Eustace sat beside Miss Verrey, who adored him.
Valentine was not there.
When Timothy had shaken hands all round, he asked where she was. Helena answered at once, “She’s a little overdone, and I’ve sent her to bed. She’s got to look her best to-morrow. Won’t you have some coffee?”
Timothy helped himself to coffee. He did not sit down, but stood with his back to the fire and looked about him. Valentine had been sent to bed so that she should look her best to-morrow.… Now what exactly did Helena mean by that? Had Valentine spoken, or had she not spoken? Helena’s face never told one very much. She would continue to behave beautifully whether the roof fell in or not.
He turned his attention to Eustace. Old Miss Verrey was telling him long rambling tales of his own childhood. He wore an air of aloof gloom. This was nothing new; he nearly always looked gloomy in the bosom of his family. But to-night Timothy thought he discerned a difference; there was a touch of decorum, a hint of restrained satisfaction, which suggested the heir at a funeral. Timothy thought that Eustace knew. Something in him hardened.
He put his cup on the mantelpiece, and approached his sister.
“Helena, could I have a word with you?”
Helena knew too. She didn’t start or show anything that anyone else would have noticed, but Timothy, following her into her own sitting-room, was quite certain that he would not have to make any explanations. Helena certainly knew. He spoke on this assumption:
“What are you doing about it, Helena?”
Mrs. Ryven was putting one of the miniatures straight. It depicted Marianne Kinnaird, who had married Maurice and Edmund Ryven’s grandfather in the thirties. Her husband frowned beside her on the mantelpiece in an admiral’s blue and gold.
“What do you mean, Timothy?”
“Don’t you know what I mean? I take it Valentine has shown you Bowden’s statement?”
There was just a perceptible pause before Helena answered.
She said “Yes” gravely, and then asked, “How is it that you know anything about it?”
“Valentine showed me the statement—or rather I was there when she opened it. Bowden had made her promise only to open it in the presence of a friend.”
Helena seemed to be thinking.
“When was this?”
“I think I won’t say. It’s not to the point. I take it Eustace knows?”
“Certainly.”
“Well, that brings me back to my first question—what are you going to do about it?”
“Do about it? Nothing.”
Timothy controlled himself.
“Did Valentine tell you that she wished to break off her engagement?”
“She said something about it. She seemed to think that Eustace was marrying her for her money, and wouldn’t want her without it, poor child.”
Timothy was thirty-four years of age, and during the whole of that time he had lived at close quarters with his sister Helena; yet it may be said that she staggered him. He wasn’t going to lose his temper yet, but there was a gleam in his eye.
“That won’t do,” he said. “You know as well as I do that she doesn’t want to marry Eustace any more than Eustace wants to marry her.”
Helena lifted her eyebrows.
“It’s a little late in the day to say that—and not, I think, in the best of taste.”
Timothy laughed. The laugh was an angry one.
“I want to see Valentine.”
“Then I’m afraid you can’t.”
He changed his ground.
“Look here, Helena, what are you going to gain by forcing that poor child into a wretched marriage? You know she doesn’t care for Eustace. You know Eustace doesn’t care for her.”
“I don’t know anything of the sort.” She hesitated. “It’s not a thing I’d say to anyone else, but as a matter of fact it was Valentine herself who first proposed the marriage. I was completely taken by surprise; and so, I fancy, was Eustace.”
Timothy’s eyes blazed and his jaw stuck out.
“And who dragged her through those beastly slums and worked on her feelings until she was ready to do anything that would let Eustace get on with his job? You say she suggested the marriage. Can you look me in the face and say you don’t know why she suggested it? Good Lord, she was ready to do anything! She was ready to make herself miserable for life if it was necessary. She nearly cried for joy when she found the money wasn’t hers, because she thought she’d get free. On the top of that, do you mean this marriage to go on?”
