The woman in the doorway was quite different from her imagining. True, she was tall, but slender and small boned. Her features were delicately cut, her expression gay and animated, her skin as fair and fine as Logie’s. She must be nearing fifty, yet in spite of her grey hair she had an air of youth. Logie had never dreamed grey hair could look as hers did. It was the colour of pale pewter faintly rinsed in hyacinth blue, swept to her head in smoothly sculptured waves that ended in flat shining curls. Her clothes were chosen as a perfect setting for her colouring; she wore a suit of pale grey in fine man’s suiting, and her blouse was heavy hyacinth-blue crepe, hand made. A brooch of sapphires set in platinum and diamonds gleamed at her throat.
She came quickly forward, giving one hand to Sherry, the other to Logie. “My dears! Too shocking of me not to have been here to welcome you. I’d fixed up weeks ago to go to bridge with Lady Danvers, and it’s impossible to get a fourth at a moment’s notice, and I couldn’t let her down.” She turned the full charm of her smile on Logie, still holding her hand and frankly appraising her. “Sherry, you never told me she was lovely!”
“I thought I’d leave you to discover it for yourself.”
“Darling, how wise of you! Far more amusing to be kept guessing. How naughty of Mary to give you tea here in this dreadful dreary room!”
“She knows I like it,” Sherry said.
“Yes, and she knows I hate it! Tiresome old woman. Did you have a good run? Logie, are you very tired? You must go up quite soon and rest before dinner. If you’ve finished tea, do let’s go to the drawing-room. You must tell me all about your plans ... Sherry, the Darringfields are coming to dinner, and Elizabeth and Rodney. And Geoffrey Peverill. Not that I wanted him, but an even number is so much easier. And the sooner Logie meets the neighbourhood, the better.”
“That’s what I thought.” Sherry’s eyes, meeting his mother’s, held an odd look of defiance; Logie, fascinated by the older woman’s exquisite grooming, did not see it.
“Yes. To-morrow we must do some telephoning and collect people for drinks. I spent practically the entire morning in York, exuding charm from every pore to get a good supply of gin. I sometimes wonder how one contrives to have any personality left at all these days, considering how one has to squander it on the butcher and the grocer and above all the wine-merchant! However, I must admit I had a most successful morning. Talking of drinks, we’d all be much the better for a cocktail. Come along.”
Tucking Logie’s hand under her am, talking still, she led her across the hall into the drawing-room. Logie could see at once why she preferred it to the library. Any woman must be happy in a room that was so perfect a background for herself, though London would have been a more appropriate background than the Yorkshire countryside for such a room. It was long and light and spacious. Walls, paint, and carpet were oyster colour; curtains and covers of hyacinth-blue brocade. There were Persian rugs in which blue predominated. A bureau and a cabinet, holding a Rockingham tea-service of grey and rose and gold, were of modem design in pickled sycamore. So was a table on which there stood a tall arrangement of blue flowers, with here and there a touch of rose. Over the fireplace hung a modern painting of delphiniums in a square accumulator tank of greenish glass, against a silvery-turquoise background. Otherwise the walls were bare, except for crystal candle sconces and a carved gilt Chippendale mirror. It had been built up as a setting for the woman who had planned it, as cleverly as she had chosen her clothes and her elusive and sophisticated scent.
Logie exclaimed, “Oh, what a perfect room! And it’s so right for you, I wonder you can ever bear to leave it!” Then felt that she had been too personal for such an acquaintance, but Mrs. MacAirlie looked pleased. “Nice, tactful child! Ring, will you, Sherry? Logie, you must call me Vee. Short for Vera, though that’s short enough, but so severe. Cocktails, Mary, please! ... Of course, you’ll want to have the whole house done up differently, but it’s so difficult these days with coupons and the wretched quality of everything. Sherry, the moment I got your wire I wrote off to find out if that flat in Curzon Street that I’d been thinking of was still available, and luckily it was, and so I’ve signed the lease. You people will want to settle here as soon as may be. I might perhaps take a small house at Maidenhead or Sunningdale next year, for week-ends ... Ah, here come the drinks!” Raising her glass first towards Logie, then to Sherry, she wished them luck. “And are you planning an enormous wedding? ... Oh, just a quiet country one? How wise of you. These large fashionable weddings are so artificial, don’t you think? Though there were eight hundred guests at mine, and it was really rather fun! ... And so you come from Suffolk? I scarcely know it, though I stayed once in Norfolk for a hunt ball somewhere near Norwich. I expect you know the Ambermeres?”
