At least I was glad to see her alone in this small private sitting room which had been carved off from the larger bedroom. Here Athmore grandeur had been very nearly banished. The rug had long ago faded to pale yellow-green and the walls had only a hint of sunlight painted into them. Most of the furniture was shabby, though of good vintage, and the upholstered things were slipcovered in plain materials. Maggie would have no Athmore ancestors looking down from her walls. Instead, there were outdoor scenes—watercolors of woods and hill-surrounded lakes, and one of a fox running, with the red-coated hunt coming after. I had once looked doubtfully at that very picture, and Maggie had said, “Don’t worry—the fox will get away. You can tell by the clumsy seat of those riders. It’s a ridiculous picture, but I like its colors. They cheer me when things are going badly, and its absurdity makes me smile.”
Things had often gone badly for Maggie. She had come to Athmore as a young girl when her mother took charge after the death of Justin’s and Marc’s parents in a tragic, flaming auto crash. After her mother died, Maggie, though only a few years older than Justin, had stepped into the breech so that Athmore continued to be their home. She had eventually married, only to lose her young husband at El Alamein during the war. She had not married again. Maggie never lacked courage and the ability to act, so that I found her a comforting and sustaining presence during my year at Athmore. Her optimistic belief that she could make things turn out for the best was reassuring, if not always practical. Now it was disconcerting to find this coolness in her despite the lie she had told for me.
I sat in a chair drawn invitingly near the fire, while she took the soft-cushioned sofa opposite me. Staring at a picture above the mantel—one Maggie herself had painted of an Athmore mare with a crescent of white on its black forehead, and sensitive velvet nostrils—I found an opening to break what seemed a too watchful silence.
“What about the stables—the horses?” I asked. “There was talk before I left of getting rid of them.”
“That’s been done,” she told me brusquely. “Cars are a necessity these days. There are three or four of those around the place now. The horses were a luxury and they had to go. Marc never cared for riding, and Justin no longer has time for it.”
So of course Maggie, who loved horses and riding, had made the necessary sacrifice in order to economize. I hoped that Nigel Barrow—if she married him—would give her a stableful and a place to ride them.
“I noticed your ring,” I said.
She glanced at the star sapphire on her left hand. The choice was a good one for her strong, capable hand. The delicacy of other jewels would have seemed a contradiction of her nature.
“Nigel chose it,” she said.
That was one up for old Nigel, I thought. I’d not have expected him to be so perceptive.
“It was Nigel who persuaded me to write and bring you here,” she added.
“Nigel?” I could not have been more surprised. “But why? Why did he think I should come?”
Maggie Graham was as honest a person as I had ever known—except where Justin and Marc were concerned. For them she would lie, or cheat, or do whatever was necessary to protect the charge she had taken so willingly upon her own shoulders when she was young. I had seen her do it. Now, however, she attempted to be frank, even though she watched me uneasily as she spoke, so that I wondered what it was she held back.
“It’s this possible marriage of Justin’s that appalls me. Nigel knows how worried I am. And since Justin has been like a brother to him, Nigel is worried too. Neither of us believes it can turn out well under the present circumstances.”
I’d had enough of evasion. “Is it Alicia Daven Justin means to marry?” I asked bluntly.
Maggie’s answer was indirect. “You’re the only one who might stop it, Eve. There were reasons for not sending for you, as you very well know. But Nigel thinks they no longer matter. What matters now is how you feel about Justin. That’s what I meant to talk to you about in London. Because there was no use in your coming here if you no longer care for him.”
This was something I could not answer—not even to myself. What Justin did was up to Justin and I could not interfere, no matter now much I hated to think that Alicia might someday be his wife. When he and I had married he had not told me about his past affair with her. In what I considered his arrogance, he had not felt it necessary for me to know, and consequently I had blundered unprepared into learning about her.
The facts had been simple enough. When Justin would not discuss Alicia with me, Maggie had told me about her. Alicia was Justin’s age and she had grown up at Grovesend, her parents’ house, not far from Athmore. Justin had known her all his life. After her mother died her father had lost heavily through unwise investments, so when she was old enough Alicia had taken a job in London on a fashion magazine. For several years she did not see much of Justin. Then a wealthy uncle had left her a tidy sum in his will, so she had chucked her job and returned to take over at Grovesend. Upon her father’s death she stayed on alone, and that was when she set her cap seriously for Justin.
“I could have liked her,” Maggie had told me. “She has beauty and a great deal of poise, and she was born to Justin’s world. But she always had a reckless, irresponsible streak that led her into escapades. I suppose their affair was a bit sultry, though things don’t last forever on that level alone. You came along and spoiled everything for her. She wasn’t able to hold him.”
This was the thing I had never understood. The why of Justin’s turning to me.
I looked up from the flaming coals of the fire and met Maggie’s gaze directly.
“Why?” I said. “Why did he marry me instead of Alicia, when he must have been in love with her all the time?”
Maggie snorted. “Athmore blood never seems to prompt its owners to reasonable behavior. Justin manages to keep his driving impulses under control most of the time. Perhaps that’s why they break out of bounds when he lets go.”
