Choose the One You'll Marry (18 page)

Why not? Why, indeed? Except that Charmian could not possibly regard that as keeping their relationship on a coolly remote footing. And even if she did not come to hear of that exact incident, there was first the fact that one had given one’s word, and secondly the fact that such an invitation, accepted and enjoyed, could only contribute to the deepening and strengthening of their friendship.

It took hardly more than a second or two for these considerations to pass in rapid mental review, and there was really only a very slight pause before she said, “Thank you very much, Michael. But I think I should stick to my original arrangement. They’re expecting me at home tomorrow evening and—”

“We could telephone and explain,” he pointed out.

“Yes, but there’s the hotel, too. They’ve already been extremely good about giving.me leave. I don’t think I can impose on them further.”

“I could make that right,” he said obstinately. “I’d have a word with Naylor.”

“But I don’t think I want you to ‘make it right,’ ” Ruth said coolly. “There are my immediate colleagues to be considered. They’ve had to do my work while I’m away. It wouldn’t be fair to stay away longer than was strictly necessary for the program.”

“You mean—” he set his mouth unexpectedly hard “—you prefer not to drive up with me.”

“I mean,” she replied, with a cool decisiveness that could only have commended itself to Charmian, “that I prefer to keep to my original arrangement and catch the ten-thirty in the morning.”

“Very well.” He turned away.

“Michael—” she simply could not let it go at that “—please don’t read anything unfriendly into that. It was a very kind offer, but—I ought to get back.”

“All right.” He turned immediately and smiled at her, in a way that made her think how beautifully easy life with Michael could be. “I understand. Don’t take any notice of my temporary crabbiness. It was just the moment of disappointment.”

“But—you will be coming to Castlemore on Wednesday, won’t you?” She could not keep back the inquiry, nor could she make her tone sound anything but eager.

“Not Wednesday, I think, now,” he said. “I felt it was worthwhile rushing things here a little if it meant the chance of taking you home by car. But, as there’s no hurry now, I expect I’ll wait over until next week.”

Even next week was something, she supposed. But—if only there had not been that hateful and ridiculous arrangement with Charmian, how different the future would have looked.

There must be a way around it,
Ruth thought, when she was alone in her room and could review the situation.
It’s simply absurd to have put myself in this false position. If only Aunt Henrietta would agree to be frank with Michael, Charmian would lose any hold over me.

But Aunt Henrietta, she knew, had the most exaggerated fears about Michael’s reaction to her real story. And in a way, how could one blame her? She, too, loved Michael—with the desperate eagerness of a lonely, aging woman who had no one else in her life.

Then there must be some way of coming to reasonable terms with Charmian
,
Ruth told herself.

But almost before this hope had formed in her mind, Ruth knew it was a forlorn one. Charmian was not a person with whom one came to reasonable terms. She wanted Michael for herself, and she meant to have him. That was all.

One might dare to hope that Michael could look after himself, in this respect as in
m
ost other ways. But one could not be anything like sure. And he had already shown a dangerous degree of interest in Charmian.

Besides—Ruth remembered with fresh anxiety and anguish—there was such a thing as a man marrying unwisely because he was disappointed by his real love.

If Angus is right—and I could really make Michael very fond of me—that must mean he is already more than interested in me. Well, he is, of course. I know that without Angus telling me.
She looked that fact in the face and found it both enchanting and disturbing.
But then, if I—choke him off, he may seek consolation with Charmian.

At this point the whole situation assumed such a harrowing and complicated aspect that Ruth was sorely tempted to rush back into the other room and assure Michael that she would wait over one day longer, if only he would drive her back to Castlemore himself.

But she
had
given her word to Charmian. And whatever the circumstances, that could not just be brushed aside.
Besides—what of the result for Aunt Henrietta if she did such a thing?

For the moment, there’s absolutely nothing I can do,
Ruth told herself reluctantly. And immediately she became aware that nothing is the very hardest thing to do when one’s heart is really involved. Only by promising herself that somehow,
somehow,
she would find a way of being frank with Michael did she finally contrive to fall asleep.

