by Jane Arbor
Mrs. Tempest had insisted that she should have a new gown for the occasion and had taken her to an early autumn fashion show to which, as a privileged customer of the designer, she herself had die entree. There Lysbet had chosen a model of dull white crepe without ornamentation except its own soft draping of corsage and skirt. With it she planned to wear no jewellery but a single-strand pearl necklace given to her long ago by her uncle. As to flowers, until the arrival of the florist’s box now beside her on the dressing-table, she had not been decided. But now she knew that she would wear the deep crimson of Richard’s gift of roses pinned to the shoulder of her gown. (Hadn’t he told her once that she should wear red—that her coloring demanded it?)
With the flowers had been a characteristically worded card: ‘If you plan to wear tangerine or purple net with green spots, abandon these. Aesthetically speaking, I shall understand. But—will you accept them all the same?’
Lysbet read and re-read the scrawled lines, seeking behind them the message she scarcely dared hope was there. When she was ready to go downstairs she slipped the card into her evening bag. Richard’s first written message, like his flowers, must not be far away.
In her aunt’s room where she went for a last touch or two to her dress Mrs. Tempest glanced at the splash of color afforded by the roses and asked: “Eliot?”
“No—Richard Guyse. They came a little while ago, while I was dressing. Do they look right?”
“Charming.” Mrs. Tempests’s tone was cool and dispassionate. “I asked because Eliot had said something about giving you flowers. Only he had mentioned orchids—”
“But Aunt Alicia—he doesn’t mean to, does he? I—I can’t wear them both!”
“And the roses are a ‘must,’ eh? All right, don’t look so distressed, pet! If Eliot says anything, I’ll tell him that I consider orchids too sophisticated for you. And if he insists, I’ll tell him that I’ll expect them myself! At my age one needs orchids. At yours, you need nothing but your youth!”
“How kind she is, bless her!” thought Lysbet as, lightly arm-in-arm, they went down to greet their guests. And then promptly forgot everything else in the warm anticipation of seeing Richard very soon. And he would see her, dressed for his eyes, wearing his flowers. And in the moment of greeting they would create for themselves a tiny island of intimacy where no one else would trespass.
So much for dreams! When Richard arrived, Lysbet was engaged with a portly and slightly deaf retired Colonel, whose capacity for lengthy anecdote approached that of the Ancient Mariner. After that, she had several dances booked, but at last Richard was at her side, offering her his hand in invitation to their first waltz together.
Nothing ever went as you planned it ... There had been no ecstatic moment of greeting when she had stood before him in her white gown and wearing his flowers; Richard had been late, owing to having been kept unexpectedly at the hospital and until now they had exchanged little more than a friendly wave across the room. But as she slid into his arms in the first steps of the dance Lysbet knew that here was where she belonged. It didn’t matter what she was wearing, or whether Richard noticed her looks at all. Here, if he wanted her, was where she could always find peace.
They danced in silence for a few minutes. Then he held her slightly away from him and putting one finger lightly under the heads of the roses asked amusedly: “No purple net?”
Lysbet dimpled. “Yards of it. With and without green spots!”
“And you abandoned it in the interests of wearing my roses?”
“We—ll, yes—and no.” Her expression was mock serious now. “To tell you the truth, I’ve a sneaking suspicion that in purple net—even with a natty touch of green spotting—I don’t really look my best!”
Richard pounced. “Then why have you got yards of it in your wardrobe?”
“I haven’t. And you know it!”
They both laughed and Lysbet felt suddenly grateful for the amount of foolery they could indulge in together. Richard’s sense of fun was always there, ready to dovetail into hers. With Eliot, for instance, it was different. Eliot laughed too, but you felt somehow that he was always readier to laugh at you than with you. As if he were willing to indulge you, but felt a little superior all the while.
Presently Richard said. “Did you see me winning the spot dance like anything.”
Lysbet nodded. “Yes. With Mrs. Peterson, wasn’t it?”
