The girl in the blue dress (16 page)

The most difficult moment, she knew, would be when she
came to the drive home with Geoffrey. How was she to talk to him with any real
candour or openness"?

But equally, how could she erect a barrier of
deceit between herself and the one person who meant most
to her?

In the end, she hit on a compromise. She would talk
of Franklin Lowell's suggestion for their future, but without giving any hint
of how she and he had come
to discuss this.
And Geoffrey himself presented her with
the required opening when he
said, "I noticed how well you get on with Lowell. I'm not surprised now
that he made you that magnificent offer."

"The offer concerns you more personally than
me, " Beverley pointed out a trifle coolly, "even if he was largely
moved by a friendly feeling for me. Which reminds me, he is quite willing to
arrange the exhibition as soon as possible, Geoffrey, without waiting for, for
our wedding."

"Is that so?" Geoffrey sounded a little
curt. Or perhaps he was just preoccupied.

"Yes. He said, the sooner you were made into a
successful and prosperous portrait painter, the better."

Geoffrey laughed slightly. "That's looking far
ahead."

"But one does want to look far ahead at such a
time, doesn't one?" she suggested timidly.

"At what time?"

"When one is going to be married."

"Oh, yes, of course!" Did she detect an
odd note of
remorse in his tone? "I
just didn't get what you meant,
for
the moment."

"I've been thinking, Geoffrey. Suppose you did
make a great success with this exhibition, "

"Dearest girl! let's wait, first, and see what
happens.
It may be the most almighty flop, however
well it's
organized.'"

"Yes, I know. And I won't moan if it is, she assured
him stoutly. "But Franklin doesn't think it's
going to be, and he is a pretty shrewd man of business.

He is quite a judge of what the public wants. If it
is a success, and you really became in demand, you wouldn't want to go on
living here, would you?"

There was quite a long pause.
Then Geoffrey said,
 
"What makes you think that?"

"Well, it wouldn't even be very practical, would
it? A man who aspires to paint portraits, "

"I'm not aiming to be a
portrait painter only, " he interrupted a trifle irritably.

" But you're marvellous at that, and it would
probably be the really money-making side of your work.
Only you can't paint people's portraits if you live in the depths of the
country. I suppose we might
even have to live in London, mightn't
we?"

Again there was quite a pause,
while she held her breath.

"We might, I suppose, "
he said slowly at last. And
then half
to himself, "It might be the best way "

I just wanted you to-know that if, if you did
decide it was the best way, I wouldn't mind at all."

'What about your mother?" he asked, as they
drew up outside Beverley's home.

"I don't know, " she confessed. "We
should have to
make some arrangements so
that she was not too far away from us. But one can always get round
difficulties

I just what is best for your happiness " And, in
spite of all that had happened that evening,
the
anger and disillusionment, her voice broke slightly
as she uttered the
sad but inescapable truth

"Baby'" He pulled
her against him suddenly and kissed her on her cheek and on her lips
"You're such a good, darling child. I'm not half good enough for
you!"

All the common sense in Beverley, and there was
a strong vein of it-told her that it is not a good
sign when a man starts saying he is not good enough for a girl. But it was so
wonderful to be kissed like that, and to lull one's fears with the idea that
perhaps a new
beginning had indeed been made that evening, that Beverley
was more than half comforted She returned his kisses very willingly, and then

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nor Beverley had supposed, when
she first witnessed that scene in the garden, that all the familiar pattern of existence
must surely be disrupted. There must in
evitably
be a break with Geoffrey, possibly a break between Sara and Franklin. And this,
in turn, would presumably put an end to her work at Huntingford
Grange (also a prospect to be viewed with dismay)
and
certainly to any good offers which Andrew Wayne
might try to exercise on her behalf with his uncle.

Instead of that, however, the surface of her day-to
day life remained unbroken both at home and at Huntinford. Indeed, plans for
Sara's wedding seemed
even more definitely taking
shape, while the family
plans which depended on that event were also
more clearly defined when Madeleine blew into the sewing- room early the
following week to announce,
 
"My
dear, I've managed it!"

"Managed what-?" enquired Beverley
smiling, for Madeleine looked so gay and pretty and lively that one smiled
instinctively at her. "I'm going to have my year in London at the Academy
of Dramatic Art."

"No? really?" Beverley was genuinely
delighted on her behalf. '"Your father has agreed, "

"Not Father, no." Madeleine dismissed her
parent's usefulness in this direction with scornful, if good humoured, emphasis.
"I've discussed the whole thing with Franklin. I don't know why I didn't do
so before. And he says he is perfectly willing to finance me for' an
experimental year."

"Is he?" said Beverley soberly, and she
found herself wondering if Franklin, shrewd business man though
he was tended to be curiously easily exploited by
those
he was fond of.

"Have you anything against it?" Madeleine
glanced at Beverley in some surprise.

"No, of course not! I just wondered how you persuaded
him. I mean have you convinced him that you really were sufficiently talented
to merit the experiment."

"I didn't, " said Madeleine cheerfully.
"In fact he
was extraordinarily cynical
about any likelihood of my success, " she added, without rancour.
"But he said that
if that was what would really make me happy, he
saw no reason why he shouldn't indulge his future sister-in law to that extent.
And he added, which I suppose is true, that it would cost less to keep me as a
student for a year in London than to provide me with a mink
coat."

