his hand, he left her.
As she crossed the lawn, Reid came out of one of the french windows to meet her.
“Was that Oliver who escorted you home?”
“It was.”
He glanced at her, evidently speculating on the reason for her curtness.
“Had he anything to say about your engagement?”
“Good gracious, yes! A lecture under three headings. His anxiety, my foolishness and your undesirability.”
Reid laughed and began to look as though he were enjoying himself.
“Do tell me what he said about me?”
“No. Your ego is quite sufficiently developed as it is.”
“Don’t tell me he praised me?”
“Of course not. But to a man of your type, some censure is better than praise.”
“That’s true,” he agreed equably. “I won’t question you about the particular, then. I’ll just ask, in general terms, did he react as you hoped he would?”
“Oh, Reid” She pushed back her hair with sudden weariness. “I don’t know. Sometimes I ask myself what I’m really trying to do. If it weren’t too late to turn back, I’d say it’s wrong and ridiculous to interfere so arrogantly with the natural course of events.”
“There is no natural course of events, my sweet,” he told her, smiling, but rather kindly. “There are those who direct events and those who submit to them. You are in the habit of submitting, and it worries you to find yourself moving the pieces on the board, instead of being moved around. But you’re tired—” He put his arm round her lightly and, somehow, rather comfortingly. “Don’t torment yourself with any more self-analysis. Be satisfied if your Oliver showed signs of being concerned about your welfare and anxious about your future. Stop planning, and let events take their course during the next few days. We have done all the interfering that’s necessary for the moment.”
“Thank heaven for that,” Leslie retorted grimly.
But he laughed, and lightly kissed the side of her cheek. And for no reason that she could possibly define, she felt her spirits rise once more.
During the next few days, to her immeasurable relief, it really did seem that events might be permitted to take their own course. Reid and she had established the idea of their engagement, not only in the minds of the family, but also with Caroline and Oliver. It remained now to be seen what gradual reaction this would provoke.
Twice Caroline telephoned, and each time she unashamedly asked for Reid. He didn’t offer to give Leslie his version of the conversations. But she heard snatches of the first one, and again she had the impression of two people who knew each other remarkably well sparring gaily and feeling out each other’s defences.
One afternoon Leslie had the opportunity of a long, quiet talk with her brother. He had kept to his own room since the specialist’s visit and now was only waiting for a vacancy in Sir James Trevant’s nursing home. Leslie found him in a curiously tranquil, indulgent sort of mood, luxuriating in freedom from the secret anxiety about his health which, she realized now, must have weighed terribly on his spirits in recent months.
“You feel every confidence in Sir James, don’t you, Morley?” she said to him, noticing with delight the brightness of his eyes and the hopeful lift to the corners of his mouth.
“Yes. I have no doubt at all that he can make me better. And if I believed that any man could make me walk again, I should believe it of Trevant.”
“Do you mean,” Leslie said almost fearfully, “that you think there might be a chance of his doing that?”
“I don’t know.” Morley idly curled the tassel of his dressing-gown round his hand. “I only know that he thinks there’s a chance.”
“Did he say so?”
“No. But he has the most expressive face I’ve ever seen. And I know he thinks there’s a faint chance. So faint that he couldn’t possibly mention it to me. But that’s one reason why he’s so anxious to have me in his nursing-home, under his own eye.”
“Morley! I—I hardly dare even think of such a thing.”
“Nor I. But the thought of it made the taking of Reid’s money more justified, somehow.”
“Oh, Morley, you don’t have to think of that! Reid told me, with all sincerity, that he would give every penny of Great-Aunt Tabitha’s money if it would make you well.”
‘Because he’s in love with you?”
‘Oh, well, yes. I suppose so.”
‘And you took him on those terms?”
‘No, Morley. That isn’t true.”
‘Are you telling me that you love him?”
She hesitated only a second before she said, “Certainly.”
“Swear it?” He was smiling at her, but his eyes were bright and exceedingly watchful.
She passed the tip of her tongue over her lips.
“I swear that I’m not marrying Reid for his money.”
Morley gave her a long, thoughtful look.
“You changed that wording, didn’t you?” he said musingly. “I wonder why. You wouldn’t swear that you love him.”