“Mrs. Petersen,” said Richard loftily, “may be described as my sleeping partner in the operation. But the skilled navigation which led us to what the papers would call “the mystery position’ at the given moment when the music stopped was all mine.”
“Don’t crow. It was mere luck. What did you get as a prize?”
“Cigarettes. My favourite brand.”
“Liar. You’re just being polite!”
Richard opened his eyes widely. “But they were! Why shouldn’t they be? Didn’t you choose ’em?”
“No. Aunt Alicia organized all the prizes. But if I had, how could I have known you would win them, you idiot?”
Richard considered this. “M’m. You’ve got something there. Pity. I’d been thinking that with my skilful and inspired navigation and a bit of efficient staff-work on your part we could consider teaming up for the next spot dance, if there is to be one. We might go far—”
“Well, you seem to have gone quite as far as you deserve on mere luck. Take what the gods give and be thankful!” advised Lysbet laughingly as the band slowed into the music’s finale and the dancers about them began the inevitable clapping.
They clapped too, standing apart from each other but happy and secure in the other’s nearness. As they walked down the room together Lysbet said: “My next partner is Long John Silver—you know, the tall Major. Who is yours?”
Richard mouthed a single word in an exaggerated stage-whisper: “Caroline!”
“Oh.” Lysbet smiled. “She is looking more ethereal than ever, isn’t she? Those yards and yards of palest pink chiffon! Her dress doesn’t look like material at all. More as if she had climbed into the sky and reached down a handful of sunset-pink cloud—”
“It is material, believe me,” put in Richard a trifle grimly, though he did not add that he had good reason to know that Caroline’s gown was not mere diaphanous mist, since she had coaxed from him an advance on her next month’s salary in order to pay for it.
The band struck up again. They smiled at each other and were about to turn away when Richard came closer and said with a new, serious urgency in his voice: “Lysbet, when are you free next?”
She glanced at her programme, upon which Mrs. Tempest, harking back nostalgically to the dance traditions of her own youth, had insisted. “Er—two dances ahead—no, three. This one,” she told him, pointing to a fox trot.
“Then let’s not dance it. Will you meet me out on the terrace? I—I’ve got to talk to you, Lysbet!”
Lysbet nodded and watched him as he strode away to keep his engagement with Caroline Ware. She saw the other girl smile a dazzling welcome to him, noticed the way in which she seemed to melt into the circle of his arms so that her body moved in one union of alignment with his—and knew, with the sudden instinctive sense of a woman who realizes she is loved for herself alone, that she needn’t be jealous of Caroline any more!
When, a little later, she went out on to the terrace to meet Richard, he was already there in the semi-darkness waiting for her. He gave her a long look and then, touching her lightly by the arm, guided her down the broad stone steps on to the lawn below.
The dance music faded behind them and fairy lanterns lent a doubtful light to their progress. Beyond the glimmer of the last festoon of lights was the spreading shadow of a beech tree; at the garden seat beneath it Richard halted and said briefly and rather hoarsely: “Here?”
Lysbet sat down and there was a moment’s silence between them.
It was in order to relieve her almost unbearable sense of tension that she said lightly: “I
’ve been thinking. If I’d known you were going to win the spot-dance the prize wouldn’t have been cigarettes at all. It would have been—gingerbread!”
“Gingerbread? Oh—!” Richard laughed as he took in the reference, and suddenly Lysbet knew an almost overwhelming tenderness for him.
“Oh, Richard,” she said with a catch in her voice, “I’d have loved to see you when you were a little boy! At prep school, with a new tin box of gingerbread, getting yourself all gummed up with the gooey-ness of it!”
Richard glanced at her and knew by the mistiness of her eyes and the little tremble in her voice that she, too, realized the flood tide of urgent, adult realities which beset them. That she knew, as he did, that there would be no staying it at last, however much they might seek to play Canute with it...
But he met her mood by answering lightly, teasingly: “Of course, that would have been about the time when you had a couple of black plaits sticking out at the back of your neck and you had a gap-toothed grin. Or maybe you had to wear a gold band around ’em!”