“Why, of course—what else? Really, Timothy! Are you suggesting that Eustace should throw the poor child over at the eleventh hour just because the money turns out to be his, and not hers after all?”
“I’m not thinking about Eustace”—Timothy’s voice had roughened—“I’m thinking about her. She doesn’t want to marry him, and she shan’t.”
Helena Ryven looked at him with a faint sarcasm.
“My dear Timothy, you won’t mind if I ask you why you consider it your business.”
Timothy met the sarcasm doggedly.
“It’s my business because I care.”
“And no one else does?”
“Not about Valentine. You only care about Eustace, and about what people are going to say.”
Helena Ryven flashed into anger. Timothy had always had the power to anger her. She managed other people, but she had never been able to manage Timothy; not even when he was four years old, a blunt, obstinate baby, who always knew exactly what he wanted and couldn’t be persuaded to want anything else. She lost her temper and lost her advantage.
“You’ve never understood Eustace or appreciated him.”
Timothy recovered his balance.
“Oh, yes, I have. You’re wrong if you think I haven’t. I give him marks for what he’s been doing in those beastly slums. I can admire him all right when he’s sacrificing himself. But you want me to admire him whilst he’s sacrificing Valentine. It’s not fair, Helena, it’s not fair. And what’s more, you know it. Everyone has a right to sacrifice himself, but no one has the right to sacrifice someone else. And Valentine’s a child that doesn’t know what she’s doing. Good Lord, Helena, you don’t need me to tell you that!” He came up to her with a hard, direct, insistent look. “That’s true, isn’t it? Don’t you know it’s true?”
Helena looked back at him indignantly.
“My dear Timothy, we are not on the stage. I gather that you are in love with Valentine. I suppose that is some excuse for the exaggerated view you are taking. But really I think it is a pity that you should make a parade of your feelings like this. In the circumstances, it seems to me to be in atrocious taste, to say the least of it.”
“It would!” said Timothy with a short laugh. “I think I’d better talk to Eustace.”
He went towards the door, and just as he reached it, Helena called him:
“Timothy—”
“What is it?”
“You can’t make a scene now!”
“Can’t I? You’ll see!” He laughed again. “As a matter of fact, I’ve no more wish to make a scene than you have. But I shall certainly make one if I don’t see Valentine and hear from her own lips that she wants to marry Eustace.”
The door close to Timothy opened as he spoke. Eustace came into the room. He looked from his mother to Timothy. Then he shut the door and crossed over to where Helena Ryven was standing with an unwonted flush in her cheeks.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“Timothy has apparently come here for the purpose of informing us that we do not know how to treat Valentine. He was announcing his intention of making a scene before you came in.”
Timothy stood just where he was. He spoke to Eustace:
“I’ve read Edward Bowden’s statement. I came here to ask what you were going to do about it.”
Eustace looked as stiff as a poker.
“How could there be any question of what I should do?”
“Look here, Eustace! I only want to know one thing. I take it for granted that you want to marry Valentine. All I want to know is this—does Valentine want to marry you?”
“It is a little late in the day to ask that,” said Helena.
“Valentine,” said Eustace, “is, naturally, prepared to carry out her engagement. Mr. Bowden’s disclosure would otherwise leave her in a very awkward position.” He spoke with offence and a certain air of not being entirely sure of his ground.
Timothy advanced a step.
“Look here,” he said, “this is without gloves! I’ll admit that you’re in a damned awkward position, but I’m not going to see Valentine sacrificed to save anyone’s face. She opened that statement because she was so unhappy that she didn’t know what to do. I think she didn’t show you the first page—the page he made her sign—No, I thought not. It was a promise not to open the envelope unless things were so bad that they couldn’t be any worse. Well, she read that through in my presence, and she opened it because she felt that nothing could be worse than for her to marry someone she didn’t love, and who didn’t love her. You don’t, you know. You never did. You only wanted to get on with your work. And she, poor kid, thought it was her duty, and was killing herself to do it. D’you know what she said when I’d finished reading the statement to her? She said, ‘Then I needn’t marry Eustace!’ And she meant it.”
