Love Is My Reason

by Mary Burchell

  Horrible it might be, degrading, without hope or purpose. But she belonged there, if she belonged anywhere.

  She had ventured into the outside world, and the outside world had rejected her. Though she knew it was a denial of all that was best in her, she would at that moment, if she had been given the choice, have elected to go back to the squalor and wretchedness which was all she had ever known as home.

  Then the spasm passed, and she found herself trembling. Like someone who had gone to the edge of a precipice and looked over, but somehow drawn back. She tried to force her attention back on what the other two were saying, and she found that Celia was talking once more of their scanty news about Martin.

  “He seems to have made a satisfactory sort of life for himself, though he has obviously been a rolling stone.”

  “Married?” enquired Lady Ranmere succinctly.

  “No. At least he doesn’t say so.”

  “It’s the sort of thing most people mention. Even rolling stones,” replied Lady Ranmere with dry humour.

  “He was in the American army during the war. He does mention that,” Celia said.

  “Over in Europe?”

  “I—think so.”

  “But it didn’t strike him to look up his own family?”

  “Apparently not.” Celia looked faintly resentful at the tone of these questions.

  “Extraordinary behaviour.” Lady Ranmere made no attempt to hide her disapproval. “Never to come near his poor mother. He must have known what misery he had caused her.”

  “I think—” Celia was inclined to defend him—“he assumed we had all long ago accepted the idea that he was dead—”

  “But it was a wrong idea.”

  “Yes, I know. But I suppose the truth was that he quarrelled badly with Mother before he went away, all those years ago—”

  “Ah! I sometimes wondered.” Lady Ranmere looked pleased over the rightness of her own deductions.

  “Even now, I don’t know what it was about. Something to do with my own father, I think.”

  “Very likely. These things happen in families,” Lady Ranmere nodded knowledgeably. “But that’s all water under the bridge now, I imagine.”

  “Of course,” Celia agreed, and then seemed to think it was time she went.

  “Mother will be coming over this afternoon,” she said, without so much as a glance in Anya’s direction. “Or, if you prefer, Lady Ranmere, of course we shall be delighted to have you come over to tea.”

  She said nothing about being delighted to have Anya come over to tea also, and Lady Ranmere—no doubt noticing the omission, for few such things escaped her—replied briskly,

  “It would be better if Teresa came here, I think. Tell her I shall be glad to see her round about four o’clock.”

  “Very well.”

  Celia then said a general good-bye which might, or might not, have included Anya, and went away.

  For a few moments there was silence between Anya and the older woman. Then Lady Ranmere, who had never shirked an issue in her life, said,

  “It is no good pretending that this doesn’t make a great deal of difference to your position, Anya. But I hope you had not been counting too securely on Mrs. Preston’s theories. No one expected anything quite so dramatic as this, of course, but I did warn you not to hope too extravagantly.”

  “I know. I don’t think I hoped much—really.” Fortunately no one had ever guessed for one moment what ridiculous hopes she had dared to have about David.

  “Try not to feel too dreadfully disappointed, my dear.” Lady Ranmere gave a glance of real concern at the unnaturally quiet figure. “When David comes down we will have a serious talk about your future. At least we do know where we are now.”

  Lady Ranmere liked to know where she was, and to her it was perhaps less upsetting to know for certain that Anya was their problem than to wonder uncertainly if they or Teresa Preston would have the ultimate responsibility for her.

  Anya, however, could not see the situation that way. She visualized herself as an insufferable burden on David, and for once the sound of his name brought no exquisite relief or inner joy. Only a fresh realization of her inadequacy and unbearable nuisance-value.

  “Can I—can I go back into the garden now?” In her confusion and distress, she spoke with what Lady Ranmere felt was quite unnecessary humility.

  “Of course, child. You can go anywhere you like in the house or garden,” Lady Ranmere said, a little impatiently. And then she turned back to her desk, with an air of relief more obvious than she knew. For whatever problems might be presented to her in her capacity as chairman or president of half a dozen committees and societies, none of them was at all likely to prove half so difficult as this quiet, pale, alien child that David had wished on her.

  Anya went back into the garden. But, although the sun shone just as brightly, and the flowers and trees were just as beautiful, the welcoming peace which had been so wonderful half an hour ago was gone. She saw the scene in all its color and radiance still, but as though from a subtle distance. Like the child who was not going to the party, after all, but must cling to the railings and look in through the window instead.

  It would have been a relief to cry a few quiet tears, perhaps, but life as Anya had known it had not encouraged self-pity. Her throat ached, but it did not occur to her to do anything but blink back the tears which stung her eyeballs. Tragedy and disappointment and frustration were a natural part of life—the larger part of it. It was not even interesting that one would like to cry about it.

  Presently she found a charming summerhouse, with a rustic bench and table in it. And here she sat down, leaning her elbows on the table and her head on her hands, while she tried to bring some order to her flying, scattered thoughts, which seemed to rush hither and thither aimlessly like small animals frightened by the sounds of a coming storm.

