But now Hope experienced a quite violent revulsion of feeling. She felt genuinely sorry for the little boy Errol Tamberly had been. Passionately devoted, apparently, to a very beautiful mother who found any displays of emotion both absurd and embarrassing.
“I wonder,” thought Hope, “why she is bothering to get married again. Because her fortunate choice lives in an even more comfortable and luxurious house, I suppose.”
And just at that moment Mrs. Tamberly said graciously:
“You must come over and see me when I’m settled in my new home. It’s quite lovely. Much bigger than Errol’s place”—her home for thirty-five years was already simply “Errol’s place,” Hope noticed—“and standing in the loveliest park in the county.”
Hope thanked her and said politely that would be very nice and no doubt Bridget and Tony would like to come too.
Mrs. Tamberly said, “Of course,” but without enthusiasm, and Hope suddenly felt profoundly thankful that this strange, passionless woman was not going to be in charge of the twins any longer. Not that she would be anything but conscientious, and even kind, according to her lights (rather dim lights, Hope couldn’t help thinking), but enthusiasm and eagerness and spontaneity just died a natural death in the dead calm of her presence.
At the end of the meal it transpired that the lunch was Mrs. Tamberly’s “party,” and the roll of notes from which she paid the bill secretly impressed and astonished Hope by its size. Comfortable living she was used to, but this was something quite different. There was evidently no lack of money in the Tamberly household, and she supposed that, as Errol’s wife, she too would have the handling of a great deal more than had ever come her way before.
As Errol’s wife.
The phrase had a curious, unreal ring to it, and though she turned it over many times in her mind on the journey down to Orterville, it never seemed to emerge from the mists of supposition into the cold light of fact.
The twins were waiting for them on the platform, and the eagerness of their greeting made Hope very glad that she had agreed to some.
“Is your Uncle Errol here with the car?” Mrs. Tamberly asked.
“No. Boles is,” Tony explained. While Bridget added:
“Uncle Errol went riding, but he said we could come down and meet you.”
“I wish your uncle wouldn’t ride that wicked black thing,” Mrs. Tamberly said plaintively. “Though I suppose he’s at liberty to break his own neck if he wants to.”
“Oh, I don’t think he’ll break his neck,” Bridget cried anxiously.”
“He can manage Lucifer,” Tony declared with tolerant amusement. And Hope was once more struck by the faith of the twins in the infallibility of their new uncle.
On the drive to the house the children were full of information about their new life, and, in the familiarity of their eager chatter, Hope lost something of the sensation of unreality which had clung to her ever since last night. Here were she and the children talking of normal things. It was impossible that the fantastic future could materialize on the lines she feared.
All the same, she felt that until she had seen Errol and talked to him, she would not know any real peace of mind.
Was it possible that the whole thing was just a rather elaborate but salutary warning to her not to put so much faith in what the Richard Fanders of this world said? Was he just administering a very frightening lesson, which would end in his scornful laugh and a particularly painful version of “I told you so”?
Hope felt that she could bear it very well, if so, but her common sense also told her that five hundred pounds was a stiff price for even a rich man to pay for the pleasure of teaching her a lesson—however badly needed.
A new restlessness entered into her, and she felt she could hardly bear even the well-loved company of the twins, as they followed her about the house, pointing out things to her and explaining the obvious at great length.
Mrs. Tamberly, presumably worn out by the exertion of shopping, was resting, and presently Tony went off on some private affair of his own. It was at this point that Hope took a sudden decision.
“Bridget, do you know which way Doctor Tam—your Uncle Errol—went?”
“Why, yes.” Bridget looked slightly surprised. “Across the five-acre field at the back of the house and over the hill and down towards the river. Why?”
“I want to—to have a talk with him. I thought perhaps I might walk out to meet him on his return. Just a little way, you know, and—”
“Oh, yes. Let’s. I’ll come too,” Bridget agreed heartily.
“Would you mind very much if I went alone?” Hope wished furiously that she hadn’t blushed as she said that, particularly as Bridget regarded her with unwinking interest. “I rather wanted a private talk, and it’s—so difficult in the house.”
“You mean Mrs. Tamberly’s always butting in with things that don’t matter,” Bridget said sympathetically.
This was so exactly what Hope did mean that she found it impossible to pretend she didn’t.
“I don’t mind,” Bridget assured her obligingly. “I’ll go and work in my garden. Did you know we each have a small garden? I’ll show you mine on the way out, and then I can point out the way Uncle Errol went.”
Divided between thankfulness and nervous anticipation, Hope pulled on her cream coat over her beech-brown jumper suit, and came out into the garden with Bridget. She dutifully admired the small, well-dug square, in which Bridget assured her all sorts of improbable plants were already almost sprouting, and then, leaving her little sister in a state of panting activity, she set out across the five-acre field.
