Authors: Mary Burchell
“I think we’ll cut out innuendoes for the weekend, Frances. If you haven’t learned to know me better than that—”
“It wasn’t about you that I was thinking,” replied his sister, and went out of the room.
He came across to Leila at once.
“My dear, I’m more sorry than I can say—”
“Oh, please don’t!”
She was not quite sure why she pushed away the arm he would have put round her. In a way, she would have been so glad of this sign of his concern for her. But perhaps her instinct told her that any show of affection, or even anxiety, would be unwise in the next few days. Anyway, she did put his arm away—and then felt remorseful because he looked so extremely rebuffed.
“Now
I’m
sorry, Simon.” She laughed uncertainly. “Please don’t pay any attention to me. I’m getting nervy and silly.”
“Oh, no, you’re not. It’s been a pretty trying day for you, and any girl would be feeling sore with everyone by now. I do apologize for Frances—”
“You don’t need to.”
“But I’ve never known even her take up quite such an extraordinary attitude.”
“Well, she’s jealous, of course,” Leila said.
“Jealous?” Simon looked utterly astonished. “But why ever should she be?” he wanted to know. And Leila thought: “How stupid even the nicest men can be!”
“Well, in spite of our protestations, she thinks that I—that—I mean a lot to you. She doesn’t imagine you would enter into a conspiracy like this with me unless I did. She’s very fond of you, in her way.
“I assure you, you’re mistaken.” He smiled slightly. “As I’ve told you—we don’t really get on at all well together.”
“Yes. And you can tell me the same thing a dozen times over, and it can be true every time, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t still fond of you in her way,” Leila retorted.
“Sure?” He looked doubtful.
“Quite sure. She probably feels angry and possessive about you, and bitterly resents any other influence on you. I imagine there’s a good deal of difference in your ages, and you’ve probably been the wonderful elder brother to her at some time in her life. I’m really rather sorry for her, now I come to think of it,” Leila added, without rancour. “Or I should be if she wouldn’t be quite so trying at the moment.”
He laughed incredulously.
“You extraordinary girl. Why should
you
be sorry for her?”
“Because I know myself that it isn’t easy to love someone, without owning it, and
h
ave to watch another girl—”
She broke off suddenly, astonished and dismayed that she could have been trapped into saying so much to him. So she added quickly:
“But that’s neither here nor there. Anyone knows that a jealous girl—even a jealous sister—can suffer a good deal. You had better accept the fact in future, Simon, that you can hurt Frances rather easily, and take some pains not to do so.”
He smiled sceptically.
“Well, I don
’
t know that I accept your theory, though I admit it explains a certain number of things.” She saw, from his reflective air, that he was reaching back into the family past, and recalling some events which surprised, and faintly disturbed, him. “But, if Frances is—jealous, as you say, of anyone who means a lot to me, why did she accept you in such a friendly manner when she thought you were Rosemary, and reject you so angrily and unreasonably when she found you were yourself?”
Leila frowned consideringly.
“I know. I wondered about that, too. But I suppose she knew it was no good fighting against the girl you—she thought you—had actually married. Any jealousy she had regarding Rosemary was over and done with. She probably experienced that when you—when you first became engaged.” She glanced at him a little anxiously, to see if it were painful to him to discuss these early stages with Rosemary. But his dark, thoughtful face gave no hint that he was disliking this discussion.
“Yes. Probably you’re right.” He seemed less inclined to reject her original theory now. “And, having once accepted the inevitable, she was determined to make the best of it by being on specially good terms with my—with my wife, you mean?”
“I imagine so. It’s all rather childish, really, of course.” Leila smiled slightly. “But then jealousy
is
childish. That’s what makes it so difficult to deal with.”
Again that look of reflective interest was turned upon her. “You’re an amazingly acute and understanding person, Leila,” he said. “But then, I suppose if one has—suffered a good deal oneself—”
“What makes you think I have suffered?” she challenged him
quickly, and a trifle defensively.
“I’m sorry—I wasn’t ‘fishing,’
” he assured her earnestly. “I thought you said something just now about personally appreciating how much Frances might be hurt, and I assumed that you were recalling some specific occasion when you, too, had been very unhappy.”
“Oh—that.” She smiled rather nervously. “Forget about that.”
“Very well,” he said gravely, apparently taking her injunction quite literally. “Only I hope we, as a family, are not going to cause you any more unhappiness.”
“No—of course not,” she assured him hastily.