  She was still sitting like that ten minutes later when a shadow fell across her and Bertram’s voice said,

  “Hallo! What are you doing here alone? Having a quiet little weep on your own?”

  She let her hands fall and looked at him.

  “No. I’m not weeping.”

  “Well, you look as though you might.” He frowned slightly, in spite of the lightness of his tone. “You’d better come out into the sunshine, I think, and tell your Uncle Bertram all about it.”

  She came at once, though she got up rather slowly from the seat, as though she were tired from carrying burdens too heavy for anyone as young as she.

  “I thought you were going to town today,” she said, quietly and naturally, as they strolled out into the sunshine together.

  “I was. But there was something I had to attend to here, after all. I may go this afternoon, or tomorrow. Now tell me what’s been happening in your life.”

  She smiled faintly.

  “I suppose it is something in all our lives. Except yours.” She remembered suddenly that he had remained peculiarly unaffected by the drama which had involved them all during the past few weeks. “Martin is alive, after all.”

  “Martin? Martin Deane—the long-lost son?” Bertram looked amused and interested.

  “Yes. He has written from America, where he has been living for a long time. He is coming home on a visit.”

  “You don’t say! Well, that’s fine for Teresa.”

  “Yes.”

  “And rather aggravating for Celia. For, however much she may think she will welcome a brother, she will not, of course, at all like having her attractive nose put out of joint by someone more important than herself.”

  “She seemed,” Anya said carefully, “very happy about it all.”

  “Aha! She brought the good news herself?”

  “Yes.”

  “And rather flung it at you?”

  “She didn’t conceal the fact that she was pleased to find I could not be in any way connected with them now.”

  “And can’t you be? I never really follow the ramifications of this
family situation,” Bertram confessed.

  “No, of course not! My mother said that—that the man she was fond of in the photograph died before I was born. That can’t have been Martin Deane. We know that now. Therefore the man she was fond of—the man who was presumably my father—was the other one. There’s no question of my possibly being Mrs. Preston’s granddaughter now.”

  “And does that matter so much?” Bertram looked at her curiously.

  Anya was silent for a moment. Then she said slowly, “If you mean in terms of affection—no. I like Mrs. Preston. I could easily be fond of her. If she were my grandmother, I suppose I should come to love her. But I can’t pretend that has already happened.”

  “It’s the vision of the comfortable home fading which hurts?” suggested Bertram.

  “No. Not even that.” She stopped and faced him, her eyes wide and her face pale. “It’s the terrifying falseness of my position among you all. The possibility of my being Mrs. Preston’s granddaughter gave me a—a sort of right here. But now that is gone. I don’t belong to anyone here, after all. I’m just a terrible embarrassment to everyone.”

  “Not to me,” Bertram assured her with steadying coolness. “You don’t embarrass me in the least.”

  “Oh, Bertram—” she gave an uncertain little laugh, and the tension in her relaxed—“that’s because you never took much part in this business anyway. You stool amusedly aloof. But your mother and—and David brought me here, knowing that, even if Mrs. Preston never proved relationship, she would always consider me in some way hers, for lack of any proof to the contrary. No one ever expected there would be proof that I was not hers.”

  “Did you count on that yourself?” he asked bluntly.

  “No. I didn’t count on it. Maybe I—I dreamed a few dreams because of it,” she said, hardly knowing why she told him that.

  “I see. You’re very fond of David, aren’t you?” He still spoke in his usual casual way and took no notice of the startled glance she gave him.

  “I—never said so.”

  “Not in words.” He smiled slightly. “There’s no need to be ashamed of it, my dear. It’s natural to love the gods who lift us to Olympus, even if, when their backs are turned, we find ourselves slipping from the exalted position again. I suppose if you had been Teresa Preston’s grandchild—”

  He broke off and shrugged his shoulders impatiently.

  “Never mind. That’s over now,” Anya said, with the quiet finality of one who has learned resignation in a hard school.

  He did not deny this. Perhaps because he knew his own world and his own cousin very well and privately agreed with her. Instead, he changed the subject abruptly by asking,

  “What are you going to do now, Anya?”

  “Do?” She gave him the bewildered glance of someone who had never been allowed to make the decisions—only to accept them. “I don’t know. Except that I can’t stay here and be a burden to David. And your mother,” she added, as a naive afterthought.

  “But you have no actual plans, eh?”

  She shook her head. But she looked at him with the sudden, groundless hope of a lost puppy to whom someone has spoken at last.

  For a moment longer he stood there, frowning down at the path in apparent thought. Then he said,

  “Come along with me into the music-room. I want to talk to you.”

  She came obediently, though she could not imagine what he had to say to her which could not be said in the garden. But there was an air of purpose about the usually casual Bertram which would have compelled the attention of someone much less compliant than Anya.

  The music-room, she found, was a long pleasant room, situated on the opposite side of the house from Lady Ranmere’s study. It had a grand piano, a gramophone, shelves of records, some comfortable chairs and very little else besides. There was no carpet on its polished floor. Only a few (and, Anya thought, very good) rugs.