“Richard, I hadn’t I didn’t!”
“I bet you did. You—” He stopped, the words choked in his throat. He couldn’t play any more. The flood gates were open. Sweet, sweet Lysbet! His girl. His woman. He knew her for his own, but he had yet to claim her. “Lysbet!” He stood up, holding out both hands to her. It was as with an instinctive giving of herself that her hands sought his blindly and she stood up before him.
His arms went about her. He began to stammer the old things, the new things ... “Lysbet, I love you! I think I’ve always loved you since that very first day at the Club. Do you remember? I cursed you for being a rotten driver and I called you an idiot for attempting that dive with young Cooke. But I loved you all the time—do you hear?” She bent her head, her happiness too deep for words. “Since then I’ve wooed you with everything I have. In my dreams I’ve courted all of you—your hair, your eyes, your lovely body, the things you wear, your fingertips—and the fine, generous mind of you. Have you realized, Lysbet my sweet, how our very thoughts seem to march together? Do you know that if you love me as I love you we’ve got a perfection that we might never have dared to hope for? Do you love me Lysbet?”
For answer she gave him her lips. Her proffered kiss was the unsullied lass of a child. But to the questioning passion of the man’s mouth upon hers her heart was giving ardent answer. In that moment she gave promise that in marriage everything of hers would be his’ to do with as he willed.
At last they sat down again, side by side, hand in hand. Richard said: “When will you marry me, Lysbet?”
“Soon. A little while.” She laughed tremulously, “I’ve got to have time to enjoy—all this.”
He went on: “You’ll be leaving Falcons. You won’t like that.”
She turned shining eyes upon him. “As if Falcons could be a rival to being with you!”
“I’ll do my damnedest never to let you regret it!” Then he laughed a little ruefully. “But do you realize that as my wife you’re going to become something quite illegal?”
“Illegal?”
He laughed again at the shock in her eyes. “Yes. Something the G.P.O. doesn’t permit—an appendage to a telephone! As the wife of a G.P. you’ll be practically attached to the thing for the rest of your days. You’ll have to learn to get charm and reassurance and variation into saying—‘No, I’m sorry, the doctor is still at the hospital’ and ‘Yes, he has only just gone to bed, but he’ll be with you in ten minutes’ and ‘No, it’s no trouble at all’. I say, Lysbet—do you think you’re going to be able to bear it?”
She smiled at him teasingly. “In all this—’the doctor’ means you, I take it?”
“M’m. It means me, all right.”
“Then lead me to the nearest telephone. I want to get into training!”
They looked at each other and laughed. From within the charmed circle of their happiness tonight they felt able to look out with confidence and with laughter—much more laughter!—upon the world.
CHAPTER SIX
For them both there were happy days to follow. Lysbet found herself moving in a world suddenly made magic by the wonder of Richard’s love. Each morning when she woke, even though she realized that today she would not see him, she knew a quiet, confident looking forward that was quite different from the ecstatic flutter at her heart when she knew that very soon now—this morning, this afternoon, tonight—she would be, however briefly, in his arms. Love, the common stuff of song and story and drama, had happened to her. And it wasn’t common any more, but something rare and astonishing and almost too sweet for belief.
Even the long summer, after a brief spell of rain and wind, seemed to be renewing itself in their honour. Chilly mornings opened out into days of cloudless sunshine almost as warm as those of July; once or twice a week Richard would be free to meet her at the top of Enshaw Hill for a ride over the common before breakfast, and on most of the warm afternoons they swam together at the Country Club. Sometimes Caroline Ware and, quite frequently, Eliot would be there too, and though to be alone with Richard was something which, for Lysbet, was important and urgent, she decided that it must be the fact of being in love yourself which made you reluctant to shut yourself away into the wonder of it. The friendliness you felt for people seemed to grow alongside your pity for them for not happening to be in love themselves! She, Eliot, Richard and Caroline made a gay foursome which spoiled nowhere the sense that she and Richard belonged to each other alone.
