To Journey Together (13 page)

With feelings of unmixed dismay, she recognized the newcomer as Rosemary Copeland.

If Kenneth's transports of delight did not reach quite such fervent heights as Rosemary's, at least he kissed her back again with cordiality.

This left Elinor completely at a loss. She could not now intrude on the two—indeed she was terrified that her presence might provoke Rosemary to some mischievous disclosure—and the only thing she could do was gracefully change course for another part of the lounge, hoping that neither of them would notice her.

Even as she made the first movement, however, Rosemary caught sight of her and, with a half friendly, wholly mocking smile, she called out, "Hello, there."

Someone rather more experienced than Elinor might perhaps have got by with a smile and a wave. But she made the fatal error of pausing, and, at the same moment, Kenneth turned and saw her.

"Why," he said, in considerable surprise, as Elinor came reluctantly forward, "do you two know each other?"

"We met," Elinor conceded, "in Ehrwald."

At the same moment the other girl said gaily, "Indeed we know each other. Quite well. I even know some of Miss Shearn's naughty secrets. Don't I?" And she appealed to Elinor for confirmation of this with a laugh which was frankly malicious.

The immediate attack was so unexpected that Elinor felt herself colour violently with alarm and distress. But, while she groped ineffectually for some sort of casual reply, Kenneth came unknowingly to her rescue.

"Don't be silly," he said bluntly to Rosemary. "Miss Shearn is not at all the kind of girl to have naughty secrets, as you put it."

"That's all you know!" Thus challenged, Rosemary was at once upon her mettle, and when Elinor made a slight gesture of appeal and protest, she simply answered with the mischievous enquiry, "And how is your handsome beau? The one I pushed over with my car."

Elinor bit her lip.

"Mr. von Eiberg is quite well again now," she said stiffly. While, to her surprise, Kenneth exclaimed impatiently, "Don't use such silly and offensive expressions, Rosemary. Von Eiberg is a chance travelling acquaintance and nothing more at all."

Even at that moment, Elinor thought he was taking a good deal on himself to assert this so confidently. And Rosemary was provoked by the retort into still further argument, though all the time she was laughing.

"Oh, oh! Don't be so naive, Kenneth," she warned him amusedly. "I believe you actually think Miss Shearn is as demure as she looks."

"That will do." Kenneth frowned. "You are embarrassing her."

"Not nearly so much as I did when I came in and caught her kissing the chance travelling acquaintance in his bedroom," retorted Rosemary lightly.

"Oh, please " At the look of astonished

distaste on Kenneth's face, Elinor could have wept with chagrin and embarrassment. "How can you say anything that makes me sound so—so horrid and cheap? You know quite well "

But before she could justify herself, even in the

stumbling phrases she was finding, Lady Connelton's cheerful tones interrupted her.

"Why, here you are! I've been looking for you everywhere. If everyone else isn't dying of hunger, I am. Come along and let's see if they can produce some genuine wiener schnitzel for us."

Elinor glanced round almost wildly. For a moment she thought she must break away from them all and run off back to her big, silent room, where no one could make dreadful-sounding accusations, like Rosemary Copeland, or look so freezingly incredulous as Kenneth now did.

But there were both the Conneltons, pausing only briefly for the necessary polite exchanges with Rosemary, and then moving on, obviously expecting Elinor to accompany them. She would have to go with them to the dining-room and make pleasant conversation as usual, even though she felt like weeping. And because they so obviously expected it, somehow she managed to make herself go with them.

Kenneth did not come immediately. He stayed behind to say something else to the laughing, bright-eyed girl who had already made so much mischief. Elinor would have given almost anything to have known what was said. But, when he rejoined them a few minutes later in the dining-room, she could not think, from his rather grim expression, that the subsequent conversation had done much to clear her.

It was a delicious meal, but once or twice Elinor thought it would choke her.

She tried to tell herself that Kenneth's good opinion was not of such overwhelming importance, but it was no good. She knew perfectly well that anyone's good opinion was of importance when it came to a question of a doubtful situation. She might feel as annoyed with him as she liked because of his glum expression and his presuming to judge her; she might tell herself over and over again that it was too bad that a perfectly innocent matter should have been reduced to these terms, to provide a malicious joke for someone she hardly knew; but the fact was that she had been made to seem cheap,

both in Kenneth's estimation and her own. And the sensation was as disagreeable as it was novel.

"Are you tired, dear?" enquired Lady Connelton suddenly at this point, and Elinor realized that her manner must have become preoccupied indeed for her employer to seek some explanation for it.

She roused herself to say, "No—not really." And after that she managed to smile and contribute a few reasonably cheerful remarks to the conversation. Though she suddenly became completely dumb again when, turning to Kenneth, Lady Connelton said, "And what brings Rosemary here?"

"Who is Rosemary?" enquired Sir Daniel, before Kenneth could answer this.

"Rosemary Copeland, dear. Ned Copeland's girl," his wife explained in hasty parenthesis. "You've just met her."

"Oh, yes—yes," Sir Daniel agreed, obviously without much interest in Ned Copeland's girl. "He's a great bore," he added, as though Rosemary were somehow responsible for this.

"Well, she can't help that," his wife said generously. "But I'm rather interested to know why she turned up out here."

"It seems she came out to join friends for some ski-ing," Kenneth explained a little coolly. "Then, at the last minute, they were prevented from coming by some family complication. She stopped in Ehrwald for a day or two, rather expecting to see me there, and then came on to Vienna."

"Stopped in Ehrwald, did she? While we were there? It would have been polite of her to have let me know she was there," Lady Connelton remarked dryly. "After all, we do know each other."

