Away Went Love

by Mary Burchell

  “Oh, Richard!” She felt she could hardly bear the disappointment. One day’s delay was bad enough—but two!

  “Hope dear, I’m frightfully sorry, but there’s a job coming into the office late Thursday afternoon and I know I shan’t get away until any old hour.” He sounded at least as sorry and disappointed as she, but, to do him justice, he still made no effort to persuade her to put off the twins.

  “Could we—could we perhaps meet late and have supper together?”

  “Darling, it’s no good my saying yes, because I know I shan’t get away until really late.”

  “How late?” Hope asked rather forlornly.

  “Oh—tennish, perhaps. And then I shouldn’t be very good company,” he assured her.

  With an effort, Hope conquered the almost childishly strong wave of disappointment that had engulfed her. It was ridiculous of her! Of course she could wait another day. She was behaving like a little girl over a birthday treat.

  “Oh, well then, of course, we’ll make it Friday.” “Good!” He sounded so relieved that she wondered guiltily if he had thought her angry.

  “That will be lovely, Richard. And thank you, dear, for being so understanding about the twins.”

  “But, of course! One couldn’t disappoint two nice kids in their circumstances,” Richard declared, with such good-natured sincerity that Hope thought all over again what a darling he was and how silly she had been to think anything could go wrong between them.

  By the time she met Enid her good spirits were entirely restored. The fact must have been reflected in her face, for Enid’s greeting was:

  “How much better and happier you’re looking, Hope dear! I suppose you’ve got things settled now and feel quieter in your mind.”

  Hope agreed that things were certainly “settled” now, but she reflected a little grimly that quietness of mind had not been exactly a constant state with her since she had last seen Enid. However, Enid was fortunately the kind of person who assumes that flat contradiction is the only alternative to complete agreement, and that Hope had therefore endorsed her whole statement.

  “And now tell me all about the new arrangements,” she begged as tea was set before them. So Hope embarked on an account of the decisions taken. But at the second sentence Enid set down the teapot with a little scream of surprise and protest.

  “My dear, you don’t mean that those poor children are to be the wards of the terrible Doctor Tamberly!”

  “Enid, he’s not terrible! He’s rather nice—to them, I mean.”

  “But I thought you couldn’t bear him,” cried Enid, who was a creature of superlatives.

  “Nonsense. I only said I didn’t like him much and—and I have found him rather difficult at times. But he can be quite extraordinarily kind,” Hope insisted, with an earnestness born of the knowledge that she owed a great deal to him now.

  “Well. I must say you’re not very consistent, darling.” Enid resumed her tea-pouring.

  “Anyway, Daddy chose him as their guardian and—”

  “But men are so silly,” Enid interjected.

  “This was a perfectly good choice,” Hope stated firmly, a little surprised to find herself defending the arrangement so wholeheartedly. “Besides”—she waited until her tea had been handed to her before completing the sentence, because she knew Enid was apt to hold up proceedings while expressing shock—“besides, there isn’t any money after all.”

  Then, before Enid could do more than clasp her hands and look stricken, she went on to explain the financial situation.

  “But, my poor pet, how frightful!” Enid really meant that and her sympathetic horror was genuine. “What are you going to do?”

  “Nothing,” replied Hope, who always became more matter-of-fact as Enid became more intense. “The twins are provided for—in a most generous manner, I might say—and I’ve got my salary at the Lab.”

  “But it’s quite different when you have to manage on that alone,” Enid declared with truth.

  “Yes, I know. But—”

  “You’ll have to leave your lovely little flat!”

  “Yes. Perhaps, but—”

  “There’s no perhaps,” Enid insisted tragically. “You just don’t know what it’s like, dear, to have to manage on half or two-thirds of what you’ve always had.”

  Hope realized the truth of that, but, at the same time, had toyed with the idea that she and Richard might go on living in the flat after their marriage. Certainly she had never seriously faced the prospect of leaving it.

  “As a matter of fact, it may turn out that I can stay on at the flat.”

  “D’you mean things aren’t as bad as they seem?”

  “Not—exactly.” Hope hesitated. Then her desire to tell someone became too strong to resist. “Enid, I haven’t told you before because it wasn’t really settled, but I’m probably getting married quite soon.”

  “Not Tamberly?” cried Enid in the manner of one recognizing the villain in the melodrama.

  “No, of course not,” exclaimed Hope rather crossly. It was too stupid of Enid to give voice to that remote possibility. “Why ever do you think I should be marrying Errol Tamberly?”

  “Well—you know—the man with the money—guardian of your young brother and sister—all that sort of thing,” Enid explained with what she evidently took to be logical deduction.

  “Don’t be silly. This isn’t a film,” Hope said crisply. “Anyway, it’s someone quite different from Errol Tamberly. He’s—”

  “Got money?” enquired Enid briskly.

  “Not much. But we’ll be very happy together all the same,” Hope assured her quickly. “His name’s Richard. Richard Fander. And he’s an architect and—oh, you’ll like him awfully, Enid. You couldn’t help it.”

  “I’d like him better if he had lots of money, to make up for what your father didn’t leave,” Enid declared with shameless candor.