“Which reminds me—how did your employer take all this?”
“Mr. Brogner? Oh, he—thinks I have shown a lack of discretion, to put it mildly. He didn’t exactly approve,” she admitted.
“I hope you told him that I badgered you into doing it.”
“But you didn’t, you know.” She looked amused. “The idea was mine.”
He looked astonished.
“That’s just Frances’s nonsense—”
“Oh, no. Though I agree that she embroidered the actual fact with some nonsense,” Leila said steadily. “But the original idea was mine. I made the suggestion when—when we were together in the garden, yesterday morning.”
“Yesterday morning,” he repeated incredulously. “Great heavens! Is it less than forty-eight hours since”—there was a long pause, then he completed the sentence rather bleakly—“since I learned about Rosemary?”
Leila felt her mouth go dry. In the press of later events, and particularly in the strange, half-sweet pleasure of sharing a tense emotional situation with Simon, she had almost forgotten the tragedy which had precipitated this situation. For him, the overwhelming, shattering event was Rosemary’s desertion.
He stood there for a moment, his hands thrust into his pockets, his frown of sombre concentration showing how far away his thoughts were.
Then he seemed to make an effort, for he raised his head suddenly and said:
“But—about Mr. Brogner. What did he decide?”
“Decide?” She had not expected to be switched back on to the subject of Mr. Brogner quite so abruptly.
“Yes. He didn’t do the heavy employer, and threaten you with dismissal, or anything like that, did he? Because, naturally, I feel responsible for you, Leila. Even if, as you maintain, the idea was originally yours, I was the one who insisted on having it put into practice. And entirely for my own—or, rather, my family’s—advantage. In a way, one might say we are nothing to you. I couldn’t possibly have you—lose your job, or anything like that, just because you happened to be Rosemary’s cousin an
d
, being on the spot, were dragged into our affairs.”
“It’s very kind of you to bother.” She heard her own, voice, cold and remote, just as his had grown impersonal and faintly abstracted. She was no longer his valued ally—a person in her own right. That one reference to Rosemary had put everything into focus for him once more.
“My dear girl, it isn’t a question of bothering, and kindness doesn’t enter into it. It’s a plain case of fulfilling one’s obligations decently.”
She knew he was probably trying to reassure her about any claim she might have on him. But his wording hurt more than she could have believed possible. Pain and resentment chilled her voice to the tone of a stranger.
“You haven’t any obligations towards me, where Mr. Brogner is concerned,” she assured him categorically, for she felt in that moment that she would beg in the street rather than accept—much less invite—help from Simon. “He may fuss and criticize and even disapprove, but he wouldn’t dream of dismissing me for something I did outside the office.”
“That’s all right, then. And if you have any trouble with him—in the way of unjust criticism, I mean—you must let me know.”
“Don’t even think about it,” Leila said, in her new-found, chilly self-confidence. “I can manage Mr. Brogner.”
Which was a lie, of course. And moreover a lie which would have annoyed Mr. Brogner greatly.
By the time she retired to her bedroom that night—a bedroom from which Frances had ostentatiously removed all sign of Simon’s existence—she already felt like counting the hours until her release.
Dinner had been a trying affair, with Frances studiedly ignoring her, and Simon—after an initial attempt to put things on a sociable basis—refusing to woo Frances into a better mood. And, because the whole atmosphere was so artificial and embarrassing, she had felt the gap between herself and Simon widening even further.
His gratitude to her and his conscientious concern for her were no doubt as great as ever. But what girl in love wanted gratitude or conscientious concern from a man?
Sitting on the side of the bed, with her head in her hands, she tried to tell herself that she had known all along there could be no warmer feeling for her. Only, illogically, her heart kept pleading that for a short while his manner had been different. She didn’t know why it had been—or why it had changed again. She only knew that there had been moments when she had broken through the wall of reserve and self-absorption which Rosemary had put around him, and made him see her and appreciate her in her own identity.
But that, Leila reminded herself, was before the unfortunate conversation abo
u
t Mr. Brogner’s possible reactions. Then, in her exaggerated fear lest Simon should feel an unwelcome weight of responsibility for her,
she
had put up a wall of reserve. It was not Simon’s fault that he did not feel enough interest to discover what lay behind it.
Which brought her round once more to the fact that her stay in this house could only be painful and humiliating, and that she was counting the hours until her release.