The next morning
Aunt Henrietta broke her usual rule of breakfast in bed and joined Ruth and Michael. It was most kindly meant and was, Ruth knew, a sort of compliment to herself, but she could not control the quick rush of disappointment that she experienced when she realized that she was not going to have Michael to herself for this very last time.

However, it seemed that he was taking her to the station. And once the goodbyes had been said to Aunt Henrietta and half promises exchanged about future meetings, she found herself alone in the car with him for at least a precious ten or fifteen minutes.

Now was the moment when she ought to be able to say something subtle and telling, which would lay delicate emphasis on the friendship between them without precipitating any situation to which Charmian could take exception.

She searched her mind desperately for the right words—or even the right idea—but nothing came. He remarked that she was going to have a pleasant bright day for the journey, and he muttered one or two things about a traffic jam that they encountered. But neither of these seemed to lead anywhere near the sort of thing she wanted to say.

Desperately, she began to tell him all over again how deeply grateful she was for all the kindness she had been shown. But even this effort to bring things onto a slightly more emotional level failed of its effect. He merely smiled and said, with brisk good humor, “My dear child, I’m sure it has given Aunt Henrietta the greatest pleasure to have you. As she told you herself, we only hope you will come again quite soon.”

“I would love to—” Ruth began earnestly. But then the figure of Charmian seemed to rise before her mental vision, and not daring to commit herself further, she had to be satisfied with making no more than that very general statement.

At the station he found her a corner seat in the train, supplied her with newspapers and generally behaved as a good host should. But there was nothing—absolutely nothing—that she could cling to or store away for future comfort in a problematical, and now rather bleak-seeming, future.

Only when he bade her goodbye, just as the whistle was sounding, he reached up through the open window of the carriage and clasped her hand tightly.

“I’m glad it’s only a few days until we meet again,” he told her. “Maybe I’ll make it the weekend, rather than next week, after all.”

“Oh, Michael,
do
!
”
she cried, forgetting every one of her good resolutions. And even when the train began to move, her fingers clung to his for a moment longer.

Then, reluctantly, she released his hand; the train slid away out of the station, and Ruth was on her way home once more, the visit to London over.

It was a pleasant enough journey, devoid of any special incident, and when she reached Castlemore, in the late afternoon, it was heartwarming to find that not only Susannah but Leonard, too, was waiting for her on the platform.

“Oh, Len—how nice!” She kissed her brother, with more emotion than they usually displayed toward each other, and then bent down to embrace Susannah.

“It seems ages since you went away,” Susannah told her, with a flattering air of having missed her. “And you must have had simply heaps of adventures.”

“Well—I don’t know about that,” Ruth laughed. For though, in retrospect, it seemed to her that a great deal had happened to her during the few days she had been away from home, she was not sure that much of it would rate as “adventure” with her little sister. And some of it, of course, could not even be told.

“But going to London is an adventure in itself,” Susannah pointed out as they made their way out of the station to where the shabby family car was waiting. “And then the television show and all the famous people you must have met—what was the most exciting thing you did, Ruth?

Ruth obligingly reviewed the events of the visit in the light of Susannah’s probable reactions.

“Let me see—the program itself was quite something, of course. And then I went to a studio party, which wasn’t like any other party I’d ever been to. Oh—and I went to tea at the Ritz—”

“Whew!” Susannah sucked in her cheeks in an admiring whistle. ‘.‘Who with? Angus Everton?”

“No. With Michael Harling, as a matter of fact.”

“Oh—Mr. Harling? Well, of course, he’s very nice,” Susannah conceded. “And I’ll never forget how helpful he was over my arithmetic homework. But it would have been kind of more exciting if it had been with a celebrity, wouldn’t it?”

“No,” said Ruth quite simply. And at that moment she could think of nothing that would have made her happier than to be going to have tea somewhere—it need not even have been at the Ritz—with Michael.

