Such is love (22 page)

"I don't know what it is," he said with masculine vagueness. "Except—yes, the black dress makes your skin look almost childishly fair."

"And the ear-rings? Don't even they save me?"

But he laughed and took her face between his hands.

"The ear-rings, sweetheart, are just a lovely sort of joke."

They were nothing of the sort, of course, but she liked it when he said such things, all the same.

Just before they left the flat she went into Toby's room to see that he was all right. To her surprise, he was awake, but lying there quite contentedly.

He smiled at her—sleepily but with beaming affection —as she bent over him to kiss him.

"I like those funny things in your ears," he said. "They flap, like elephant ears."

The compliment might not be very happily expressed, but the tone was unmistakably admiring, and Gwyneth laughed.

She hugged him and he immediately put his arms up round her neck and hugged her in return.

Impossible—impossible! she thought, that he was Terry's son. The child of a good-for-nothing, cruel swindler. He was so much more the sort of son that Van might have—

And at that she suddenly found the tears very near, because he was not Van's, and Van wouldn't even want him in the house if he knew the truth.

"Go to sleep, darling, and pleasant dreams." She patted his cheek and he immediately snuggled down again under the bed-clothes.

"Pleasant party," he said politely, and she went out of the room, laughing a little.

But when she was outside the door she didn't laugh any more.

Pleasant party! No, it was hardly likely to be that.

Van was waiting for her, and they went out to the car together.

"Sanderton rang up from the office a few minutes ago," he said as they drove away from the flat. "He's staying on there tonight until ten or eleven because we are expecting a veiy important cable from America late this evening. It's just possible that I might have to go along, too, later„ He'll phone me at Norbury if necessary "

"You mean you might have to leave me there?" Gwyn-eth sounded slightly startled in spite of all her efforts to hide the fact.

"Yes. You don't mind, do you?"

She didn't answer at once, and he said: - "They aren't at all alarming people, you know. Formal but perfectly friendly. Besides, it isn't like you to need social support." He seemed surprised and a little amused.

"No, no, of course not. It's all right," she amended.

"Sure?"

"Quite sure."

He glanced at her, she knew, not entirely convinced. But evidently he decided to take her answer at its face value, and nothing more was said.

They were silent after that. They often were when they went out driving together, but it was the silence of perfect companionship. No doubt he was pursuing the train of thought in connection with his business affairs, she told

157

A

herself. She was free to reflect on the disagreeable possibility of having to face whatever crisis there was tonight, alone. Or, if there were no crisis—^then she might be forced to allow Terry to take her home by taxi.

It was difficult to say which thought was more unpleasant, and she was looking unusually grave when they arrived at Paula's home.

Actually, Gwyneth found, on arrival, the house at Nor-bury was nothing like so forbidding as Paula and Van had suggested. Large and not very modern, yet it had an air of rich-toned comfort which suggested a very pleasant sufficiency of this world's goods.

Throughout the house there reigned a rich, carpeted silence which it was difficult to associate with Paula. But then Paula's parents were also a little difficult to associate with her, Gwyneth found, when she and Van entered the long drawing-room and were greeted by them.

Mrs. Stacey, tall and heavily dignified, wore a dress of heavy amethyst silk, which had probably cost more than anything Gwyneth had ever worn in her life, though she reckoned to spend a good deal'on her clothes.

Mr. Stacey was rosy-cheeked and bushy-haired—an unexpectedly cheerful little man, and nothing like so dignified as his wife. They were both at least sixty, Gwyneth saw, and indeed Mr. Stacey, at least, was probably not far off seventy.

Apparently Van enjoyed their almost imlimited approval, and it seemed probable that she was to be allowed to share this.

"We were sorry, indeed, not to be able to attend your wedding in the summer," Mrs. Stacey told her, "but, of course, my husband and I do very little travelling nowadays, and it seemed too much of an undertaking to come quite so far." /

Gwyneth assured her hostess that she quite understood —^though she secretly felt convinced that old Mr. Stacey, if left to his own choice, would certainly have undertaken an even longer journey. He seemed game for a good many more things than his wife, but was rather firmly suppressed if he showed signs of breaking out in any unorthodox direction. It was from him, undoubtedly; that Paula inherited her more headstrong qualities, and, in consequence,

Gwyneth thought, it was probably he, rather than the mother, who had capitulated so completely to Terry's onslaught.