The next morning, however, with a doggedness which said something for her character, she took up her task again with undiminished resolution. Frances might be absurd and trying, Simon might be unbearably indifferent, but Mrs. Morley—for whom all this unpleasantness was being endured—was in the same need as when she had first come.
With all the skill at her command, Leila assumed the r
ol
e of the happy bride, and went to visit her supposed mother-in-law.
“Come in, darling,” Mrs. Morley said, in answer to her knock.
After the pettiness of Frances’s attitude and the distasteful complications of the deception in which she was involved, Leila found the simplicity and the unemotional charm of Mrs. Morley irresistible. She sat by the bed, happy and relaxed, and talked with her as though they had known each other all their lives. They had much the same sense of humour, they discovered, to their mutual satisfaction. And even the way they regarded Simon was not dissimilar.
“You see him steadily, and love him faults and all, just as I do,” her supposed mother-in-law remarked, amused but approving. “Very unusual in a young bride. But that is how you do see him, isn’t it?”
And because she knew that was literally the truth, Leila could only smile reluctantly and say, “Yes.”
“Most girls are so thankful to have captured the man they love that they put a golden cloud round him in the early days, and usually have a shock, of course, when the cloud starts dispersing. But you seem to have retained the clearness of vision which goes with the even earlier stage,” Mrs. Morley added thoughtfully. “The stage when one isn’t very sure of one’s
h
appiness.”
Leila gazed at her, fascinated, and a little alarmed, by such penetration.
“Mrs. Morley, you see a great deal for someone who has to spend all day in bed,” she protested, with a slight, nervous laugh.
“Darling, I am not a stupid woman, thank heaven.” Mrs. Morley gave her an extraordinarily roguish look. “Silly sometimes, which is quite a different thing, but not stupid. And I use my eyes.”
“Yes. I—see you do.”
Simon’s mother glanced at her, speculatively and amusedly.
“Then if you have accepted that fact, perhaps you won’t be startled by what I am going to say,” she observed pleasantly. “What is the trouble between you and Frances?”
CHAPTER V
LEILA gasped.
“What makes you think—? I haven’t said—”
“No, darling. You haven’t said a thing,” Mrs. Morley assured her. “You’ve been a model of tactful reticence, and shifted off the subject of Frances every time I have come near it. Frances, too, hasn’t said a word. But her silences are much more informative. I might say she has been a model of tact
ful
reticence. Between the two of you, I can’t help knowing that something is wrong. I wish you’d tell me what it is.”
For several moments Leila was silent, marvelling really that Simon could ever have supposed that he could practise a well-meant, amateur deception on his very wide-awake mother. Then she said slowly, picking her words carefully:
“You mustn’t think I’m unkind if I say that it’s—it’s a fairly simple case of jealousy, I’m afraid.”
Mrs. Morley tapped her admirable front teeth with a thoughtful forefinger.
“I don’t think you’re unkind at all. And the mention of jealousy leaves me completely unshocked and unsurprised. I know and love both my children very well,” she stated categorically and without self-consciousness, “and so, of course, I know Frances’s fatal tendency to be jealous—especially where Simon is concerned. What I find difficult to follow is that yesterday afternoon, when Frances first brought you up here, she was not jealous. You remember—she spoke to you with genuine friendliness and warmth. But by the time she came to say good night to me, you were a forbidden subject.” And, with a laughing little grimace, Mrs. Morley indicated how clearly she had been assured of this.
“I—see.”
“Something must have happened in between. It isn’t
just
feminine curiosity which makes me ask what?”
“You mean,” Leila said thoughtfully, “that it worries you?”
“A little.”
“It wouldn’t do if I simply told you that there is nothing whatever to worry about?”
Her supposed mother-in-law smiled.
“Oddly enough, I should find that more reassuring from you than from either of my children. If you said it, I think it would be true. If they said it—particularly if Simon said it—I should begin to wonder if he were not just keeping something from me, for some mistaken idea that I couldn’t stand an unpleasant truth. I can, you know. Much better than most people. Mind you, I’m quite used to my tiresome Frances being inconsistent.” Mrs. Morley seemed to be pursuing her own thoughts aloud. “But the difference in her manner was too sudden an
d
too complete for mere inconsistency to cover it. It was as though she—regarded you almost as a different person—”
Leila gave a slight exclamation, and Mrs. Morley paused and looked enquiringly at her.
“N-nothing. You’re almost too acute—that’s all.”
Mrs. Morley smiled, and smoothed her already smooth hair like a pleased child.