“Please, Morley, don’t go imagining things. Believe me, I had agreed to become engaged to Reid before I knew about your
needing this expensive treatment.”
“Because of the family?”
“No. Because of myself.”
He laughed, not altogether satisfied, she saw. But he was too happy and hopeful about his own prospects to question her more closely. Besides, Morley being Morley, he would undoubtedly concede that she had a right to reticence about her own affairs. Having satisfied himself that no specific sacrifice had been made on his behalf, he obviously considered that anything further was, broadly speaking, her own business.
To Leslie’s delight and relief, when the summons finally came for Morley to go to the nursing-home, she was the one who was chosen to accompany him and see him safely installed. Reid offered to accompany them too. But Morley was not enthusiastic and, since Dr. Bendick insisted on being of the party, Reid’s presence was not really necessary.
For two or three days, Leslie stayed on in London, although Dr. Bendick, having seen his patient safely installed, returned to Cranleymere the same day. She rather enjoyed the curiously detached existence of one stranger among many other strangers in a quiet hotel, and it was wonderful not to have to pretend about herself to anyone. Each day she went to see Morley, so that in those first difficult days he should not feel bereft of everything and everyone familiar. But towards the end of the week he said to her,
“If you want to get back to the family—and Reid—you don’t need to hang about here any longer on my behalf, you know.”
“I’m rather enjoying it, as a matter of fact.” Leslie smiled.
“You are? Curious point of view for a newly engaged girl,” Morley remarked, with his characteristically quizzical glance.
“Well—” She coloured a little. “I meant, really, that anyone can enjoy herself in London for a few days, and I don’t want to go until you feel perfectly settled here.”
“I am perfectly settled, my dear. And though I enjoy seeing you every afternoon, that can hardly go on indefinitely and may as well stop now as any other time. Besides”—he smiled .with that touch of real sweetness which could sometimes irradiate his thin, sardonic young face—“I owe Reid enough. It’s not exactly fair to keep you away from him too.”
“Oh” She looked faintly surprised, because she never could quite get used to the idea that Reid was supposed to be consumed with passion for her. “I dare say Well, perhaps you’re right, Morley.”
“I think I probably am,” he agreed. And they arranged then that Leslie should return within the next two days, though probably she, or another of the family, would visit him again in a few weeks’ time.
As she made her preparations for returning home, Leslie found her thoughts running on ahead of her. To everyone expecting a letter—some news—an event, it always seems that a short absence from home works some sort of miracle. Because one has not been there to watch every post and every change of event, it seems that limitless opportunities must have occurred for the thing one hoped or dreaded to have happened.
As the train drew slowly and reluctantly into the station, she caught a glimpse of Reid’s car standing outside.
Well—it had been rather fantastic to imagine that Oliver might somehow be there. Reid was perhaps the one best suited to give her the news. And as she came out of the station and he got out of the car to open the door for her, she greeted him with a brilliant smile.
“Everything satisfactory so far as Morley is concerned, I see,” he observed. And she laughed and agreed that this was so.
While they drove down the slope from the station and along the first half-mile of the road home, she gave him further details about her brother, and the one or two items of personal news about her stay in London. But when they turned into the long, familiar, winding lane which eventually led to Cranley Magna, he slowed the car and, as though sensing that something was coming, she said,
“You didn’t write to me, Reid.”
“No. Did you expect me to?”
“Only if there were—something special to tell me.”
“There was nothing special to tell you, during the first five days.”
She was indescribably chilled and disappointed.
“You mean—nothing at all happened?”
“Nothing.”
“No—news of either Oliver or Caroline?”
“Not until yesterday.”
“And then there was some news?”
“Yes.”
“Of which of them?”
“Of both.”
“Well, then, tell me,” she cried, half frightened suddenly by his manner, though she hardly knew why. “What happened?”
“They were married, Leslie, by special licence, yesterday morning.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
THERE was complete and stunned silence for perhaps twenty seconds, except for the sound of the motor. Then Leslie cried,
“I don’t believe it! It can’t possibly be true. I simply don’t believe it. Is this some ridiculous sort of joke or something?”
“It is not a joke,” Reid said flatly. “It’s the simple, damnable, inescapable truth. Oliver and Caroline are now man and wife, and so far as we and our schemes are concerned, we can call it a day.”