  “Oh, well, never mind about that,” Hope said with a laugh. “We shan’t be exactly poverty-stricken—and we’re very much in love.”

  “That does all right at first,” Enid conceded. “Let’s hope he has a big rise in salary before it wears off. Now tell me how you met him and what he’s like to look at and when I shall have a chance of seeing him.”

  So Hope obligingly entered on a further list of details about Richard, and all the time she was talking about him and her future plans to Enid, she felt her own sense of security and happiness deepening. To have reached the point of discussing minor details with Enid made it quite inconceivable that there should be any hitch now in the happy future which she sketched so willingly.

  By the time she left Enid, Hope was even reconciled to the fact that she would not be seeing Richard until Friday, and, since she was really not at all a one-subject girl, she was able to take the liveliest pleasure in the thought of seeing her young brother and sister the next day.

  The visit of the twins was an unqualified success. Both rather undemonstrative children in the ordinary way, they were on this occasion so delighted to see the one other member of their family again, that they almost literally fell on Hope and hugged her. But it was quite evident, as soon as they had time to talk in anything but unison, that they were happy at Orterville and most kindly looked after.

  “Uncle Errol’s really a darling,” Bridget declared, and though Tony was not given to such romantic phraseology, he added that Uncle Errol was quite a good chap, which amounted, Hope knew, to equally high praise.

  “And I hope you’re both very good.” She smiled very affectionately at them as they sat either side of the fire, eating their supper and turning their eager, bright faces towards her every other minute.

  “We’re just ordinary, you know,” Bridget said engagingly. “Mrs. Tamberly says we both have nice manners, so I suppose we have. She should know. I should think she knows everything about things like manners, wouldn’t you?” Hope agreed that Mrs. Tamberly was probably a very good authority on social behavior.


  “Did you know she’s going to get married again? Don’t you think it’s funny that anyone as old as that should get married?” Tony said casually.

  “Married? Mrs. Tamberly! Is she really?” Hope’s astonishment evidently gratified the children.

  “We think it’s queer too,” Bridget said. “She must be quite as old as Mother. Don’t you think so?”

  Hope didn’t offer to say, though, in a passing guess, she put Mrs. Tamberly at a very, very well-preserved fifty-five. Still, there was no need to start the twins on the very absorbing topic of the ages of grown-ups, so she hastily retrieved her position by adding:

  “But of course she is very attractive and charming. And people do marry a second time.”

  “Or a third or a fourth time,” declared Bridget, who followed the domestic tangles of her film favorites with close attention. “But not the Mrs. Tamberly sort of person.”

  “Anyway, the man she’s marrying is quite old too.” Tony added. “Boles—that’s the chauffeur—says he’s the richest man in the district and he wishes he had a shilling for every five-pound note Mr. Hullin has.”

  Hope said rather hastily how nice, and would Mrs. Tamberly continue to live in the district? And then she led the children away from the topic, as it was obvious that they and Boles had already discussed it at somewhat unsuitable length.

  But later, when the twins were in bed, and she was free to pursue her own line of thought, she returned to the subject. Was this perhaps the explanation of Errol Tamberly’s queer proposal of marriage?—if one could call it a proposal. He wanted someone to run his home as smoothly and agreeably as his mother, and thought—though why, it was hard to say—that she would be the right person to fill the role.

  ‘Though what special qualifications I have, apart from being the sister of the twins and therefore a possible choice, I don’t know,’ Hope told herself.

  Anyway, the question was one of only academic interest, of course, since the matter would never be put to the practical test.

  She saw the children off at Charing Cross in the morning before going on to the Laboratory, and was glad to notice that they were in excellent spirits and spoke quite naturally of “going home.” Whatever Errol Tamberly’s faults might be, he had certainly succeeded in making the twins feel welcome.

  It was an uneventful day. The kind of day when one wished idly that something exciting would happen. Such a pity that Richard had not been free this evening. But of course work did have to come first sometimes, and, in a way, she was glad that he showed himself so conscientious about it. In any case, there were half a dozen things to be done at home, and she could well fill an evening with odd jobs.

  In the end, Hope decided to have a meal out before going home, so that she could give the whole evening to clearing up the various small tasks she had in mind.

  She had an early dinner at a quiet little restaurant near Leicester Square, and then, since it was a beautiful evening, sauntered a little way before picking up her bus home. There were a great number of people about, enjoying the evening sunlight as she was herself, and outside one of the big cinemas was a particularly dense crowd, watching the arrival of celebrities for a film premiere.

  A little against her will, Hope got caught up in the crowd, and was the involuntary witness of the arrival of a famous actress, a Cabinet Minister and a couple of dozen quite undistinguished people. It was all rather amusing and interesting, but Hope was anxious to get home by now, and she had already turned to make her way out of the crowd when yet another car drew up. With a flourish the be-medalled commissionaire threw open the door—and out stepped Richard in evening dress.

  He turned to give his hand to a slight, pretty girl in a mink coat, and the next moment they had both entered the foyer of the cinema.