"Was he going to give you a mink coat, then?"

"Not that I know of. But rich men do give
their sisters-in-law that sort of present sometimes, I suppose, " replied
Madeleine airily.

"I suppose they might, " agreed Beverley.

"But you still look
disapproving!"

"Not disapproving, no. It isn't my business
either
to approve or disapprove, "
replied Beverley very truly.

"And I'm very glad for your sake that he feels
like making the gesture. It only reminds me that I too have agreed to a very
generous gesture. And I hoped he wasn't letting his good heart betray him into
too much
generosity."

"Oh, my dear, he can afford to throw around
much more money than that, " Madeleine assured Beverley confidently.
"But what is he going to do for you?"
She looked curious.

"Perhaps he told you. He wants to pay for an exhibition
of Geoffrey's paintings in London, as a wed
ding
present to us both."

"Really?" Madeleine was generously
delighted on Beverley's behalf. "What a good idea! I've often wondered why
anyone so talented as Geoffrey pokes himself away in Binwick, instead of
getting out and about among the smart set who really buy art, as distinct from
admiring it on someone else's wall." .

"It's very simple, " Beverley said, without
offence. "Lack of money."

"But his father's really very well off, isn't
he?

Revian's is one of the soundest businesses in
Castleton.

I've heard Father say so
often."

"I suppose so. But Geoffrey and his father
don't get on together. They haven't for years."

"My goodness, I'd make it my business to get
on with any sort of parent, if I were the only child of a rich father, "
observed Madeleine frankly. "So you mean that Geoffrey is more or less a
poor man by
choice?"

"I suppose you could say so." Beverley
smiled
slightly. "That was the only way
he could pursue the
art he loves."

"You have to respect him for it, "
conceded Made
leine, with an air of recognizing,
without being able to understand, some amiable form of insanity. "Who will
get all the money when the old man dies?"

"I have no idea."

Madeleine threw up her hands
and laughed.'

"It's all too, too high-minded
for me, " she declared. "But possibly that's what preserved Geoffrey
safely for you, my child. He's very attractive, and if he'd been rich as well, I
can think of one or two people who might have snapped him up." And she
looked rather, droll, but so entirely without offence that Beverley could smile
too and say, with curious sincerity,

"Perhaps it was my good fortune that Geoffrey
was
poor."

During the next week or two she worked hard at
Sara's trousseau, while the days grew longer and
hotter,
and everyone said that this fine weather must break sometime
soon.

Geoffrey too was working hard almost feverishly,
to complete one or two unfinished pictures which
would add value and importance to any exhibition of his work.

He had had a long business
talk with Franklin Lowell, in which presumably the two men had successfully camouflaged
their dislike of each other, for he had emerged from it in very good humour, to
tell Beverley
that Franklin Lowell certainly
had very handsome ideas
about the way he
intended to discharge his promise to
promote a London exhibition,

"I told you he was genuinely bind and generous,
" Beverley reminded him.

"Well, all right. But he's a damned lucky
fellow
too, " Geoffrey retorted.
"Perhaps that makes it easier to throw largess around. I suppose he has
almost everything in the world that most people want. Health, wealth, a
reasonably interesting job, a fine house, and
a beautiful wife. At least
he will have that last in a very short time now."

"Then you think anyone who married Sara would '
be a lucky man?" enquired Beverley, amazed that she suddenly found, she
could put the question almost casually.

"I suppose so, yes." Geoffrey cast her a
quick glance. "She's lovely to look at, and she's a nice girl
too. Don't you think so?"

"Yes, of course. But I think there's a hard
streak in her."

"Hard?" Geoffrey looked astonished.

"Well, perhaps more hard-headed. I don't think,
"

Beverley said, coolly and
deliberately, "that Sara would
marry
a poor man, just because she loved him, do you?"

There was a second's pause. Then Geoffrey spoke equally
coolly. "No. I suppose you're right there."

"Don't you call that being a little
hard?"

"Not necessarily. I think I understand how she
feels." Geoffrey spoke slowly. "There are some things one simply
cannot give up. With Sara, it's a way of life, I guess, and the desire to put
everything right for that family of hers. It's a question of what a thing is
worth to you personally. Not unlike the way I felt about breaking with the old
man because I just couldn't or
wouldn't face
life without painting."

"I don't think it's the same thing at all, "
exclaimed Beverley, with energy. "You sacrificed your comfort and
prosperity in order to follow your art. In her case,
she sacrificed, I mean we are suggesting she would
sacrifice , a
worth-while man for the sake of material
prosperity."

"Well, " Geoffrey smiled and ruffled her
hair, the way he used to when she was a child, "nothing is ever in quite
such simple terms as that, I expect. Perhaps the answer is that if a man wanted
Sara enough he jolly well ought to make it his business to be rich."

He laughed as he said that. But Beverley did not laugh.
She merely decided that she would never again discuss Sara with him. For what
satisfaction had she
extracted from it?

Fortunately, he was so deeply concerned with the arrangements
for the proposed exhibition that there was little need to talk of anything
else. A suitable gallery had now been selected, a date had been fixed in the early
autumn, when people would be returning to town after the holidays, and a
certain amount of what
Franklin called
"indirect publicity" was already in hand.