Even in that moment she resented the word “schemes,” but these silly details had no significance any more. She stared at him helplessly, wondering why she had not noticed before that he looked grim and strained.
At last she said, “How did it happen?” Heavily, like one enquiring for details of a fatal accident.
“I don’t know.”
“Well then, how did you hear about it?”
“Mrs. Bendick telephoned your mother and told her. I gather she and the Doctor were a bit upset. But why they did it, or what decided them to act so suddenly, I don’t know. And I’ve been such a complete fool in all my calculations up to now that I’d rather someone else made the next guess.”
She was silent again, delving reluctantly into the recesses of her memory. Had there been anything—anything at all—in her conversation with Oliver which could have given her the slightest hint of what was coming?
“He said”—she was speaking her thoughts aloud—“that they hadn’t come to any decision about the length of their engagement. Oliver said that to me, not two weeks ago.”
“Well, they came to a decision,” retorted Reid dryly. “A pretty thorough one, it seems.”
“But there was nothing—”
She stopped suddenly, and passed her hand over her eyes.
“Oh—wait a minute! I said something stupid—”
“You did?”
“Yes. About—about the way Caroline looked at other men. She—has a special way, you know.”
“You’re telling me,” he said dryly, and Leslie muttered,
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“Never mind. Go on. What did he say then?”
“At the time he was just angry, and I more or less took the words back. Then we got off the subject. But, just as we were separating—when we’d been talking of quite other things, I mean, and come to a more or less agreeable understanding—he said, as a sort of afterthought, ‘What did you mean exactly, when you spoke of the way Caroline looks at other men?’ ”
“I thought I got out of it fairly neatly, Reid. I thought I satisfied him. But I think I know now why he was so angry with me. It was not that he felt I did her an injustice. It was that what I said made him really jealous.”
“So what?” He stared ahead gloomily at an awkward corner.
“Why, don’t you see? Sooner or later that induced him to have some sort of showdown with her about her—her attracting other men. I suppose she protested that it all meant nothing. And to prove it—or perhaps just to seal their reconciliation after they had had a row about it—she suggested they should get married right away. It was the perfect answer to the suspicions that I had been fool enough to put into his mind. And Oliver would be swept off his feet by such a gesture, you know. He would fall for it unhesitatingly. In fact, I probably had quite a lot to do with hurr
ying on the one thing we hoped to delay,” she finished bitterly.
He considered that in silence. Then he took his hand from the wheel and patted hers, rather as he had the first time they met. A familiarity which, she remembered, had annoyed her greatly at that time.
“I don’t think I’d torment myself with that one, if I were you,” he said. And the touch, as well as the words, oddly comforted her.
“I shall always feel I muffed my part, though,” she said with a sigh. “And after you had shown such skill in managing her too.”
“Like hell I did!” He laughed rather bitterly in his turn. “I flattered myself I was such a smart fellow, rousing healthy doubt and jealousy in her. Don’t you remember, you told me at the time that you thought she wasn’t suffering from anything more than pique? Quite right, my dear! And what I was suffering from was wilful blindness and egregious conceit.”
“Oh, no, Reid!” She thought he was being a little too hard on himself.
“Um-hm. I just couldn’t, or wouldn’t, accept the fact that she might prefer someone else to me.”
“It is rather difficult to accept these things,” Leslie said sadly. “Poor Reid! I’m so sorry. In a way, it’s much worse for you.”
“Hell! Why?” he wanted to know.
“Because you hadn’t ever really imagined losing. I’d already had my major shock. I could never quite imagine our hopes succeeding.”
He laughed reluctantly.
“Sweetheart, I’m most dreadfully sorry too,” he said ruefully. “I’m entirely responsible for waking all sorts of hopes in you which your courage and determination were trying to put to sleep. I wonder if I haven’t let you down even worse than Oliver.”
“Oh, no, Reid!” Again she felt she could not have him blame himself so completely. “‘I was just as anxious as you to try what we could do. Well, nearly,” she amended. At which he laughed again and said,
“The proportion of blame doesn’t much matter now, I guess. Look—we’re in sight of Cranley Magna. Do you feel able to face them? Or do you want me to drive around a bit?”
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