“Of course it isn’t too late.”
“Yes it is. He doesn’t love me any more. You have made me see now that it was all my own fault, but the fact remains that I have lost him. We can never get back to what we were. You don’t know how he looked at me when he told me that I had ruined their lives.”
“Yes, I do. I know just how he looked. I have seen Stephen when he’s angry. It’s terrifying, I agree with you, and he doesn’t snap out of it quickly. It has to
burn
out of him—a very slow process—but I learnt just to let him burn in peace and not get upset about it!”
Rose put her hand to her forehead. “Are you feeling ill?” Deirdre asked anxiously.
“My head seemed suddenly to spin round. I suppose I’m tired. I’ve had two very bad nights
...
I haven’t done anything about your lunch, but Vittoria knows you’re here.”
“Don’t you worry about that. They feed you so much on a plane that your stomach doesn’t know whether it’s coming or going! All I’m waiting for is for my soul to catch up with me.”
“That’s what Stephen said when he got back—that you leave your soul behind on a long flight—was it only yesterday? Oh, where is he, why doesn’t he come?”
Stephen’s voice spoke suddenly from the door: “Deirdre.”
Deirdre and Rose both jumped up, but while Rose hung back Deirdre flew to him and in a moment they were clinging to each other in a close embrace.
Rose felt her head spinning round again, and then everything grew black in front of her eyes. She tried to call out but no sound came, and she fell, a crumpled little heap, just inside the garden door.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
WHEN Rose opened her eyes she found that she was in her own bed and Deirdre’s gentle face was bending over her.
“What happened? I must have fainted,” she murmured.
“You had a sort of blackout,” Deirdre replied, smiling reassuringly, “but you’re quite all right again now. We got the doctor at once and he knew just what was the matter with you
...
He’s still here as a matter of fact—downstairs.”
“How long was I out for?”
“Quite long enough for our peace of mind! The doctor gave you glucose injections. You’ve been eating up your nervous energy—and that means eating up your sugar
—
and not replacing it. You’ve been under a great emotional strain and have hardly eaten or slept for the last forty
-
eight hours—but now you’re going to be perfectly all right. It’s not a thing that need ever happen again, so don’t worry. I’m going to give you a large spoonful of glucose every two hours and you’re going to stay in bed until to-morrow and have a good night’s rest to-night.”
“Where’s Stephen?”
“He’s downstairs with the doctor. I’ll go and fetch him. Don’t look so frightened. There’s nothing to worry about. I’ve had a chance to talk to him and explain things. Everything’s all right. Just relax and be happy
...
Here, I’ll put another pillow behind you so that you’ll be really comfortable.”
It was not long before Stephen came into the room. He shut the door behind him and came to her swiftly, and kneeling down beside the low bed took her hand in his and kissed the palm of it and then laid it against his cheek. She smiled at him tenderly.
“How are you feeling, my darling?” he asked.
“Quite all right again now but rather ashamed of myself for being so silly. I don’t know what happened. I’ve never fainted before in my life.”
“It wasn’t your fault, my love, and it wasn’t an ordinary faint. We couldn’t bring you round, but fortunately the doctor realized the moment he came what was wrong with you. You’ve heard of diabetics going into a coma, haven’t you? Well, that’s when they take too much insulin which eats up their sugar. You’d eaten up all your sugar by having to go through so much since I’ve been away, but it’s not a thing that need ever happen again. And it never will now that I’m here to look after you properly.”
“Oh, Stephen, I was so afraid you weren’t coming back. What happened to you?”
“I discovered that Robin had
already
left for abroad. He had gone first to Paris to I followed him there. I thought I would know where to find him—a little hotel on the Left Bank where we have sometimes stayed together
—
and sure enough he was there. He was able to convince me that it probably was the best thing that could have happened to him and Gai in the long run. And he told me, in the course of our subsequent conversation, everything he had said to you that evening at the Caprice
...
Do you think you ought to talk?”
“Oh, yes; but come and sit beside me,” and she patted the bed with her free hand.
He got up from his knees, still holding her hand, and sat down on the bed close to her.
“I went to see Gai,” she said, and she told him all about it
—
how she had had to force her way in, and how they had eventually become friends and she had stayed the night with her, and how she had taken her round that morning to the Botticelli.
“That was very wonderful of you,” he said, and he kissed the palm of her hand lingeringly again.
“No, it was the least I could do. But I’ve got a feeling that the
Botticelli
it going to open up a new life for her. I somehow felt it was
right
for her to be there.”
“I’m sure it is if you feel that,” he said tenderly. “Your instincts are always right. You have only got to follow your own wise instincts through life
...”
“My instinct wasn’t right where you were concerned.”
“Yes, it was. It wasn’t your instinct to mistrust me. It was the evil that others put into your mind.”
“But all the same I should have known, I shouldn’t have listened
...
But what Robin said coming so soon after what Clive had told me
...