“Dear, you make me feel like the clever detective in the last page but one. Only
he
always knows the complete explanation by then. Forgive me for resorting even to pathos, in my attempt to arrive at the truth—it’s rather unscrupulous of me—but, I should like to know the explanation of all this before I die.”
“Mrs. Morley, don’t say such things!”
“It was horrid of me, wasn’t it? You see, anyone else can use that expression, and it’s just a figure of speech. But I know—it’s mean of me to trade on the sense of shock that it gives you all if I even mention the word ‘death’—but, I want to know about you and Frances, and I’m obstinate enough to think I have a right to know.”.
Again there was a short, telling silence, during which Leila thought: “Our scale of values has been all mixed up. Of course, she
has
a right to know. She’s much more intelligent and courageous than our silly scheme gave her credit for being. In a way, it’s a sort of insult not to tell her.”
Then at last, aloud, she said:
“Will
you
tell
me
something first? Were you very happy about Simon’s marriage?”
Mrs. Morley gave her an extraordinarily sharp glance.
“And you want the unvarnished truth?”
“Of course.”
“Very well,” her companion said slowly. “I was not at all happy about Simon’s marriage, until I saw you. In spite of all his enthusiasm for you, my dear, I somehow had the impression of someone—superficial and not very warm-hearted. I did you a considerable injustice. I realize that now. But, as I told you yesterday, you were not in the least as I imagined you. Perhaps I gathered a wrong impression from your letter—”
“My letter? Oh, yes—of course.”
“Perhaps I foolishly allowed myself to be disproportionately chilled by the fact that you never came to see me. You see, I am being quite frank with you. It was not so much that I resented any slight to myself as that I thought anyone who—who did that was unlikely to be the sort of impulsive, warm-hearted creature I hoped Simon would marry. As I have said, I realize now that I was quite mistaken about you. There must have been a perfectly good reason for your omission, but—”
“But, if Simon had suddenly told you, two or three days ago, that he was not going to marry Rosemary
Lorne
after all, you could have borne it quite well?” suggested Leila.
Mrs
.
Morley laug
h
ed.
“Since you said you wanted the unvarnished truth—I’m afraid I could, dear. Apart from the fact that I should have been deeply worried on Simon’s behalf, and hated his being unhappy. However, I am very glad now that I had a chance of seeing how mistaken I
was. You are the ideal girl for him, and I am only glad—”
“Mrs. Morley, I haven’t really the right to tell you this on my own authority alone, and I hope Simon will forgive me,” Leila interrupted quickly, because s
h
e felt she simply
must
not let Simon
’
s mother commit herself any further. “Simon might well have come to you a few days ago and told you he was not going to marry Rosemary Lorne. That was exactly what happened. That she refused to marry him, I mean.”
Mrs. Morley frowned.
“But you did marry him, darling. And here you are—proving a very satisfactory daughter-in-law.”
“No”—Leila shook her head—“I’m not Rosemary Lorne, I’m her cousin, Leila. And I’m not married to Simon,” she added, almost as an afterthought.
“Oh—dear.” Mrs. Morley regarded her for a long, thoughtful moment in silence. “How very stupid of me. I ought to have realized, of course.”
“I don’t see how you possibly could," Leila said. “It was such a completely unreal and fantastic situation.”
“I mean—I ought to have realized that you couldn’t, in any circumstances, be the girl I have heard about during the last few months.”
“But”—Leila smiled rather doubtfully—“surely Simon said only nice things of Rosemary?”
“Oh, of course,” Simon’s mother agreed. “It’s usually what a man
doesn’t
say that counts, though.”
Leila laughed reluctantly. Then she said:
“Please don’t get an entirely false picture of Rosemary. I know you can’t feel very warmly towards her just now—and there’s no real reason why you should—but she is rather a dear girl, really. She’s irresponsible, I know, and sometimes cruel in the way that irresponsible and unthinking people can be. But she isn’t a bad girl, Mrs. Morley, and she is capable of some very charming and endearing actions.”
“You’re very generous, my dear,” Mrs. Morley said a little dryly.
“What made you take this thing on—Leila?”
“I was so sorry about you—” Leila began. But Mrs. Morley stopped her, with a smile and a slight shake of her head.
“Very sweet of you, child. But you didn’t even know me, you know.” There was a pause. Then she said, in an almost matter-of-fact tone: “You must be very fond of Simon.”
Leila’s lips parted slightly. She stared at the other woman in silence, until it was too Tate to say any of the conventional things about having felt affectionately sorry for her cousin’s poor
fiancé
, in his dilemma. What she said slowly, at last, was:
“He has no idea, you know.”
