Choose the One You'll Marry (12 page)

“I don’t know what’s the matter with the men you know, then,” he told her gaily. “I should have said it was almost impossible
not
to fall in love with you.”

“That makes me sound a very uncomfortable sort of person to be with,” Ruth said soberly.

“You darling!” He laughed heartily at that. “Very well—I won’t rush you, my sweet. At least, I won’t rush you over this. But—” he glanced at his watch “—so far as our evening is concerned, I shall have to rush you. It’s time we were going if we’re not going to be late for the theater.”

Ruth could not have said at that moment if she were relieved or disappointed by this reprieve. She only knew that it seemed strange to her that he could switch so easily from something of vital importance—if that were indeed what it was—to the comparatively minor matter of being late for a play.

Remorsefully, she then told herself that she was being unreasonable—that he was merely giving her the time she had clear
l
y shown she wanted.

He saw I didn’t want to be rushed,
she assured herself.
And because he’s kind and considerate and—and chivalrous, he’s making it as easy as possible for me not to attach more importance to the occasion than I want.

But on the short journey to the theater, she could not help wondering what would have happened if she had encouraged Angus to go on with what he had started to say. Presumably the question of being early or late for the play would hardly have concerned them then.

As it was, they were just in time to slip into their seats before the curtain rose. From the opening words the play was a gripping one, and the performance was excellent. But even so, Ruth found her attention wandering from time to time to her own affairs.

What, exactly, had Angus meant? And if he had meant that he truly loved her and wanted to marry her, what sort of answer did she really intend to give him?

More than once she stole a glance at his absorbed, good
-
looking face, in the light from the stage.
He
didn’t seem to feel his attention wandering. Though that, too, of course, could have been his determination not to embarrass her with more personal attent
i
on that she wanted at the moment.

He was much the most romantic and attractive personality she had ever come in contact with, and up to now she had thought of him in an exalted little vacuum, remote from her own everyday affairs. Now she tried to imagine him as part of her intimate life. Meeting the family. Being the one person whose wishes and views were her chief concern.

He’s not one of us, of course,
she thought, using the quaint term that she and her brother had always used as children when they wanted to denote that a school companion was, or was not, the kind who fitted into everything quite naturally.
But he’s nonetheless a darling for that,
she added loyally.
I wish
I
knew just what he meant by what he said.

She always came back to that. That was the difficulty of his not being “one of us.” If any of the young men in her set at home in Castlemore had spoken as Angus had done, she would have known exactly what they meant. But with him it was different.

I suppose I’m being ridiculously unworldly,
thought Ruth, slightly mortified by her own indecision.
Or are these things the same, all the world over, and am I just making difficulties? Michael would know immediately, of course.

She could not imagine why Michael Harling had suddenly popped into her mind, right in the middle of act 2, and while her thoughts were almost entirely concerned with Angus. Except that he represented, in his uncompromising but good-humored way, a sort of bridge between the world at home that she knew so well, and this new, uncertain world in which Angus played such an important part.

Michael’s judgment of people was good. She knew that instinctively. (If one excepted Charmian, of course—and even there she was not quite sure what his views were.) And ever since they had set out for London, his attitude toward her had been one of friendly, almost protective, indulgence. Almost as though he really were her cousin.

I couldn’t ask him his opinion,
Ruth thought, immediately thinking how much she would like to do just that.
But I’m sure he would know the answer.

And then the lights went up and Angus was asking her opinion of the play, and she was having to pretend she knew much more about it than she really did.

During the last act, for some reason or other, Ruth felt less agitated at her own affairs, and she was able to enjoy herself to the full. Perhaps because there lingered at the back of her mind a funny little sensation of reassurance, which might be summed up in the words—there’s always Michael.

After the play Angus suggested that they should go dancing, but Ruth was firm in her determination to go home reasonably early.

“Even if it means an awkward interview with Aunt Henrietta?” Angus asked teasingly.

“Yes. Even then. I’d rather get it over,” Ruth said resolutely.

“What’s the betting that she won’t even mention the subject?” laughed Angus, as he helped her into the car.

“
I
don’t know. But I’d like to give her the chance of saying something, if she really wants to.”

He did not try to dissuade her, but drove her straight home, smilingly brushed aside her eager words of thanks, and finally kissed her good-night. It was not a passionate kiss, but it was an extraordinarily charming kiss in its light, undemanding way. And it sent Ruth into the apartment in a fresh fever of indecision about her own feelings.