Oh, if only Deirdre had come sooner
...
“Then Clive said something too, did he? What did he
say?”
Rose told him all about that evening after they had left the airport.
“My poor darling, to think that you have had to go through all this by yourself. But you will never have to go through anything again without my help and support. And there will be no more Frentons in our lives, I promise you,” he added grimly.
“Oh, by the way, did Clare get on to you? She sounded so desperate.”
“Yes, and she was desperate. When she got back she found that Clive had walked out on her. He had just left a note to say it was the end and she had no idea where he had gone. She wanted my advice as to how best to find him. The shock has been a very salutory one. It is what he should have done years ago, but he has been so weak. She has tracked him down at last through his brother and he has agreed to have another go at it—on one condition
—
that she will give up her work and leave London. He’s been wanting to give up the City for a long time and take to farming, so now they are going off to the west of England, where he has a property, as soon as possible
...
I can’t altogether blame him for his suspicions. It’s true there was no American woman who had asked Clare to do up her flat. It
was
a pure invention on her part to get out there alone with me, but I didn’t realize what she was up to until we were half-way across the Atlantic. She had always been very sweet to me about you—that was one thing that made me put up with her interference in our lives, and I did genuinely believe, fool that I was, that she was a good friend for you and that you needed a woman friend like that because everything was new to you in London and Francie was so much occupied with the coffee bar
...
But half-way across the Atlantic, she began making insinuations against you—that you weren’t happy with me, that you had confessed to her that you had only married me for my money and that all the time you were in love with that boy from the country whom you had been meeting secretly while we were engaged
...
”
“She had something real to go on there,” Rose put in quickly, and she told
him
about her lunch with Tony during their engagement and how Clare had seen her with him in a taxi.
“Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“The only reason was because Tony asked me not to, but of course I should have told you. I was a fool, as in so many other ways
...
You didn’t believe what she said, did you?”
“I knew that part of it was false at any rate; I knew that you weren’t in love with Tony because I had seen you together, but some of the other things she said hurt, I must confess, even though I tried to discount them. Oh, I can tell you now, it seems so absurd, but with the Atlantic between us and feeling that you had changed so much
—
because you have been so different, my darling. I couldn’t find you again in that brittle new personality so unlike my own lovely blue rose
...
Oh, Rose, Rose, if only you knew how I love you for what you are—deep in the lovely scented heart of you that
is
you—the essential you—the
you
that went off to help Gai—the
you
whose every instinct is faultless
...
But to get back to Clare, I realized soon enough what she wanted from me, and that she was bitterly jealous of you, so I made it quite clear to her before we landed that it would be better if we didn’t see each other again. She tried to get hold of me in New York but I wouldn’t see her
...
She rang me up to say that she was returning to England and would I have dinner with her before she left—she gave me her word that it would be nothing but a friendly dinner—but even then I wouldn’t see her. I couldn’t forgive her for the things she had said about you
...
But it’s only now, since I have had a talk with Deirdre, that I realize the full extent of the mischief she has done to us
...
Deirdre told me about the screen too. That’s really rather funny. What fools we have both been. I’ve already had it removed from the drawing-room. I thought we might stick our Chris
t
mas cards on it in future and eventually make a scrap-book screen for the nursery.”
Rose smiled happily. “What a lovely idea.”
“I thought at the beg
innin
g that love was enough,” he went on musingly; “that love would be the key to every door, particularly the door into your mind—but now I see that one must also have understanding. Perhaps understanding cannot come all at once, but in future we shall always understand each other. Let it be a lesson to us always to tell each other the truth, never to allow a shade of misunderstanding to come between us by keeping something back—by withholding the slightest thought or feeling from each other
...
Oh, my darling, it seems so extraordinary that you knew me so little that you didn’t understand that it was
your
opinions that mattered to me,
your
reactions,
your
feelings—everything and anything that came spontaneously into that little head of yours which I so adore. It’s the
freshness
of your mind and outlook that I love—your eyes that look out on the world with the excitement of a child and the wisdom of a sage
...
I want you, I want you—I want all of you for myself.”
“You have got all of me,” she whispered.
“I have realized lately how little it means to possess the body if one does not also possess the mind. I have tried so hard to find again through your little body the secret heart of you, but it always eluded me
...”
“But now I am all yours again—body, heart and soul,” she said, raising her lips to his. He kissed her then at last
—
a long kiss that seemed to draw through her lips the very soul of her.
“Yes, my Rose, you are all mine again,” he whispered, withdrawing his lips at last and looking deep into her shining eyes. “Darling, shall we go off for the week-end for a second honeymoon?” he asked suddenly with the eagerness of a schoolboy. “Shall we go back to The Three Kings at Basle where we were so happy?”
She shook her head, smiling. “No, let’s stay and have a second honeymoon at the Blue Rose in London. The Blue Rose—our
home
—where we are going to live happily ever after.”
THE END