Logie said she had never met them. “We live very quietly and don’t go about much.”
Sherry added, “You’ll have to rub up your geography, Vee! Suffolk is a pretty large county. It’s a case of ‘East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet!’ you know.”
“Yes, I suppose so. I always was shockingly vague about places I haven’t been to. Rosemary Ambermere has grown into such an attractive creature. I saw her with her mother at the Garden Party in June. She would have made a charming bridesmaid ... You’ll have to be presented next year, on your marriage, Logie! ... Come along, it’s time we all went upstairs. Sherry, did Mary tell you Crail Count was the best bull at Perth last week? Macpherson is delighted.”
She came with Logie to her room. A pleasant young housemaid was waiting there. “Oh, there you are, Elsie. See that Miss Logie has all she wants, won’t you? And look after her—Ask Elsie if there’s anything you want, my dear. We must have a long talk to-morrow! I must fly—the Darringfields are shatteringly punctual, and I do love to linger in my bath!”
The housemaid said that Logie’s bath was ready. “And have I put out the right dress, miss?” The hyacinth-blue dinner frock lay on the bed. Logie, reflecting that it might have been selected specially to wear in the oyster and hyacinth-blue drawing-room, told her that she had, and that she would want nothing more.
“Will you ring, miss, if you do? I must go down now, I have to help in the dining-room when there’s company, and Mary likes me to be there in good time.”
Logie found a long row of jars and bottles holding bath-salts and essences and dusting powder on a glass shelf within reach of the bath. She studied their labels: Mary Chess, Floris, Coty, Atkinson; gardenis, stephanotis, pine, rose, geranium, carnation, A pres la Pluie, Omy, Russian leather. Some day when she was in experimental mood she would investigate their contents; this evening she didn’t want to smell like someone else, and so she used her own Roman hyacinth essence, thinking what fun it was to be luxurious and how glad she was that Sherry was so well off. Money couldn’t buy happiness, of course, but there was no denying that it could make life far more amusing! Alison should have this room when she and Jane came to stay here after the wedding. Alison should have breakfast brought up to her in bed. Jane, who longed to ride, should have lessons from the groom who had taught Sherry years ago; Sherry had said there was an elderly quiet polo pony in the stables that would be the very thing for her—he’d give it to her for her own. Andrew could come and spend his leaves here, and have shooting. Hunting, too; Sherry had said practically everybody hunted, and since he joined the Army Andrew had done a lot of riding. It would be marvellous to be able to do nice things for all of them!
Lying in the bath, she reflected that it was rather a pity people were coming to dinner this very first night. From Sherry she had gathered that his mother loved to entertain and to go out, and that the neighbourhood was a gay one, since most people knew a friendly farmer or kept a few cows of their own and a pig or two and poultry, so that to feed guests was no problem. She would enjoy having parties later on, when they were married; sharing with Sherry the pleasure of welcoming their friends to Crail, giving shy people a good time, making things “go”, talking it o
ver together when they were alone again. Only this evening she would have liked to be alone with him and Vee (would she ever get used to calling her that, to being on those terms with a woman so much older than herself, finished and sophisticated as she herself could never hope to be?). She would have liked to see the house. Better, perhaps, to go over it in the daylight of to-morrow morning ... She wondered what the room was like that she and Sherry would share ...
When she was ready to go down she looked long and anxiously in the triple mirror, and was reassured by what she saw there. Last night she had washed her hair in rain water; it framed her face in a silken aureole of honey-coloured feathery curls. Her eyes were bright and excitement had set a faint colour glowing in her fair skin. The frock, too, was a great success, becoming to her slender figure, flattering to her colouring. She pirouetted about the room for the pleasure of seeing the skirt float out about her as she moved, then fall back gently into place.