However, tea at home with the family once more had its points, too, and she thoroughly enjoyed being the center of interest, while she gave a detailed account of her visit to London.

Her mother said little, though she listened with the utmost attention, and Ruth felt pretty certain that she was still turning over in her mind the doubts and suspicions she had entertained in connection with Aunt Henrietta. Her father said that no doubt Ruth would find it difficult settling down to the old routine, but that was how life was. Leonard remarked that she seemed to have managed to group a great deal of fun around half an hour’s actual work. And Susannah said would Ruth
please
tell them all over again about the time she went to have tea at the Ritz.

It was not until much later—just before she went to bed, in fact—that Ruth and her mother were alone together. And then Mrs.
Tadcaster
asked, with characteristic directness, “Did you find out the real truth, Ruth?”

“About—Aunt Henrietta, you mean?” Ruth knew it was useless to prevaricate where her mother was concerned.

“Yes, of course.”

“Well—yes, I did.” Ruth spoke a trifle reluctantly, because she had never really come to any decision with Aunt Henrietta about the amount she was to tell her mother. But then she made up her mind that she was not going to start a series of untruths and misrepresentations in her own family. So she went on, more firmly, “You were quite right about her not being the real Aunt Henrietta. And I—I’m going to tell you the whole story. But
please
remember she was terribly lonely and friendless, mother, and—and greatly tempted, I suppose.”

“I’ll remember,” Mrs. Tadcaster promised with a faint smile, and she glanced at her eldest child with an air of affection.

And so, in some detail, and with a careful—almost a tender—choice of words, Ruth told the story of Aunt Henrietta and the woman who had tried to impersonate her.

At the end there was a short silence. Then her mother merely asked, “Does Michael Harling know about this?”

“No.”

“Well, then, I hope, if he ever has to know the story, that you are the person who tells it to him.”

“Oh, mother—why?”

“Because it would be a hardhearted person who could hear your account of events and not absolve that poor woman.”

“Oh, mother!” Ruth said again. “Then you mean you don’t really blame her?”

“M
y dear
!
” Mrs. Tadcaster looked genuinely surprised. “I have everything in the world that matters—” And Ruth saw that, to her mother, this was the simple truth. “How could I take it upon myself to judge anyone in her position? I don’t even know how she felt. I may think I understand. But I don’t suppose anyone knows what loneliness really is unless they’ve had to experience it.”

“That’s true.” Ruth hugged her mother, just because it was so lovely to be home and to know that the family
values were her own. “I wish I could be sure Michael would feel the same, if ever he had to know the story.”

“It’s different with a man, of course,” her mother said succinctly. “But perhaps he need never know.”

“Perhaps,” Ruth agreed, but she bit her lip. “I wish he did know, though. It—it would make some things so much—simpler.”

“Any explanations would have to be made with the utmost tact and feeling.”

“Yes, of course,” Ruth said. And she winced as she thought of the way Charmian would throw the distorted facts at Michael, if she ever had reason to think she had been double-crossed. “Perhaps it would be better—for him never to know.”

“Well, fortunately the choice isn’t ours,” her mother pointed out consolingly. “Aunt Henrietta—for I suppose we must go on calling her that—is the only person to decide on that point. All we have to do now is to try to forget that we ever thought of her as anyone else.”

“I suppose you’re right.” Ruth laughed and then sighed, which made her mother glance at her speculatively. But, because she possessed the almost priceless quality of minding her own business, even in the bosom of her own family, Mrs. Tadcaster said no more.

The next morning at the hotel Ruth’s colleagues displayed a certain degree of interest in her experiences, but naturally this fell somewhat short of the family’s reaction.

They asked one or two good-natured questions. The tale was soon told. And half an hour later Ruth was so completely immersed in her normal duties that it was hard to believe she had ever been away from the reception desk at the Excelsior.

Only when she raised her head occasionally and looked across at the big calendar that hung on the wall of her office, she thought,
I don’t even have to mark off the days. Michael will be coming soon.