Conversation took a very correct and conventional turn. They talked of the mildness of the weather, their pleasure in Paula's engagement, the possibility of a foreign honeymoon for her, while Gwyneth thought:

"How awful! They're so completely and utterly taken in, and they're the kind to blame themselves terribly afterwards if anything happened to their darling. I can't let it go on." And yet to speak meant—what?

"Mr. Muirldrk," announced the au pair girl, and Terry breezed into the room.

Until then, Gwyneth had felt that he could not do anything but strike a shghtly incongruous note—in these surroundings, with which he had nothing in common. But she was quite mistaken. Nothing could have been more complete than Terry's assumption of the attributes and qualities most suited to the Stacey's expectation of what a son-in-law should be.

He bent over Mrs. Stacey's hand, and then respectfully kissed the large, smooth cheek offered. Royalty saluting royalty could not have done it better. He called Mr. Stacey *sir', and deferred to him in most things, listening with pleasant attention to almost every word he uttered. And, while Paula showed a famt impatience at the slow tempo of the household, he accommodated himself to it with magnificent good humour tinged with respect.

It was not lost on Van, Gwyneth saw, and while she felt nothing but indignation and contempt for what she knew was the exploiting of these decent people, he was evidently very genuinely amused by what he believed to be a piece of harmless and tactful (Uplomacy.

Terry greeted her with charming courtesy, and Van with more than friendliness. His effrontery was so staggering that Gwyneth was frightened. It was as though he knew he was invincible, and scarcely bothered to suppose that anyone could thmk him anything else.

Presently they moved into the slightly gloomy dining-room, where heavy mahogany furniture and a deep-piled maroon-coloured carpet seemed to suggest that here eating took place as a very solemn rite.

Tall, steadily-burning candles shed pools of light on the highly-polished table, and the very exquisite lace table-mats seemed to float on the surface of a dark pool. The flower decorations were conventional but lavish, and they had evidently been chosen quite regardless of expense.

Each course of the meal was perfectly served, perfectly cooked, and, to tell the truth, perfectly chosen. Mrs. Stacey might not believe in 'patronizing gay restaurants', but she certainly knew how to provide a meal which defied criticism, in her own house.

Gwyneth*s intelligence paid tribute to it, while her sense of enjoyment was left untouched. It was impossible to enjoy the most perfect of food when one's thoughts were in a turmoil and one's confidence in. open revolt against one's fondest wishes.

"We were just talking about your plans for a foreign honeymoon," Van remarked to Terry across the table.

"Oh yes?" Terry exchanged a smile with Paula. "I should actually have liked a tour round the world myself, but we decided it would mean too great a change for Mr. and Mrs. Stacey. One doesn't expect to have one's only daughter taken away quite so completely and abruptly." This time the smile was directed upon Mrs. Stacey, whose slight inclination of the head was evidently meant to convey that she appreciated Terry's thougiht for them.

Gwyneth watched iu silent but incredulous astonishment It would have been impossible for a casual observer to suppose that any but Terry's money would have paid for the suggested world tour. No—^the change of plans was due solely to his exquisite consideration for others, and not at all to the fact that he was drawing lavishly on his fiancee's family for his future support.

"You chose Switzerland, didn't you?" Terry was addressing himself to her, she found, and the conversation was apparently still circling round the topic of honey- 1 moons.

"Yes. We only managed to snatch ten days, but we had a wonderful time." She was surprised, herself, at the agreeable cordiality with which she managed to produce that. 1

"Ah, that's the worst of you business magnates," Terry • turned to Van again. "Busiuess must come first, even on a honeymoon. Now, we good-for-nothing artists can laze

away a month or two, and all anyone says is "disgusting how that fellow neglects his work, but then what do you expect from an artist?" And he laughed so pleasantly at the joke against himself that everyone joined in, just to show how absurd was the disparaging reference.