  The whole incident had not taken more than a few seconds, and Hope stood looking after them, oblivious of the crowd which jostled her, wondering if her eyesight and her imagination had played her some preposterous trick.

  Richard had not been able to come out with her that evening because he had to work late at the office. Yet here was Richard, very much on pleasure bent, acting as escort to an expensively dressed girl on an important social occasion. It simply didn’t make sense.

  Somehow Hope pushed her way out of the crowd and, no longer in any mood for strolling, boarded her bus for home.

  The bus was almost empty and she sat right up in front, isolated, staring out of the window and yet seeing hardly anything of the passing streets.

  What had Richard been doing? Why hadn’t he told her quite frankly that this was the engagement which kept him from joining her? It must be some long-standing engagement—it must be. Something which he hardly liked to bring forward as a reason for delaying their own celebration, and yet something which he felt he could not possibly put off.

  But then, why not tell her? Why resort to some silly glib lie? For a moment she wondered whether she had sounded so dismayed and annoyed that he had hastily invented the old office excuse.

  But that was absurd! He knew he could be frank with her. Surely he knew that.

  More by instinct than observation she got off the bus at the right stop, and she felt something like relief when she reached her own flat at last. As she closed the door behind her, she imagined for a second that she shut out the tormenting thoughts which had accompanied her home. But they were back with her again almost before she had taken off her hat and coat.

  She was, however, ready to consider them in a more balanced and reasonable state of mind. Suppose that Richard had been asked at the very last minute to accompany this girl—that the expected work had not come into the office after all—that he had tried to get in touch with Hope herself and not been able to do so? It was rather a lot to have to suppose, Hope admitted—and it still didn’t explain his friendly, intimate air towards his companion—but there must be some explanation of the sort.

  Could she be a sister?—a favorite cousin?—some sort or relation? Hope wondered distractedly. But she knew Richard had been an only child, and somehow a favorite cousin who had never been even mentioned in their conversations seemed a rather improbable sort of relative.

  Hope was not by nature in the slightest degree jealous. If she could have thought of any reasonable explanation why Richard should be taking out a girl other than herself on this particular evening she would have hoped he enjoyed himself and left it at that.

  But what hurt and frightened her almost past bearing was the idea that he might have lied to her. And if he had lied about this, what security was there in anything else connected with Richard?

  Again and again she tried to comfort herself with specious excuses or with assurances that tomorrow he would tell her all about it and she would be divided between amusement and shame to think how frightened she had been. But never once, in the whole of the dreadful evening or the broken night which followed, did Hope have one moment of real confidence and reassurance.

  This time the morning brought no relief—only the fresh realization that a whole day had to be lived through before any explanations were possible.

  Hope was an exact and conscientious worker in the usual way, but it took all the concentration of which she was capable to avoid making mistakes that day. And when the afternoon came to an end at last, she felt weary and depressed, and entirely unfitted for tackling what might prove to be a delicate and difficult situation.

  Still, there was a certain measure of relief in the knowledge that the waiting was over and that now at least she would know the truth.

  When she reached the familiar little restaurant where they had agreed to meet, Richard was already waiting for her and, as he came forward with a welcoming smile, she felt some of the chill round her heart relax.

  He kissed her—with an easy charm that surely held sincerity too—and told her how much he had missed seeing her during the last few days.

  Hope hardly knew what reply she made. Something adequate, she supposed, and accompanied by a
sufficiently convincing smile, because he seemed to see nothing wrong. And then he was busy ordering their meal, consulting her half laughingly, half teasingly, as though her likes and dislikes were a matter of real moment to him.

  But at last that too was over, and the smiling waiter went away, leaving them alone, pleasantly isolated at their corner table.

  Now! This was the moment. This was when Richard should plunge eagerly into explanations. Hope thought her very breathing would stop with the intensity of her nervous excitement.

  Then she saw from his expression that something quite gay and trivial was coming, and, unable to bear the waiting any longer, she said in a voice that sounded curiously unlike her own:

  “How—did you get on—yesterday evening?”

  “Yesterday evening?”

  “Yes,” Hope said rather faintly. “Did you have to work very late at the office?”

  “I’ll say I did.” He grinned at her. “As a matter of fact—”

  She didn’t hear the rest. To her surprise, she really did feel for a moment as though the room swung round her, and she had to concentrate all her attention on keeping her head.

  Then, as everything settled down again, the clear conviction came to her that there was only one thing to do. Quietly, but quite incisively, she cut across what he was saying.

  “You’re lying, aren’t you, Richard? You weren’t at the office at all. You were at the premiere of that film at the ‘Magnifique,’ with a very pretty, very expensively dressed girl.”

  She heard him catch his breath in a dismayed little hiss, and, terrified suddenly that he would try to tell her more lies, she hurried on:

  “Please don’t deny it or—or try to explain it away, There’s something so degrading about having lies told to one. I’d so much rather know the truth, however unpleasant.”

  She hesitated a moment, and Richard broke in, a little hoarsely:

  “Well, the truth is that she’s the daughter of the head of the firm. It’s very important to be—to be on good terms with her.”

  “Why, Richard?” Hope’s grey eyes rested on him gravely.