As she quietly let herself in at the front door, her glance went immediately to the thin line of light under the door into Aunt Henrietta’s room. But the light was also on in the drawing room, and the door to that room stood ajar. So she went in there first, and found Michael leaning back comfortably in an armchair, one ankle over the other knee, and a mass of papers in front of him that he appeared to be studying with considerable attention.

“Hello—” He glanced up and started to move the papers.

“No—don’t get up.” Ruth stood smiling down at him. “You look terrifically busy, and very much the high executive.”

“I’m not especially. Busy, I mean.” He took off his glasses and grinned at her, in that amused, indulgent way that she found singularly pleasant. “Had a good time?”

“Yes, thank you. Lovely. We went to the new Lucas Manning play. What did you do? Work?”

“Not until the last half hour. I went out with Charmian Deal.”

“Oh,” said Ruth, and immediately wondered if his judgment were quite as good as she had supposed. “I—I think I’ll go in and say good-night to Aunt Henrietta. Her light’s still on.”

“Do, my dear.” He replaced his glasses and seemed inclined to go back to his papers.

Ruth went slowly toward the door. And then—whether it was a cowardly desire to put off the interview with Aunt Henrietta, or whether it was the overwhelming impulse to confide her doubts to
someone,
she could not have said—she came back to where he was sitting and said, “Michael, can I ask you a rather—rather odd question?”

“Certainly.” But he did not look up from some figures he was apparently checking.

“If you told a girl you loved her, what would you mean, exactly?”

“What’s that?” He abruptly abandoned the figures, took off his glasses once more and regarded her, his dark, handsome, farsighted eyes slightly narrowed in amusement and puzzlement.

“You heard what I said.” She was a little put out at having that amused glance quite so fully upon her.

Perhaps he saw that, for he didn’t try to tease her about the question or elaborate on it. He considered it judicially and said, “I would mean she was the girl for me and that I wanted to marry her.”

“Oh, Michael, would you?” She smiled at him, in a sort of relieved approval. “Yes—
I
suppose you
would
mean just that.”

“But I haven’t said it to anyone,” he warned her, with a sort of whimsical alarm, “Who’s been telling you tales?”

“No one. It wasn’t you I was thinking of.”

“Oh. I’m both relieved and chagrined,” he told her. “What prompted the question then?”

“I just wanted to know what sophisticated, worldly men usually meant when they talked that way, I suppose.”

“Oh, my dear, we’re getting into deep waters!” Again
he looked humorously alarmed. “Sophisticated, worldly men—how charming of you to put me in that category—might not mean at all what I would mean by those dangerous and ambiguous little words. You’d better tell your Uncle Michael the whole story, if you really want advice.”

“I don’t want to tell you any more. And anyway, you’re not my uncle—” she smiled mischievously at him “—you’re my cousin. But thanks for the words of wisdom.”

And with an airy little wave of her hand she went out of the room smiling, aware that he looked after her in a half amused, half dissatisfied way.

Outside the door she paused for a moment. But the light was still on in Aunt Henrietta’s room, and there was no point in putting things off any longer. She went across and knocked on the door and, in spite of her brave words to Angus, her heart was beating heavily.

“Come in,” called a voice from within, and Ruth entered to find Aunt Henrietta sitting up in bed, looking indefinably elegant in a very becoming dressing jacket.

She put down the book she had been holding when Ruth came in, but Ruth had the curious impression that she had not really been reading it. However, she smiled composedly and asked pleasantly whether it had been a nice evening.

Once more—but now with a slight sense of unreality—Ruth spoke about the play, enlarging upon it more than she had done to Michael, perhaps with the instinctive desire to put off the difficult moment, even now.

At the end, there was a slight pause, in which she was terribly tempted to say a quick good-night and flee. Then Aunt Henrietta ran an absent hand over the book beside her and said, “You’re really fond of Angus Everton, aren’t you?”

It wasn’t quite what Ruth had expected, and she caught her breath on a slight, nervous laugh.

“I like him a good deal, Aunt Henrietta. He’s an interesting and very charming friend.”

“And you attach a good deal of importance to anything he tells you?”

“Well—yes. I suppose I might.”

“What did he tell you about me, Ruth?”

The question was so undramatically put, without emphasis or rancor, that for a moment it was hard to believe that this was the crux of the matter. She had not really expected Angus to be brought much into this. On
l
y that her own statement would be challenged.