“But if he loved Alicia—”
“Oh, he did. For a time. But he didn’t trust her, and that always held him back. I’ve an idea the affair was thinning out a bit when you turned up. Somehow he trusted you at once. Don’t think he didn’t sing your praises to me! You know how he sets integrity above everything else, and you had all that straightforward American honesty on display. Besides, you had a special young appeal of your own, and you knew a great deal about Athmore. So he made the mistake of marrying you.”
I stared at the fire again. I knew what was coming now.
Maggie jumped restlessly to her feet, a tall figure in brown tweeds as she paced the faded yellow-green rug. “You could hardly have behaved more outrageously, Eve. Carrying on with Marc practically under Justin’s nose. Not that it fooled me—or Marc, either. You had to make Justin jealous because of Alicia, didn’t you? You had to destroy his belief in you. You had to behave like an absolute idiot!”
“Which I was,” I admitted.
I reached my hands toward the fire because the chill of Athmore had seeped into my bones. What Maggie accused me of was true, yet what had happened had not been exactly as she claimed. There had been circumstances that I might have explained at the time—if anyone had been willing to listen and believe me. I had been stupid, but I had not been faithless.
“What I found hardest to take was the way you deliberately involved Marc,” Maggie went on. “I’ve never forgiven you for that.”
So this was what Marc had told her, leaving no loophole for anything I might say. And of course this was what Justin believed.
Maggie was still pacing. “I had a dreadful time persuading Justin not to send Marc away from Athmore for good. I’ve never thanked you for what I went through for Marc at the time.”
“Apparently you succeeded,” I said wryly.
She came to a halt in front of me. “I’ve never understood it—never! Oh, I knew you were trying to slap out at Justin, but this seemed a cheap thing to do. I’d have expected more of you. I
thought you loved Justin.”
“I did,” I said.
“And don’t you now?”
I would not look at her. I wanted to answer furiously that I hated him. Yet I could not.
“I—I don’t know,” I said truthfully. My emotions were a tumult of confusion. How could I know how I felt while I was being tugged in so many directions?
Maggie turned from me and went to a window where the trumpet flowers of an azalea plant bloomed deeply pink in a green pot. Beyond lay the lawns and woods of Athmore that she had loved and served so well.
“What sort of an answer is that—you don’t know?” she asked after a moment.
“It’s no answer,” I admitted and gathered my courage for the hard thing I must say. “There’s nothing I can do. Justin has made his choice. Tomorrow I’ll be gone and I won’t have to see him again. I only came here to—to get myself back.”
She swung about so suddenly that I was startled. Without warning she swooped across the room, to put her strong, square hands upon my shoulders, pulling me up to face her. Like all the Norths, Maggie was tall, and I had to tilt my head to look up at her.
“Shaking me isn’t going to help,” I said.
She dropped her hands from my shoulders as if I’d slapped her and ran the fingers of one hand through her short graying hair, so that it looked the way it did when I’d seen her come in wind-rumpled from a ride on her favorite mare.
“I’m sorry, Eve,” she said. “Along with other traits I seem to have inherited the Athmore spleen. You’re the last one I should be angry with. When I saw you suddenly in the topiary garden this afternoon, I began to hope that Nigel was right and that just as you rescued Justin from Alicia before, you might save him again. You’re my last chance, I suppose, but I mustn’t blame you and scold you. Let’s sit down quietly, my dear, and talk this over.”
I dropped into my chair by the fire and braced myself to resist this softening, to resist any pressure she might put upon me.
“Justin can’t possibly marry that dreadful woman,” she told me flatly.
“Why not?” I challenged her. “If Justin wants her, what can you do?”
“Listen to me,” she said more quietly. She sat opposite me, her hands clapsed about her knees. “I never wrote you about how it was here after you left. Justin was like a wild man. He was sickened by your behavior and he was through with you, but I think he loved you and he didn’t take kindly to suffering over you. Goodness knows, Alicia would have offered him solace, but he was in no mood for her then. She was clever enough to wait. She went out of the country, took a jaunt around the world, and stayed away for a year. In the meantime her investments went well and she came home a richer woman than before and flung herself into a new venture. She bought a small casino in London—the Club Casella. She retained its original owner—a man named Leo Casella—as general manager. It was the sort of thing to satisfy her taste for gambling—though she doesn’t play the tables. She likes to appear as hostess—quite elegantly, you know—several nights a week, and she has made the club very smart and popular. Very jet set and swinging, and open only to the right people. Gambling’s quite the thing in London now, and Alicia fits in well.”
I wanted to hear none of this. None of it mattered except the fact that Alicia and Justin were together again. But Maggie showed me no mercy, and I had to listen.
“The odd thing about Alicia is that she seems to have come home a different woman. Outwardly. If anything, she’s more fascinating than before. But she seems to have learned a new serenity as well. I think she’s developed a lovely act, so that she seems to be offering comfort and peace to a lonely man. What used to exist between them seems to have deepened and matured.”
I swallowed hard. “Then why am I here?”