  “Now—” Bertram indicated a chair, in which Anya sat down, though he himself remained standing—“do you remember telling me some time ago—almost the first morning we talked together, I think—that you used to do sketches and songs for some theatre director you knew in the camp?”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “I think you said they were all in Russian or German?”

  “Some were in Polish.”

  “Oh, yes. Something outlandish,” he agreed impatiently. “Never mind. Perhaps I can judge. I want you to do something for me now. Anything. Any one that you remember and can do easily.”

  “But I—I haven’t done it for over a year. And there’s the language. And, anyway, I—I don’t feel very much like play-acting this morning,” she stammered.

  “One never does,” Bertram assured her drily. “Come on, there’s a good girl. Just to please me.”

  “You mean—just anything that I can remember at the moment?” She got slowly to her feet, and began to move towards the end of the room, as though this were a stage.

  “Yes.”

  She stood with her head bent in thought for a moment. Then she glanced up and said,

  “Do you want me to explain it to you beforehand?”

  “Only as much as one might put in a couple of lines in a programme.”

  She gave him a quick, half-enquiring smile. But she said, “Very well.” And then, after another few seconds of thought, “I am a village girl who has just been kissed for the first time by the boy who matters. I put on my new bonnet, meaning to go out and charm him afresh. When I am ready, I look from the window—and he is walking away with another girl, in a prettier bonnet.”

  “And that’s all?”

  “Yes. That’s all.”

  “Excellent. Go on.”

  Anya walked to the side of the room. Then suddenly she swung round and made a light, eager rush of an entrance on to the improvised stage. She was talking to herself in little breathless rapturous snatches, and by the small movements of her hands and the naked rapture in her young face, one knew what had happened. Indeed, as she put her hands to her face for a moment, it was obvious that her cheeks were hot. One even knew which one had been kissed.

  Then she sat down and examined herself eagerly, inexpertly—in a non-existent mirror, and the tip of an excited tongue flicked her lips as she hovered between laughter and tears.

  And then there followed a little pantomime so unbearably funny and pathetic that the watching man narrowed his eyes as though anxious not to miss a single detail. Still talking to herself, in half-encouraging, half-admonishing tones, she began, with trembling, eager, too hasty hands to make herself ready to meet and enchant the boy she loved.

  But it was all just a bit wrong. Though there was no rouge there, one knew she was putting on a little too much. She nervously licked her fingers and painstakingly made slightly too large curls each side of her face. And all the time she turned this way and that, to consult the mirror which was not there.

  Then came the final moment when she lifted the imaginary bonnet. It had a feather, one felt, and possibly a rose too, and as she perched it on her head, again the tip of that excited tongue protruded between her lips.

  She tied the ribbons. She asked the mirror if he would love her like that. She even shut her eyes tightly for a moment and, with clasped hands, grabbed a small prayer that he would. And then she was ready.

  She ran to where the window might be, looked out—and suddenly was so completely still that it seemed the world had stopped. It was impossible not to share her shattering disillusionment and shock, or the physical ache of the disappointment which stilled the breathless half-sentences with which she had been encouraging herself.”

  For perhaps half a minute she stood there, while rapture ebbed and the light went out. She was not even pretty any more. Just a clumsy, silly, mistaken little girl, whose bonnet was slightly awry.

  Slowly she turned away from the window, untying the ribbons from under her chin. As she took off the bonnet, she took off the crown which love puts on every girl
’s head. She looked at it for a moment in incredulous revulsion. Then she flung it from her and rushed from the “stage” with childish, choking sobs.

  There was silence, until she turned and smiled at Bertram and became Anya once more.

  “Did you like it?” she enquired.

  “Yes,” Bertram said heavily. “I liked it. Would it be tempting Providence to ask if you have a lot of these sketches?”

  “Oh—” she shrugged—“eight or ten, I suppose. Perhaps a dozen. We made up some of them ourselves—the Polish theatre director and I. It was something to do in the long evenings.”

  “Yes. It must have been,” agreed Bertram with friendly irony. And then he said, half whimsically, half seriously, “My God, let me be awake and not dreaming!”

  Anya looked enquiring.

  “It’s all right,” he told her, in answer to her glance. “I don’t want to say too much at the moment, just in case it’s a flash in the pan, and you can only do it once. But—I feel a bit stunned. I suppose one always does before genius.”

  “Genius?” She repeated the word, on a note of incredulous amusement. “Oh, it’s not genius. It’s just a—a sort of talent”

  “Perhaps.” He looked at her almost sombrely. “Who knows?—You said you could sing too, didn’t you?”

  “Not much.” She laughed apologetically. “If you want me to sing, it will have to be something where it doesn’t matter much about the tone. I haven’t sung for ages.”

  “Whatever you like,” he said.

  She frowned thoughtfully.

  “You know Schubert’s ‘Hurdy-Gurdy Man’?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Well—” she made a slight gesture towards the piano—“could you give me a few leading notes?”

  “I think so.” He went over to the piano and opened it “It’s a man’s song, though.”

  “It can be a girl’s song too, with the very slightest alteration,” she replied quickly.

  “Very well.” He struck one or two chords, and she nodded to him when he gave her the key she wanted.