She heard a car approaching along the drive, followed by a second, then voices below her window, and decided to give the guests time to be in the drawing-room before going down, rather than meet them in the hall. They must be on the early side. It was a pity; she had hoped to have a moment alone with Sherry before his mother came down.
After waiting for a few minutes she went down and entered the drawing-room quietly. Sherry was at the far end of the long room, busy with a cocktail-shaker. A middle-aged man, red-faced, clean-shaven, and a younger one with a loud hearty voice began to laugh as she came in, apparently at something he had said. Near the door, their backs towards her, two women sat together on the sofa, talking in lowered voices. One head was fair and shingled, the other had brown hair corrugated in the sharp ridges of an overdone iron wave; her dress, of hard electric blue, was crude and harsh against the sofa’s hyacinth brocade. Logie stood uncertainly by the door, suddenly shy, reluctant to interrupt Sherry’s conversation with the two men. The women, unaware of her presence behind them, went on talking.
“... on the rebound, obviously!” said the fair one.
“Oh, not a doubt of that! Rather humiliating for the girl.”
“A difficult position for both of them to carry off. But people’s memories are very short. The whole thing will have been forgotten in a week or two.”
“I should have liked to be a fly on the wall when Zara heard of it.”
“Who wouldn’t? She always did expect to have her cake and eat it.”
Logie supposed they were discussing some piece of local gossip. She came forward as Sherry turned, a glass in each hand, and saw her. “Ah, here you are! My dilatory parent is late, as usual.” Smiling at him, she did not see the startled and uncomfortable glances exchanged by the two gossipers on the sofa. Sherry gave her one of the glasses, and with a hand behind her elbow gently turned her to face them. “Lady Darringfield, Elizabeth, this is Logie Selkirk. I expect Vee has told you that in October she’s going to change her name to MacAirlie.”
In Lady Darringfield’s weatherbeaten face and the younger woman’s round, light-lashed blue eyes, Logie read friendly curiosity mingled with something else: something she could not define. Embarrassment? Confusion? Yet how could they find any cause for either emotion in meeting her?
“Indeed she did, and we saw it in The Times for ourselves as well, and very glad indeed we were to hear of it!” said Lady Darringfield heartily. “We’ll be the envy of the entire neighbourhood for being the first to meet you!” Taking Logie’s hand in both her own, she patted it. “Tom, come and meet Sherry’s bride-to-be. You too, Rodney!” Tom, the red-faced man, was apparently Sir Thomas Darringfield. He and Elizabeth and Rodney Sawdon, who were evidently brother and sister, since Elizabeth was “Miss,” joined in congratulations. The door opened for Mary to usher in a tall, thin, slightly stooping man whom she announced primly as “Sir Geoffrey Peverill.” He wore an eyeglass and looked, thought Logie, as though he would be more at home in riding clothes than in his dinner jacket. This was not surprising, as it turned out that he was master of the local hounds. More introductions followed. The cocktail-shaker was called into play again. Everybody seemed to be telling Logie simultaneously how glad they all had been to hear of the engagement and that they wished her and Sherry all the luck in the world.
The door flew open. Vee came swiftly in, exquisite and fragile in orchid chiffon frail as gossamer, with long wing sleeves falling to its hem and floating out behind her. Characteristically, she held out both her hands in laughing apology. Logie was to learn in time that Vee spent a great deal of time in unrepentant apologies for unpunctuality.
“My dears! Marjorie—Elizabeth! How frightful of me to be late! But I’m not going to attempt one single, solitary excuse. You know them all by heart, and I’ve been far too happy in my bath to spend a moment of it thinking up a new one ... Geoffrey, how splendidly that new mare of yours did in the jumping at Heckaby! Everyone I met to-day was talking of it! ... Ah, here is Mary, summoning us to dinner. Come along, Kathleen. You must all be starving! Logie, my dear, has Sherry done all the introducing? Good. I’m so bad at it. I can’t remember even my best friend’s names—once I even forgot my mother’s, too shattering! ... Now, let me see. Kathleen, will you sit here, between Sherry and Rodney?”