Maggie leaned toward me. “Because Nigel and I both believe that Justin is being thoroughly fooled. What Alicia has learned in her year away is how to play the role that will most please Justin.”
“He isn’t stupid!” I cried. “And he can’t like this gambling club. That’s not his sort of thing.”
“He doesn’t like it at all,” Maggie agreed. “But Alicia has convinced him that it’s a toy with which she amuses herself—though Nigel suspects that it’s a major source of her income. Anyway, she’s promised to give it up when she and Justin marry. She’ll come to him as a rich wife who will take the curse of poverty from Athmore.”
“That’s not why he’d marry her,” I put in indignantly.
“Of course not. But her money wouldn’t hurt, would it? Besides—if you love him so much that you must spring to his defense, why are you running away? Why don’t you stay and fight for what you want? Aren’t you woman enough by this time?”
I stared at her, appalled. After what she had told me, how could she possibly expect me to stay?
“I don’t love him,” I said as calmly as I could. “I don’t even hate him. I don’t feel anything at all about him except the need to go home and forget him. I can do that now. I’m glad you brought me here because you’ve made that possible.”
“If you must lie,” Maggie said, “learn to do it with more confidence. If you blunder into statements like that, with your fists flailing, no one will ever believe you.”
There was nowhere to hide my hot face. “Do you think I want to stay and be abused by Justin, insulted by him—treated the way he treated me today in the garden?”
“He treated you as he did because you upset him so badly,” Maggie said. “That’s the thing that gives me hope. He couldn’t take the sight of you calmly. He couldn’t shrug you off as he wanted to, so he had to fly into a rage and take his anger with himself out on you. How can two people be such total idiots about each other? Why don’t you wake up and face the truth about yourselves?”
I heard her out bleakly and said nothing more. I had done enough damage by trying to argue with Maggie Graham. She had always believed what she wanted to believe, and I must not let her words sway me into some impossible course that would hurt me more in the long run than if I turned tail and fled. The difficulty between Justin and me was no mere matter of a misunderstanding that could be cleared up with a little discussion. Quite aside from Alicia, there was too real a basis for our incompatibility and no chance at all that either could change enough to live with the other. A physical attraction there had certainly been—and so strong a one that it had clouded even Justin’s better judgment, while I had been too young to have any sort of judgment about my own emotions. Once the edge was off a little, we saw each other as the strangers we really were, and the trouble began. It wasn’t in me to play a role, as Alicia had apparently learned to do. If he couldn’t love me as I was, then I didn’t want his love anyway.
Maggie continued to watch me, and her look made me increasingly uneasy. Like Justin, she was never one to give up on a direction she had settled upon.
“Don’t you know what brought you here?” she asked abruptly. “You’re a grown woman and it’s time you faced up to a few things. At nineteen we couldn’t expect much of you. Now the least you can do is think this through sensibly. Face it and figure it out with your perfectly good brain, instead of using all that uncontrolled American emotion. Come downstairs tonight and join us for dinner. Get into the order of things again. Justin won’t be here. He’s going to Grovesend—you’ve frightened him that badly.”
So he had run from me straight to Alicia!
“Please—I don’t want to come down to dinner,” I said. “It’s not only because of Justin. I don’t want to see Marc either. The things he told you and Justin weren’t wholly true. Marc wanted me to leave. I never realized it until the end, but he wanted our marriage to break up.”
“And you helped him along,” Maggie said.
Marc was her darling, but there were times when I suspected that she had few illusions about him. She gave evidence of that now.
“Of course he was against your marriage. Marc would like to stay next in line as heir. Children could spoil
that for good. His approach to such matters is fairly simple—he is always in need of money. In fact—that’s his main difficulty now. I might as well tell you that one of the reasons I feel about Alicia as I do is because she’s encouraged Marc to run up huge debts at her club. She’s using him—perhaps as a weapon to hold over Justin’s head. Though she’d be skillful in using it, and she hasn’t let Justin know about this as yet.”
“Marc’s troubles are nothing to me,” I said. “And Justin can take care of his own head. I’ve told you—I never want to see Marc again.”
Maggie drew a long, deep breath and I knew she was angry with me. “You needn’t have any concern about Marc now. He has found a little girl who seems able to lead him about by the nose.”
“The girl who plays Petula Clark recordings?” I asked.
“Endlessly. Dacia Keane. She’s been rather a shock for Athmore to absorb. Far more than you ever were, since she’s the new England. She considers us terribly square Establishment, but she tolerates us kindly and forgives us our shabby luxury. She knows all about turning the world into something more swinging, and doesn’t mind telling us how we muff our chances. But you can come downstairs quite safely, Eve, since Justin won’t be there.”
“I’m not hungry,” I said.
Maggie sighed, but she gave in to my stubbornness more gracefully than usual. “Very well—stay here by the fire, and I’ll send you an early supper tray. After that flight across the Atlantic, you’ll be ready for a long night’s rest. Tomorrow we’ll have another chat. I’ve a number of things to see to now, so you can have this room to yourself for the evening, if you like. I’ll send up an old friend to see you in a little while. Perhaps someone more persuasive than I’ve been able to be.”
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