“No. Of course not.”
“You won’t let him have any idea, will you?”
“Again—of course not.”
Leila drew a long sigh.
“Oh, dear—my sole usefulness in coming here was supposed to be that I could save you anxiety,” she said, with a rueful little smile. “And all I have done is to unload all my own troubles on to you, including one that no one else has ever even suspected.”
Mrs. Morley put out a hand and patted hers briskly.
“You have no idea how stimulated and, interested it has made me feel, dear,” she asserted. “And please don’t be shocked or pained if I put into words the fact that I have no intention whatever of dying before something of this has been straightened out.”
“Oh, Mrs. Morley!”
“I mean it. One’s mental attitude has quite a lot to do with one’s chances, and rate, of recovery after an operation of this sort. Simon thinks of me as a sweet, delicate thing who needs constantly wrapping in cotton-wool. I won’t say I don’t enjoy some of the cotton-wool sometimes”—she gave Leila that roguish smile again—“but I can exist without it. And sometimes I definitely do better without it. You’ll see.”
“You’re sweet!” Leila leant over and kissed her cheek—not, this time, because she was Simon’s mother, who had to be lulled into false security, but because she was a dear and stimulating friend. “It seems, t
h
en, that our elaborate deception on your behalf was just a silly business, without reason and without effect.”
“Oh, dear me, no. I shouldn’t have known you without it,” Mrs. Morley pointed out, with energy. “And as I told you before—only I thought you were Rosemary then, which is very confusing—I wouldn’t have missed knowing you for anything, child.”
Leila laughed.
“It’s very nice of you. And of course I feel the same about you. What is worrying me now is—how are we going to tell Simon? And I think it’s his step I can hear.”
She looked uneasy, but Mrs. Morley looked towards the door
with an air of pleased anticipation.
“It will be perfectly easy, she assured Leila. “After all, Simon doesn’t have to be saved from shocks.” And, when her son entered, she greeted him smilingly with “Come in, darling. Leila has just been telling me about this amusing idea of yours.”
“Leila—!” Simon looked terribly taken aback, and the glance which he directed at Leila was both reproachful and angry.
“There is no need to look at the child like that,” his mother assured him, before Leila had time to say a word in her own defence. “I guessed most of it, anyway. And I must say, dear, that the only thing I hold against you is your thinking I could possibly be so stupid as not to suspect anything was wrong.”
“Mother—really—you’re the most unpredictable creature!” He sat down by the bed and smiled at her, half protesting, half relieved.
“You mean that you feel I ought to be sniffing sal volatile and crying?” his mother retorted contemptuously. “Don’t you know me better than that?”
“I have seen you sniff sal volatile,” her son reminded her, with a slight smile again.
“And seen me cry,” Mrs. Morley conceded. “But only when there is absolutely nothing else left to do,” she added firmly. At which Leila laughed so much that the other two looked at her, and presently joined in—Simon a little reluctantly still, however.
“I still can’t get used to the idea that all this isn’t very bad for you,” he said, glancing fondly, and a little worriedly, at his mother. “I never imagined you could take it all so lightly, or—”
“Darling, don’t think I’m taking it lightly,” his mother interrupted quickly. “At least, I’m certainly not taking your unhappiness lightly. But I’m trying to take it sensibly—a very different thing. It was really very clever of you, my dears. I’m beginning to see that now. If you’d just come and tol
d
me, in cold blood, that Rosemary had run away and that there would be no wedding, I suppose, Simon, that I might have been terribly upset. I
am
upset—if I were not, it would mean I had no natural feeling for you—but”—she turned her thoughtful glance on Leila—“having this dear girl has made a great deal of difference. She has lessened the shock for me wonderfully.”
“Leila”—Simon gave her a rather abstracted look—“oh, yes, of course. You’ve been a brick over this, Leila.”
She smiled at him. She managed to make it a friendly, impersonal smile, even though she knew that, this time, someone besides herself knew how much that smile cost.
“I was very glad to help, Simon. And I still feel rather guilty about being the one who gave the show away. But perhaps, in view of the effect on your mother, it doesn’t matter so very much,” she said.
“That’s how it looks, anyway,
”
he conceded, with a slight smile. But it was an absent smile, an
d
she had the impression that, since she was no longer needed to play a part for his mother’s good, she made remarkably little impression on Simon’s consciousness.