“Do you mean—do you mean this evening, Aunt Henrietta? He—he didn’t say anything about you.”

“No.
I
don’t mean specially this evening. What did Angus Everton say to you that made you think I am not the person I’m pretending to be?”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Ruth took
a quick, scared breath. She was greatly tempted in that moment to evade the issue, to make protestations that might possibly conceal the fact that she and Angus had indeed discussed Aunt Henrietta at some length. But then she remembered saying to Angus earlier that evening that she did, as a general rule, try hard to tell the truth, and she felt ashamed of the impulse.

Besides—if she wanted to settle this mystery of Aunt Henrietta, once and for all, now was the moment. So, in a voice she strove hard to make steady, she said, “Angus is sure that he met you once, some years ago, here in England when—when you were supposed to be in New Zealand or Australia.”

“But he could be mistaken, couldn’t he, Ruth?” Aunt Henrietta’s voice was surprisingly calm and even.

“He doesn’t seem to think he could be.” Ruth, who was sitting on the side of the bed, pleated the bedspread nervously in her fingers, her head bent because she found it difficult to look the older woman in the face at this moment. “He’s quite convinced he is right. Besides—”

She hesitated, and Aunt Henrietta prompted her quietly.

“Besides what, my dear?”

“Mother had her doubts, too. I—I hope that doesn’t sound horrid and suspicious, or as though we didn’t
want
to accept you at your face value
,”
Ruth interjected distressfully. “We’re not distrustful people, and truly we don’t make a habit of querying other people’s statements. But mother has a—a sort of instinct about these things, which she follows quite obstinately.”

Ruth stopped again and Aunt Henrietta said, incredulously, “Do you mean that she just followed a kind of—hunch? That she simply decided I wasn’t the woman I pretended to be—and that was all there was to it?”

“
Oh, no, no.” Ruth shook her head emphatically. “It was much more than that. She didn’t think you seemed like the woman she remembered—in attitude and disposition, I mean, much more than in actual looks, which she realized of course, would have changed a good deal. And what shook her most of all was that you didn’t recognize the spoons and forks or—”

“The spoons and forks?” Aunt Henrietta looked bewildered, as well she might, Ruth thought. “But why should
I
recognize them, after all those years?”

“Because you yourself gave them to mother for her wedding present. And there was a sort of family joke about them, in which you implied you would always recognize them. You—you didn’t. You didn’t even remember the joke. And—oh, other little things. Like your saying you were never carsick, when mother remembered that you suffered especially in that way.”

Once more Ruth hesitated, but this time Aunt Henrietta made no answer, so that Ruth felt bound to hurry on, half
-
apologetically.

“Don’t think we were on the lookout for mistakes, or anything horrid like that, Aunt Henrietta. Only mother did have these doubts, right from the first evening. And then, when Angus told me confidently that he’d seen you before, I—I couldn’t exactly ignore it.”

“And where,” inquired Aunt Henrietta, still calmly, “did he think he saw me?”

“It was some years ago—perhaps ten years ago—in a—in a provincial music hall,” Ruth explained diffidently. And because she was looking down again in a sort of embarrassment, she saw Aunt Henrietta’s well-shaped hand tighten on her book.

“How extraordinary,” said Aunt Henrietta. But this time her voice was flat and curiously lacked conviction.

“Yes—wasn’t it?” agreed Ruth unhappily.

“Well—go on.”

“He said,” Ruth continued doggedly, “that you were doing impersonations and that you were extraor—I mean amazingly—clever. Not so much from an entertainment point of view, because you lacked the quality that makes people laugh or cry. But from the professional point of view. Angus said you fascinated him, and he went and watched you every evening. That was why he was so sure it was you. He knew the way you—this woman, I mean—walked, came into a room and, above all, the way—she—could sink herself in the identity of another person.”

“Very penetrating,” observed Aunt Henrietta, and looking up, Ruth saw that she was smiling, with a faint suggestion of bitterness. Or perhaps it was just resignation.

“Wh-what did you say?”

“
I
said this young man of yours is very penetrating. He observed well and drew the correct conclusions.”

“The—correct conclusions?” Ruth held her breath.

“Yes, of course.” Aunt Henrietta spoke almost impatiently. “He was absolutely right in saying I lacked the power to hold or amuse an audience. And yet I had the talent for absolute impersonation.”