Hope walked rapidly, her hands dug deep into the pockets of her coat, pretending to herself that only the cool April air was responsible for her tendency to tremble. She had very little idea of what she was going to say when she saw him, though she rehearsed one or two weak opening sentences to herself as she went along. A lot would depend on how she felt when she actually saw him—And then she did see him—riding over the hill towards her on the horse which Mrs. Tamberly had described, not unjustly, as ‘that wicked black thing.’
She saw the surprise in Errol’s face as he rode up and dismounted, and then walked towards her, flinging the reins over his arm.
“Why, Hope, has something happened?”
“No,” she said a little breathlessly. “No, of course not. I just—thought I’d—like to walk out and meet you.”
“That was uncommonly nice of you.” She thought she detected a certain dryness in his tone. “But then perhaps the brightness of the sunshine tempted you.”
Hope swallowed.
“Yes. It is rather a nice afternoon, isn’t it?”
He gave her a curious glance and then laughed curtly. “Come, Hope, you didn’t come out to discuss the weather with me, did you?”
She drew a long breath.
“No. I—there was something else I wanted to discuss. I thought it would be best to do it out here where we could be on our own.”
“Yes?” He looked extremely cool, but she noticed with faintly alarmed surprise that the line of his jaw was rigid and that a slight pulse beat in the side of his neck.
She had fallen into step beside him now and they were walking slowly down the slope of the hill together—she with her hands still rammed into her pockets, he with one hand unusually tight on his horse’s rein.
“It was about—our talk last week—I mean this week.” It seemed like a month ago! “I was to come and tell you on Monday what I—I had decided to do. At least—”
“All right. I know. You don’t really have to refresh my memory, you know,” he told her with a rather grim little smile. “I have it all quite clear in my mind.”
Of course he had. All he wanted to know was what had happened.
“I handed over the five hundred pounds,” Hope explained almost calmly. And then the rest of the explanation stuck in her throat and no other words would come.
He waited—perhaps giving
her a moment to recover herself. Then with his disengaged hand he took her lightly by the arm.
“This is rather unfairly difficult for you. Shall I complete it for you? There isn’t going to be any marriage with Richard Fander, is there?”
There was a moment’s silence. Then Hope wordlessly shook her head.
“You can say ‘I told you so’, if you like,” she said rather huskily at last.
“I shouldn’t waste time saying anything so futile,” he assured her. “Instead I shall say—and what about the alternative?”
She glanced up quickly at him.
“You mean—marrying you?”
“I do.”
“Well, I’m prepared to stick to my word, of course.”
He drew a deep breath, and she felt his fingers tighten for a moment on her arm.
“So you’re prepared to stick to your word, are you? Then”—she knew suddenly that he was smiling although she was not looking at him—“I take it we are engaged?”
Hope bit her lip.
“I suppose—we are.”
He released her arm and, putting his hand into the pocket of his riding breeches, drew out a small jeweller’s box.
“If you don’t like this, Hope, you can choose something else later. But—I’d like you to have this now.”
Before her astonished gaze he opened the box, to display a slender platinum ring in which two dazzling diamonds twinkled splendidly from the midst of an exquisitely delicate setting.
“But”—she stared at the ring—“were you so sure that things would go your way? Have you been carrying this about with you since you made your queer—I mean, your proposal?”
He laughed and flushed slightly.
“I allowed myself the indulgence of—hoping I should need this ring.”
She looked once more at the diamonds and then at him, trying to decide just what had prompted him to this. Errol Tamberly was not a man to indulge in some romantic fancy, surely? Was it just a gesture of bravado, to assure himself that his judgment could not be wrong?
“Suppose you let me put the ring on your hand,” his voice said quietly, and, for no special reason, she remembered the ridiculous word “masterful” which his mother had used of him.
With a feeling that there was absolutely nothing else to do, Hope drew her left hand from her pocket and held it out to him, the fingers slightly spread out.
He took her hand, lightly but quite firmly, in his own strong brown fingers, and the next moment the diamonds twinkled, not in the box, but on Hope’s hand.
She looked down at them in fascinated silence, telling herself that now she was engaged to Errol Tamberly—one step nearer being Mrs. Tamberly.
“Do you like it?” he asked gravely.
“It’s a beautiful ring,” Hope said.
“But you don’t much like what it implies?” There was the slightest harsh edge to his voice. It might have been anger, it might have been impatience, it might have been anxiety.
“I don’t—really know—what to make of it,” she confessed in a low voice.
“Why?” He spoke abruptly. “What is there so puzzling about it all?”
She hesitated a moment, and then spoke impulsively.
“Doctor Tamberly—”
“I think it will really have to be Errol,” he pointed out with a smile.
“Errol, then. Why do you want me to marry you? Is it because you want someone to run your house when your mother’s gone?—or because the twins need me?—or because—”
He laughed and, letting the horse go its own way, took her by both her hands.
“No, you silly little idiot,” he said quite gently. “It’s simply and solely because I love you.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
HOPE drew a sharp, quick breath. Then she stood staring down at their clasped hands, allowing the strange, unbelievable fact to sink into her consciousness.
Errol Tamberly loved her.