Eustace was fearfully pale.
“If you and Valentine—” he began.
“What are you going to do about it?” said Timothy.
“If you and Valentine have an understanding—”
“We haven’t.”
“Then I think you had better leave me to manage my own affairs. Hadn’t you?”
“Damn your affairs! You and Helena think of nothing else—your affairs, and what other people are going to say about your affairs. Cut it out, can’t you? Valentine doesn’t want to marry you, and I’m here to see that she isn’t pushed into it.”
Mrs. Ryven commanded herself. Her colour remained high, but her manner was assured.
“I think, Timothy, that if you will cast your mind back to the occasion of our last difference, you will perhaps remember that you told me, not very politely, to mind my own business. If I was not permitted to remonstrate with you about your sister Lil’s most undesirable engagement, I really do not see how you can consider yourself entitled to interfere in Eustace’s affairs.”
“It’s Valentine’s affairs that I’m concerned with, Helena. Eustace can do anything he damn well pleases, but I mean to see that Valentine has a fair show. I mean to see her.”
“You can’t—she’s gone to bed.”
“Then in the morning—”
Eustace put his mother aside.
“I think you had better go away,” he said. “I have not any desire to press Valentine. I think I am the person to see her.”
“The whole thing is absurd! All girls panic at the last minute. Ida nearly ran away.” Mrs. Ryven laughed a little. “Ida! You’re making a mountain out of a molehill.”
“I’ve got to see Valentine,” said Timothy.
“In the morning,” said Helena Ryven. She thought she could manage that. There would be a rush and a bustle, and even Valentine could hardly propose to go back on her word when the wedding guests were arriving. Besides, she wouldn’t leave her alone with Timothy. She said, “To-morrow,” and smiled.
“Then I’ll say good-night,” said Timothy.
Helena’s smile sent the blood to his head. He was afraid of what he might do or say. He went to the door, and then turned.
“If I don’t see her when I come up to-morrow, I’ll stop her on her way up the aisle. If you want a scandal, you know the way to get one,” he said, and went out.
CHAPTER XXXII
Valentine drank the soup that Agnes brought her, and she ate some chicken, because Agnes said that if she didn’t eat it, Mrs. Ryven would come up. Then she lay down in the dark and presently she slept. She did not know that she was going to sleep. She slipped into it suddenly and was submerged. No consciousness, no dreams; just a blank space. And then a sharp awakening.
A thrill of terror went through her as she opened her eyes. It couldn’t be morning already. No, it was dark. She turned on the light and looked at her watch. It was eleven o’clock.
It was eleven o’clock. Everyone had gone to bed. No one would come near her until the morning. This thought was such a relief that she began to think clearly again. She hadn’t been able to think; she had only been able to feel that she must do what Aunt Helena wanted her to do. It was a dreadful feeling. The minute she began to think again, the pressure of Helena Ryven’s will lessened. No one would come near her for hours and hours. But in the morning they would come, and Felton and Agnes would dress her in her wedding dress, and she would have to go to church and marry Eustace, because if she didn’t—There wasn’t any “If.” Aunt Helena would make her do it.
She wondered if everyone had really gone to bed. And as she wondered, she heard something. It was the tap of a heel on the polished floor just outside the door. There was a second tap, and then silence. Someone was there. Someone was standing outside her door listening.
Valentine was leaning on her elbow, with her watch in her hand. The little table with the lamp on it was between her and the door, and she could see the door. She saw the handle move. And in a moment she had put down her watch and buried as much of her face as possible in the pillow. There was no time to turn round; she had to face the light and the door. She shook her hair forward, brought her hands up under her chin, and lay still.
The door was opening slowly, and a voice said, “Valentine—” It was Helena Ryven’s voice. She said “Valentine” again in the low, even tone of someone who wants to find out whether you are awake or not.