"I think," Kenneth said slowly, "that she didn't want to thrust herself on you when I was not there. She tells me she met Elinor in the village and left it to her to mention her presence, so that you could see her or not, as you pleased."

"Elinor!" exclaimed Lady Connelton in great astonishment. "You never told me anything about it, dear."

They all turned and looked at Elinor then.

Taken completely off her guard by this fresh contretemps, Elinor went crimson and then rather pale.

"I—Miss Copeland made it perfectly plain that she preferred not to make any contact until Kenneth arrived," she explained hastily and a little breathlessly. "She—she certainly didn't suggest that she wanted me to mention anything about—about her being there."

"I suppose she thought you would do that anyway," Kenneth said rather impatiently. "It was the natural thing to do."

"Except that she—she implied that she wanted to—to make her introduction, in her own way, when you were there."

"I think you must have misunderstood her," Kenneth replied coldly, and Elinor felt perfectly miserable until Lady Connelton said cheerfully, "Anyhow, it was just as well, so long as the child didn't feel slighted, and she doesn't strike me as sensitive. If I had known of her presence I'd have had to do something about it, as her father is a member of Dan's club. In the circumstances, we were both spared a meeting which I should probably have found tiresome and she would undoubtedly have found boring."

And, on these philosophical words, she rose from the dinner table, thus breaking up the discussion.

So, it was over at last, and Elinor began to think gratefully of escaping upstairs under the protecting wing of Lady Connelton's presence. But, as they reached the dining-room door once more, Kenneth unexpectedly put his hand lightly round her arm and said—pleasantly, but in a manner not to be denied, "Just a moment. I want to speak to you."

It was her impulse to pull her arm away and say, "No!" But the Conneltons were already saying a brief good night to her and Kenneth. Then, as they left her, she found herself being guided into the big silent writing-room, whether she liked it or not.

At this late hour, and at an out-of-season period, there was no one else there, so that it was without any likelihood of interruption that Kenneth indicated a chair to Elinor and said, "Now, do you mind telling me just what silly position you have been getting yourself into?"

His air of having the right to enquire carried such conviction that, for a moment, she almost conceded that right to him. Then some instinct, stronger than all her inexperience and natural diffidence, came to her rescue and warned her not to rush into nervous protests and excuses. Instead she replied, with a quietness and even a touch of dignity which astonished herself, "How dare you speak to me like that? As though you had some right to question any behaviour of mine, or berate me if you didn't find it to your liking!"

"I'm sorry." Kenneth was visibly astonished by this reaction. "But—" he stuck to his guns—"you won't deny, I suppose, that you and von Eiberg were seen in the sort of compromising situation one just does not get let in for, and "

"I could," Elinor interrupted almost gently, "tell you to mind your own business, Kenneth, and leave me to mind mine. But that is not the way for—friends—" she chose the word deliberately and saw it had its effect on him—"to behave to each other. Any more than it is right for friends to speak the way you did to me, or suspect each other of almost anything, on the strength of a few mischievous words."

"They were not just a few mischievous words," he protested, but she had not before seen Kenneth's self-confidence so shaken.

"But it would still have been more—friendly of you to have come to me and asked for my version of the facts, before condemning me unheard."

"That is just what I am doing," he reminded her. "Asking you for—for an explanation."

"But in what a tone, Kenneth! As though you knew I had been involved in something disreputable

—and what had I got to say for myself now that you, the clever fellow, had cornered me?"

He actually flushed at that.

"I didn't mean to sound like that at all," he said stiffly. "I was a little—upset." He looked slightly surprised by the admission himself. "If I chose my words badly, I apologize."

She thought she would not split hairs by telling him that it had been his manner, even more than his words, which had been at fault. Instead, wondering dazedly how it was that she had somehow managed to become mistress of a situation which she had dreaded all through supper, she said coolly, "If you now want the real explanation of what Rosemary Copeland saw and reported so unkindly, the fact simply was that, when Rudi von Eiberg was injured, I—like everyone else in the hotel—went to his room to enquire about him "

"But you were there alone."

"All right. I happened to be busy that day and was the last person to go to see him. We talked a little and—I don't even remember how the subject came up now—he said something about always taking things lightly, because then, when real disaster struck, one had not so much to lose."

Kenneth looked for a moment as though he were going to interrupt here. But he obviously 'then thought better of it and let her go on.

"I said—a little naively, I suppose," she admitted sadly, "that there was no need to suppose that disaster necessarily always came. But, the moment the words were out, I knew that I was a happy, normal creature, talking to someone who knew disaster in a sense I could never understand. In about a couple of sentences he described how he and Ilsa were the only survivors of their family—rootless figures from a world that no longer existed. The way he put it was so laconic and yet so—heart-breaking."

Kenneth bit his lip, but he said with a frown, "He really had no right to play on your sympathies like that."

"I don't think he 'played on' my sympathies,

Ken. He had my sympathy. Sympathy—like trust —is something one gives freely, and without criticism."

"Is that a rebuke?" he asked with a slight grimace.

"If you feel it is deserved—yes."

He swallowed that with some difficulty, she saw, but he did accept it, and after a moment he said, "Well, go on. What did you do then?"

"I cried."

"Oh, Lord!" He seemed both touched and annoyed by that.

"Not much—but it was a sort of shock. A sudden understanding, I suppose, of how terrible the world could be. And I think he was a good deal moved too, and that was when he kissed me. Whereupon Rosemary walked in, and drew what conclusions she liked."

"I—see."

He was, she thought, struggling with the unfamiliar sensation of being in the wrong. There was a short silence. And then, with a self-possession that the old Elinor would never have known, she said, "If you want to apologize, don't let me interrupt you."