Excitement carried Logie through the long evening. It was not until nearly four hours later, when her bedroom door closed behind Vee with a final “Good night! Lovely to have you! We must have a long talk to-morrow,” that exhaustion took her in its clutches. Too tired to sleep, she saw with closed eyes the road rushing under the wheels of Sherry’s car until she felt herself grow giddy, and sought distraction in reliving all that had happened since her arrival at Crail.
She thought of Mary, brusque and kindly; of the dogs who had padded at Sherry’s heels all evening, lying beneath the sideboard during dinner. She sat once more through dinner, while Vee held the reins of conversation in her practised hands, keeping their seven faces turned towards her by the magnet of her gaiety and charm. She followed Vee, Lady Darringfield, and Elizabeth Rodney to the drawing-room. The two guests were interested in her plans and Sherry’s for the wedding and their future, but in a very short time the talk was focused round Vee’s flat in Curzon Street and the possibility that she might later buy or lease a house at Sunningdale or Ascot. “And I thought of going to South Africa for part of the winter. Such a bore having to stick to the sterling area—the Riviera would have been so much easier!” Again she met Sherry’s eyes, seeking her own when the door opened to admit the men. Again she felt the pressure of his hand on hers beneath the table as they played vingt-et-un for stakes that seemed to her frighteningly high, so that although she had been thankful not to lose she had felt ashamed of taking such large winnings in a game with friends.
She thought again of Vee. She liked her, and it was a great relief to find herself apparently approved by Sherry’s mother, who might have been unkindly critical of her son’s choice. But already she knew that she would never know Vee, would never be near her, and that this had nothing to do with the dividing years. Already she had realised that Vee’s appealing charm was superficial, part of the setting she had created for herself. Her praises of Sir Geoffrey’s mare, Elizabeth’s new frock, Lady Darringfield’s garden—“You must see it, Logie! It’s quite the loveliest garden in the East Riding! When may I bring her, Marjorie?”—did not come from genuine admiration of the mare, the frock, the garden, but from her determination that their respective owners should like her. She had lent Lady Darringfield a new novel, and given the Sawdons, who had no hothouse, a basket of peaches when they left. Yet Logie felt that she had done these things rather from a wish that they should think of her as sweet and generous rather than through any real concern for their pleasure. She had spared no pains to make this evening a success, in order that she might appear in the light of a considerate and gracious hostess.
She approved of Sherry’s labradors because Rajah had won a first at Cruft’s and both were field-trial winners; had they
been poor specimens of their breed or mongrels, she would almost certainly have decreed that they must live outside in the kennels. Although she would most probably have failed to pick out Crail Count, Sherry’s bull, from half a dozen of his breed, she was delighted by his win at Perth, since it reflected credit on Crail and so on herself. Besides, it was the fashion these days to take an interest in agricultural matters.
Logie was convinced that all Vee’s guests this evening had seen her as she had intended, and as she most probably saw herself: as a woman whose character and personality were as charming as her outstandingly delightful appearance. Probably it was her love for Sherry that had given her such a swift insight into his mother’s character?—Not that it was exactly an unpleasing character; on the whole, it was too negative for that. Not unkind, yet not kind; not mean, yet lacking genuine generosity; not unsympathetic, yet without sympathy. Logie believed there were only two positive attributes in her composition: self-love and charm so dazzling as to blind one, or very nearly blind one, to that self-love.
In regard to Sherry his mother’s reactions were probably on the same lines as her reactions to the dogs and the shorthorn bull. He was a fine specimen, who reflected credit on her as his parent. (How odd to think of her as Sherry’s mother—as anyone’s mother!) ... Logie could see, now, why he had said, “Trouble and failure don’t appeal to her. She likes success.”
Something in her new understanding of what Sherry’s boyhood must have been, the loneliness he must have known, had introduced a new element into her love for him. Until now it had been chiefly the magnetism of his assurance and vitality, his physical attraction that had drawn her. Now she felt a warm protective tenderness go out towards him as she told herself that in future she would give him all that he had lacked. Comfort in time of trouble, sympathy in failure, the knowledge that he was loved not for his possessions, his successes, or his achievements, but for himself.
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