"But then you work very hard when you are at it," Paula protested.

Terry shrugged and smiled.

"You've only seen me working on something I specially enjoy," he told her. And then Gwyneth was not at all surprised to learn that he was busying himself on a portrait of Mrs. Stacey.

"It's really wonderful," she thought, with something like reluctant admiration for his sheer rascality. "He had the sense to choose her rather than the old man. She was the difficult part of the problem, as I thought He can manage his futiire father-in-law with one hand.

"Terry is extremely gifted," Mrs. Stacey said to Van, and Gwyneth thought that was certainly true, though not in quite the way she meant.

"We're having a marvellous studio built, all along one side of the house," Paula explained. "Two stories high and lots of the right sort of light—I never know which it is. Anyway, Terry is delighted with it."

The whole Stacey family appeared to share Terry's delight, Gwyneth noticed at that moment.

"A very bad arrangement," Van told Paula rather teas-ingiy. "You shouldn't have your husband working at home. You'll be dreadfully sick of him before the first year's out."

"Oh no! It's much more fun than saying good-bye immediately after breakfast and wondering after that if he'll even be in to tea. I think Gwyneth's an angel to put up so well with all those hours alone."

"Gwyneth is quite an exceptional person in every way," Van asserted, still with an air of banter, but this time with an under-current of meaning.

Gwyneth smiled.

"I don't mind my own company," she said, "and in any case, I'm not alone."

"Oh no. Of course, there's Toby now, isn't there? And I hear you really are adopting him permanently, as you

wanted. But a little boy isn't really very much company, is he?"

"Toby is." Gwyneth was quite firm about that, while Mrs. Stacey remarked judicially:

"An intelligent child can be quite a little companion. At six, Paula, you certainly were."

"Oh, I don't expect I was a tenth as quaint and amusing as Toby," Paula declared generously. "He's quite adorable."

"My daughter tells me he is a most attractive child," Mrs. Stacey said graciously to Gwyneth. "So fortunate, because, of course, it is a terrible risk."

"Adopting a child, you mean?"

"Yes."

"We didn't feel there was much risk about it," Van put | in, with that casual firmness that always made Gwyneth feel the whole thing was so reasonable and justifiable—^not simply a wild and emotional impulse, as it must seem to some people.

"I think the most remarkable thing is their objective view of it," Terry declared to Mrs. Stacey. "I don't believe they even insisted on knowing anything of the child's antecedents."

"Do you thmk that was very wise?" Mrs. Stacey's tone expressed perfectly that she did not.

"But there weren't any known, in any case, were there?" ,j Paula said. I

"There must have been some sort of record at the | orphanage, unless he was actually a foundling," her mother. insisted.

"I don't think he was that," Van said. "But Gwyn and I both felt that the less we knew about his previous circumstances, the more he would seem like our own."

Mrs. Stacey sucked her under-lip thoughtfully and shook her head.

"But the parents might have been anybody" she pointed out with perfect truth.

"Does it matter?" Van's smile was extremely charming in its determined tolerance.

"Well, I rather think it does."

Terry laughed good-temperedly and explained to Mrs. Stacey:

"What Onslie means is that it just wouldn't have made any difference. Suppose Toby's mother had been—^no better than she shoxid be, for instance—and I suppose it's more than probable—still they would have wanted to have him."

It was not until that moment that Gwyneth realized how Toby had grown into Van's affections and pride. The look he gave Terry was quite frightening in its cold anger.

"I've never supposed Toby's mother to have been anything of the sort," he said icily, and for a moment an uncomfortable silence fell on the company.

Even when Mrs. Stacey healed the breach with.a pleasant and cast-iron platitude, Gwyneth herself remained silent—^withdrawn from the conversation, almost unbearably moved.

M Van had known! If Van had knownl With those dear, curt, angry words, he had been defending his own wife. It touched her so that she could have wept in front of them all, and it hurt her that she would never be able to thank him for the comfort he had given her.

CHAPTER TEN