“Then—” even now Ruth was strangely reluctant to believe that she was hearing aright “—
t
hen—it
was
you that Angus saw?”

“Oh, yes. It was I.” Aunt Henrietta made an odd, comprehensive little gesture with her hands, as though she were physically rejecting further argument.

“But—in that case—you were here—in England—when you should have been in New Zealand—or Australia?”

“I was never in New Zealand, except for a brief visit,” Aunt Henrietta said calmly. “And
I
went to Australia at a much later date than I led you to suppose.”

“Then—it’s true? You aren’t my Aunt Henrietta, after all?”

“No. Does that surprise you so much?” The older woman smiled faintly again. “For someone who has been assuring me of the fact for the last ten minutes, you’re registering a remarkable degree of astonishment.”

“But
I
am
astonished.
I
didn’t quite believe it—until now, in spite of all that mother and Angus said.”

“Didn’t you, Ruth?” Aunt Henrietta looked curiously indulgent for a moment. “But then you’re trustful by nature, aren’t you?”

“Perhaps.” Ruth frowned a little, wondering if she had been altogether too naive. Then another thought struck her and she glanced up, to ask quickly, “Does Michael know about this?”

“No! Of course not.” Aunt Henrietta’s voice sharpened, and everything about her suddenly seemed to become taut. “He doesn’t know, and he
mustn’t
know. He, of all people.”

“Oh,” said Ruth soberly, and she wondered what deep waters they were now treading. “That’s going to be difficult, isn’t it, Aunt Henrietta?”

“No. Why should it be? He hasn’t guessed anything up to now. I don’t imagine you will think it your business to tell him?”

“Of course not!” Ruth was a good deal shocked at the idea. But then she thought uncomfortably of Michael being deceived in this very queer and unsatisfactory way, and she reflected that perhaps she ought to know a little more of what she was agreeing to conceal before she promised absolute silence.

“What is it?” Aunt Henrietta was watching her closely, and she must have seen the shade of doubt cross Ruth’s face.

“Nothing. Except that—” Ruth looked up and faced that other woman resolutely “—I don’t want to seem inquisitive, Aunt Henrietta—” one had to go on calling her Aunt Henrietta, in default of any other name “—but if you’re asking me to be party to this—this deception—”

“I’m not asking y
o
u to be party to it.”

“Well, you are in a way, if you want me to help conceal the truth from Michael.”

“I’m not asking you to help conceal anything. Only not to tell Michael what you have discovered.”

“It’s very much the same thing,” said Ruth, refusing to accept this hairsplitting. “If I am to go on treating you as my aunt Henrietta, with the object of convincing Michael that you
are,
then I think I must ask you to tell me a little more. I don’t know why you should be doing this. But you must have some overwhelming reason for it. I—I’m sorry, but I think you’ll have to tell me what it is.”

“Otherwise, you mean, you will go out now and tell Michael what you have discovered?”

“Oh, no, Aunt Henrietta! I’m not a self-righteous sneak,” exclaimed Ruth indignantly. “I’m not going to put any pressure on you, if that’s what you mean. But I just can’t give any real cooperation over this if I have the uneasy feeling that you may be leading Michael up the garden path in some sort of—of unworthy way.”

“I assure you my motive is a harmless one.”

“Is it?” said Ruth, and looked unhappy.

Aunt Henrietta gave a half-vexed little laugh.

“But that isn’t sufficient, eh?”

“If that’s all you’re willing to say, then it has to be sufficient,” replied Ruth practically. “But I wish you’d tell me more—that’s all. I don’t
want
to feel distrustful and uneasy about you. I’d be glad to hear any explanation that put you in a good light. If you don’t feel you can give it—that’s all there is to say. But I shall go away as soon as I can, and you mustn’t be surprised or hurt if I try not to see you again.”

There was silence, and Ruth had the impression that the moderation of her little speech had not been without its effect.

“You’re discreet, of course—” Aunt Henrietta seemed to be talking half to herself “—and you’re trustworthy. Perhaps—in a way—it would be a relief to tell someone.” Still Ruth said nothing, in case she should give the impression of trying to hurry the older woman into a decision she might regret. And, after a moment, Aunt Henrietta began to speak—slowly, as though she were choosing her words carefully, or recalling facts that had been so long suppressed, even in her own consciousness, that to bring them to utterance required some sort of effort.