Valentine’s lashes trembled as her eyelids shut closer. She felt cold and sick at the thought of having to talk to Helena again. You can’t talk to a person who is asleep. If she was asleep, Helena would go away.
Mrs. Ryven did not speak again. She came into the room without making any sound and stood looking down on Valentine. The lamp cast a circle of light on the dark polished table, and a diffused golden twilight upon Valentine. She was lying on her side, her hair over her face and her brown hands clasped under her chin, and all that Helena could really see was the curve of her cheek and part of her mouth and chin—a red mouth, a pale cheek, a soft round chin.
Helena had come because it was her duty to see that Valentine was all right. She did not know quite why she stayed. Valentine was asleep, and she certainly had no desire to waken her. Yet she stood there watching for five of the longest minutes of Valentine’s life. Her anger with Timothy had passed into a deep resentment. She had justified herself and proved him in the wrong, and she ought to be experiencing the feeling that she had earned a night’s repose. She felt no repose. Timothy had said things which she could not ever forgive, because they were the things that her own conscience would have said if she had not held it dumb.
She looked at the pale curve of Valentine’s cheek, and in the deep silence of the room the dumb thing spoke and said, “It’s not fair! It’s not fair!”
Helena put her hand on the switch of the lamp, and darkness rushed down upon the silence. Then she went out of the room, walking softly.
The door shut, and Valentine broke into a quivering sigh. Helena had gone away at last, and she wouldn’t come back.
She thought about Timothy, as she had thought about him at intervals all day. But it wasn’t any good thinking about Timothy. He couldn’t help her; he couldn’t stop people saying dreadful things about Eustace. No—Timothy couldn’t help her. He was kind. If he could help her, he would come. If he didn’t come, it was because he knew he couldn’t help her.
Valentine went to the window in her night-gown and looked out. She could see the arch of the sky and the dark mass of the woods. It was very dark. There was no moon, and there were no stars. Last night there had bee
n stars, so many, and so far, and so bright.
She leaned over the window-sill to catch the breeze—a faint, chill movement of the heavy air. She looked down and remembered her first night at Holt, and how she had climbed out of the window in the dawn and gone down through the woods to meet Timothy. The air stirred about her uncovered neck and her bare arms; and all at once her thoughts began to move, and bubble, and spring up in her just as the water used to spring up in the cavern.
Why should she stay here at all? If she wasn’t here, Aunt Helena couldn’t make her marry Eustace. And if she ran away, everyone—everyone would know that it wasn’t Eustace’s fault.
It is really quite impossible to describe the relief which this thought brought to Valentine. She had been driven back into the cage, and the door had been shut upon her; and now, just when she had given up hope, the door swung open of itself. She could get out and go wherever she liked. She needn’t stay a moment.
She sprang back from the window, put on the light, and began to dress quickly, quickly, quickly, with such a living, joyful energy that everything she did was like doing something new and beautiful. She wasn’t dressing, she was escaping. She put on the dark red dress which she had worn when she went to Waterlow, and the little hat that matched it, and a tweed coat with a fur collar. And she packed a few things in a suit-case that was light enough to carry. The suit-case was in her dressing-room, half packed with things for her to take when she went away to-morrow with Eustace. She wasn’t going to go away with Eustace. She wasn’t going to be here to-morrow. Lovely—lovely—lovely. The word kept singing itself over in her mind.
The thought of Helena Ryven came as suddenly as a shadow. What was she going to say to Aunt Helena? In books people always wrote a note and left it on the pin-cushion when they ran away. But she didn’t know what to say. In the end her pencilled note was a very short one. It ran:
DEAR AUNT HELENA,
It is very kind of Eustace to want to marry me. But I don’t want to—I really don’t. I only wanted him to have the money, and if it is his, I needn’t marry him. So I am going away. Please tell everyone Eustace wanted to marry me, but I wouldn’t.
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