Until that moment, she had deliberately excluded that possibility from her mind, even while she sought for a reason for his offer of marriage. Almost any other reason, however far-retched and fantastic, had seemed more likely—and more acceptable.
Now she had his own word for it. It was impossible to escape the realization any longer. He loved her—and she had got to make her life with him, taking that fact into account.
How simple now seemed her first idea—that an amused, half-indifferent Errol wanted her to marry him for some motive of convenience! Hope felt at this moment that she could have managed such a situation with ease.
Instead, she would have to deal with a devoted Errol. A tiresomely devoted Errol was how his mother had put it. Though she remained outwardly calm, panic rose in her throat and nearly choked her.
“Well, Hope,” he said at last, when the silence had grown much longer than she realized, “is it such a shock?”
There was amusement in his tone, but anxiety in his eyes as she looked up at him at last.
“Yes—yes. I think—it is,” Hope said, truthful rather than tactful in the stress of the moment.
He laughed. Not a specially amused laugh, she thought.
“Why?” Is it so extraordinary that someone should fall in love with you?”
“Oh—no. At least, I suppose not.” Suddenly she remembered Richard, with such poignant regret and despair that she wanted to tear her hands away from Errol’s clasp and run right away from him.
“So extraordinary that I should fall in love with anyone, then?” he suggested.
“In the circumstances—yes.” Then she made herself meet his eyes squarely. “I’m not in the least in love with you, you know,” she insisted with desperate honesty.
“Not yet,” he agreed, and she found herself wondering if it were insufferable arrogance or a sort of touching optimism which made him set his mouth in that obstinate way.
The next moment she was astounded to find she had applied the word “touching” to him in any sense at all. She wondered why she had, and then remembered confusedly what Mrs. Tamberly had said of him as a little boy. And all at once, life seemed so dreadfully complex and pitiable and unmanageable that Hope wished she could just shut her eyes and not have to open them again for a long, long time.
Instead of such an easy escape, however, she had to do exactly like everyone else—deal with life as she found it, and make the best she could of it.
“I think—we’d better have this—quite clear, you know,” Hope said in as steady a voice as she could manage. “It isn’t only that I’m not in love with you. I—I can’t imagine myself ever being so. I’m only marrying you because—well, because I took a risk which didn’t come off, and now at least I feel I must have enough honesty to pay up.”
“Are you trying to frighten me off?” he enquired dryly.
“No,” Hope said. “I’m trying to keep you from going into something with your eyes shut. Something that—that might hurt you very much.”
He gave her a quick surprised look at that.
“Is it my feelings you’re worried about?” he asked sceptically. “What about yours?”
“I thought about those when I made the first decision,” Hope returned firmly. “I decided to risk them because I wanted to help Richard. I lost. But at least I’m not going into this with my eyes shut. That—that’s why it was you I was thinking about at the moment.”
He didn’t seem to have anything to say to that. She got another quick, half-puzzled look. Then he let go her hands and went over to his horse, which was now cropping the grass with an air of entirely deceptive meekness.
Errol caught him by the bridle and came rather slowly back to where Hope was standing.
“Shall we go on home now?”
Without saying anything, she fell into step beside him.
She supposed they could hardly leave their conversation broken off with ragged ends like that, but there seemed so little more to say. If she protested or argued it would sound as though she were trying to wriggle out of the ba
rgain, now that it had gone against her.
Then he said—with something of an effort, she thought:
“People marry for all sorts of reasons, Hope.”
“I know.”
“Some of the things I can offer would rank as—quite good reasons, I suppose.”
“You mean you’re very rich,” Hope said, with a sort of naive directness.
“Well, I am, as a matter of fact,” he admitted with a smile. “You make me feel a bit guilty about it, when you state the fact in that tone. But it has its uses.”
“Of course. Especially”—she too made an effort—“especially when you’re a generous man into the bargain.”
“Am I particularly generous?” He considered that impersonally. “I don’t know that I am, Hope.”
“I think you are. Materially generous, that is.”
“And spiritually mean, eh?”
“Oh, no! I didn’t intend to suggest that. I can’t imagine your being mean in any sense. Nothing so—so small as being mean.”
“Thank you,” he said, and though he smiled at her seriousness, he also flushed slightly.
“I suppose,” Hope explained, “I really meant that I don’t know very much about you except in the material, day-to-day way. The—the real you is rather an unread book, as far as I’m concerned.”
“Only you don’t like the binding much,” he suggested amusedly.
Hope smiled too then and looked at him, perhaps for the first time, with appraising rather than critical eyes.
“If by binding, you mean your looks,” she said judicially, “of course, strictly speaking, you’re a fine-looking man.”
Rather to her surprise, he laughed heartily at that. And, very much to her perturbation, he put his arm round her.
“I don’t think I was referring to my personal appearance, Hope, but we’re straining the metaphor a bit too far. Shall we leave it at this—that you don’t very much like what you know of me, but as that isn’t much, there may be considerable improvement later?”
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