“When I told you that Aunt Henrietta and a woman friend lived together for some years,” she said carefully, “that was perfectly true. Only—I was the friend. It was Henrietta who died.”

Ruth caught her breath in a little gasp.

“I—I see. Then—you assumed her identity?”

“Yes.”

“But—why?” However intrusive the question might seem, it had to be asked. And the answer was completely astonishing.

“Mostly, I think,” Aunt Henrietta said with a wry smile, “because of Michael—and your mother.”

“Because of—mother? But you’d never even seen her, surely? Or Michael, either, I suppose, for that matter.”

“One doesn’t always have to see someone in order to want to—belong to them,” the older woman said slowly. “
I
suppose, Ruth, you can’t imagine what it’s like to be absolutely alone in the world. Without a soul who belongs to you or cares whether you live or die. You’ve always been part of a family. An easygoing, loving, expansive sort of family. You don’t even begin to know the meaning of the word loneliness.”

“Well—well, no,” Ruth admitted uncomfortably. “If you put it that way, of course I don’t. But was that, then, how you were?”

“Yes. My parents died when I was quite young, and I had no immediate family at all. I went on the stage with my impersonation act, and when I was twenty-five I married. His people were very much against the marriage and
never even bothered to meet me, but we neither of us cared, because we were completely happy together—for just two years. Then he was killed in an accident.”

Her voice was quiet, almost unemotional. But when Ruth exclaimed impulsively, “Oh, Aunt Henrietta, I’m so terribly sorry!” she put out her hand and held Ruth’s tightly for a moment.

“I went back to the stage, but—I suppose the spark had really gone out of me. It was just as your Angus says. I was extraordinarily clever, in a way—” she spoke without false modesty and also without pride “—but the true human reaction, which draws an audience to one, was gone. Perhaps I never had it to any special degree,” she added reflectively. “I was certainly not the stuff of which great stage figures are made. I just exploited an odd talent that I had.”

“But you—at least you made a living out of it?”

“Yes. Not a good one, but I kept going. Touring around provincial theaters most of the time, never making close or lasting contacts. You don’t, you know, if you do a solo act and have lost the capacity for mixing well. At the time when Angus Everton must have seen me, I was getting a little too old for the job, and I was almost as scared and lonely as it’s possible to be.”

She paused, as though mentally reviewing the gray emptiness of other days, and Ruth, breathless with interest and sympathy, took her hand again in a warm clasp.

“
Go on,” she said urgently.

“
It couldn’t have been more than a few months after that there happened what seemed at the time to be a stroke of good fortune. I got the offer to go to tour Australia and New Zealand in a company of mixed variety artists. It meant something like a year’s work and a fascinating change of scene. I accepted, of course. But—I’m afraid I couldn’t have been a very lucky person in those days, Ruth—” she smiled wryly again “—we hadn’t been there more than a couple of months when the company went broke.”

“
Oh, how awful!”

Ruth was so obviously moved by the story that Aunt Henrietta said, with a sort of dryly consoling air,
“
It’s a long time ago, and it’s all over now. Most of the others made their way home somehow, but I had neither the money nor the initiative left to do that. I stayed on. And after a rather rough few months—” Ruth felt that must have been an understatement “—I was lucky enough to find work as a companion housekeeper to an elderly lady in a remote little settlement beyond the Blue Mountains.”

“
And she was the real Henrietta Curtis?”

“Yes. She was the real Henrietta Curtis. And I lived with her and looked after her, until she died about two years ago.”

“And she told you all about mother—and Michael?”

“Yes. Though not particularly willingly. The extraordinary thing was that she
liked
being alone. She never wanted to see anyone or to make friends or visit or be visited. She called it ‘keeping herself to herself,’ and spoke as though her isolated state were some sort of achievement. We were on little more than nodding terms with anyone in the small town, and I suppose we were both regarded as a trifle eccentric and ‘uppish.’ Sometimes in later years she would talk about her sister and nephew back home in England, and several times she spoke about your mother, of whom she was really fond, I think.”

“It’s difficult not to be,” Ruth explained in loving parenthesis.

“But, although I often urged her to write to them, she never did. She said she was too old to bother with correspondence, though of course she was not really old at all. Then her resources dwindled, and she wasn’t really able to pay for a companion any longer. But by then I couldn’t leave her—she’d become too dependent on me in every way. So I stayed and we managed somehow. And then she died, leaving the little house and the furniture to me.”