But when they had become engaged she had admitted to more than a tinge of curiosity as to what Caroline would say. She did not know that Richard, too, had wondered what would be his secretary’s reaction to the news.
He had made the announcement casually enough on the morning after Lysbet’s party while he and Caroline were at work together in the surgery. The Richard Guyse who had believed that he could always keep his mind on his work to the exclusion of everything else had found himself with no more than half his thoughts to spare for anything but Lysbet—the beauty of her, the wonder of her!—and it was partly in order to test his ability to mention her calmly that he said to Caroline:
“By the way, I wonder if it will be news to you that, last night, Lysbet and I—” He had stopped there and had glanced across a little sheepishly at Caroline. He had not been prepared for the abrupt movement with which she had set down the pestle and mortar with which she had been working, nor for the look of dismay, almost of chagrin, which crossed her unguarded face.
But the next moment she had smiled at him and had said archly: “Richard, you wretch! You mean that you and Lysbet got engaged? But of course it’s a surprise! Or—is it?”
“I don’t know. You tell me,” was Richard’s dry comment.
“Well, it is—and it isn’t. I suppose it has been sticking out a mile really. But somehow it’s always a surprise to hear that people have actually got to the point—”
“But isn’t it a matter of congratulation or something?” queried Richard. “Come on, my girl, you haven’t said any of the right things yet. Where are your manners? Even if you’re not prepared to wish me joy, I’ll sack you if you don’t give me a good character to Lysbet the next time you see her!”
Again he had not been prepared for the impulsive, swift movement with which his secretary crossed the room to stand before him and to take both his hands in hers. And there had been too much intensity in the way Caroline said softly: “Of course I’ll tell her how wonderful you are, Richard! And she’ll have to believe it, coming from me, because I understand you—perhaps better even than you know!”
Richard hoped afterwards that he had withdrawn his hands from hers not too abruptly and without discourtesy. He had said drily: “Do you? I wonder.”
And to that Caroline had replied in no more than a whisper: “I—think so,” as, with another swift movement which he had no time to circumvent, she had leaned forward and had set her full red mouth upon his. Then, without a word, she went back
to her work.
Astonished, Richard said lightly: “Dear me, I thought it was the bride who got kissed?”
This time Caroline’s tone was dry. “It is, usually. But, you see, I don’t know Lysbet Marlowe very well. Certainly not well enough to kiss her—”
There Richard had dropped the subject, his next remark across the surgery being strictly professional. He had been very interested to see what would happen at the meeting of the two girls after that. But if he had expected Caroline to be cryptic or anything other than her usual, consciously charming self, he was disappointed. He had to admit that she said just the right things to Lysbet. And Lysbet, bless her, was obviously glowing with happiness at the pleasure she believed she was giving Caroline in having promised to marry Richard.
But somehow, though she had questioned him eagerly as to ‘what Caroline had said’ to his news, he hadn’t been able to bring himself to reporting the scene quite faithfully. He hadn’t been able himself, he had argued, to understand Caroline’s attitude. Had she been pleased? Or had she—incredible idea!—been as jealous of Lysbet as that first, chagrined look of hers had seemed to betray? But in any case, there wasn’t any reason for attempting to interpret it to Lysbet...
Lysbet, too, had had her announcements to make—to Aunt Alicia and to Eliot Bradd. As they had returned to the house, hand in hand through the darkness, Richard had urged that they should tell Mrs. Tempest at once.
But Lysbet had begged to be allowed to tell her herself. “Tomorrow. I’ll tell her tomorrow,” she had promised. “Tonight is ours. Let’s keep it for ourselves!”
At that she had trembled a little and Richard had loosed her hand in order to put his arm around her waist and to draw her closer to him.
“She won’t mind?” he demanded. “Because if she is likely to make difficulties, I’m damned if you shall tell her alone, Lysbet!”
“No. No, she won’t mind, of course. It’s only that—well, I’ve been so much to her, it’s bound to be something of a shock. I’d rather tell her myself. Please, Richard—”