The girl in the blue dress (27 page)

With slightly faltering steps Beverley approached the
front door and pulled the big brass bell-pull at the side. Almost immediately a
severe-looking maid opened
the door, and to
her Beverley made her timid request.

"Please, is Mr. Lowell in? and can I see
him?"

"I'll enquire, madam.
Will you come in?" The maid
stood
aside and admitted her to the hall which she had last seen in company with
Franklin himself and Sara Wayne.

"Who shall I say, madam?"

"Miss Farman, " said Beverley, and
swallowed nervously, as she wondered what effect, embarrassing or irritating, the
announcement of this name would have
upon
him.

The maid went away and Beverley, too-nervous to sit
down, stood there waiting.

But in a matter of moments she heard footsteps re turning,
and it was Franklin himself, not the maid, who came to fetch her. "Why, Beverley,
what a pleasant coincidence! I wanted to see you today. I actually called in at
your
place, "

"Yes, I know. I've just come from there. I
heard you had been. That's why I came." She spoke rather jerkily.

"But how quickly you've come."

"Yes. I, I got Barton the
taxi to bring me. You see,
I, I
guessed why you wanted to see me, and I had to
come and explain because, "

"Well, why don't we go into my study?" he
interrupted, with a slight smile. "We don't need to stand and discuss
things in the hall. Can I give you anything to eat? or drink? You must have
come on almost im
mediately from work."

"No, no, thank you. It's all right. I don't
need any thing, " she assured him. "I just wanted to explain, She
wished she could get away from that self conscious assertion, but the words
seemed to come with out her own volition.

"Come along, then." He ushered her into
the room she remembered as his study, and set a comfortable
chair for her. She sank into it, because her knees
felt unsteady, and only then did she realize that there was
one profound
difference in the furnishing of the room since she had last been there. The
beautiful portrait of Sara had disappeared, and in its place hung the picture of
herself in the blue and white dress.

"Why, why, you've changed the picture. I mean,
you didn't have that in here before."

"No." His glance followed hers. "I
had the picture of
Sara before.
But, in the circumstances, I felt she
should have that picture. I find my little girl in the blue and white
dress very good company."

He turned and smiled across at Beverley, but her answering
smile was rather tremulous, partly because of her nervousness and partly
because she was deeply moved to find that he could still speak of the picture in
these almost affectionate terms.

There was a slight pause, while Beverley found a great
wordless gap where the active part of her mind should have been.

"I, I hardly know where to begin, " she
stammered at last.

"No? Well, then, shall I begin?" he said
carelessly.

"It started with Madeleine telephoning to me
this
morning, "

"Madeleine?" gasped Beverley, in the
utmost dismay, for it seemed to her that there was no limit to the way this
unhappy business was spreading. "What on earth did Madeline know about
it?"

"Well, " he looked slightly puzzled, "she
seemed to think it concerned her primarily."

"Madeleine did?" Beverley passed a
bewildered hand over her forehead. "I don't understand."

"But she said you would explain everything.
She asked if I had had any opportunity of talking to you recently, and if she
herself had been mentioned. And when I said we hadn't discussed her in any way,
she urged me to see you as soon as possible, as you had something important to
ask me."

"Oh!" Sudden comprehension began to dawn
on Beverley. "Was that why you called in to see me at home?"

"Yes. I was near, and I thought I would take
the opportunity, "

"But, " Beverley had the greatest
difficulty in not bursting into hysterical laughter, "I thought, oh, never
mind. Let's settle this business of Madeleine first. She really is the most
engagingly egotistical creature! It's
about
that offer you made to her, to provide her with an experimental year at the
Academy of Dramatic Art.
She wanted desperately to know if, if the
breaking of Sara's engagement would mean you'd withdraw the
offer."

"No. Of course not. But, " he looked at
her curiously, "why were you to ask me about it? Why couldn't she ask me
herself?"

"Well, she thought, she thought, "
Beverley broke off, in the profoundest embarrassment, for she saw that Franklin
must inevitably be linking this up with the odd story Toni had told him.
"Please don't think it was my idea, " she cried, almost wringing her hands
in her distress. "Madeleine felt embarrassed, "

"Madeleine did? Oh, no, Madeleine never felt
embarrassed about anything, " he interjected, with good humoured irony.

"Well, then, she felt it would be impossible
for her to find the right moment to ask you how you felt about the whole thing.
She had the idea that you were rather friendly with, with my mother and me

"The perfectly right idea, I might say."

"And she asked me to, to find a tactful moment
when I could ask you whether you were going to withdraw that offer. I didn't
really want to take on the task, but it seemed unkind to refuse. And, that's
all, " she finished lamely.

"Well, that's satisfactorily settled, anyway, "
he observed. "So there's no need to go on looking so distressed. You have
carried out the commission; I assure you that Madeleine need have no fears
about my not standing by my bargain, and tomorrow you can tell her so. Is
everything all right now?"

If only she could say it was! If only she could
take this cowardly line of retreat, and vow that concern for Madeleine was the
sole reason for her coming to Ei
thorpe Hall!
But, quite apart from the difficulty of explaining her earlier confusion
if she said that, Beverley knew she
  
183
could
never go all the way back home without doing
anything
at all about that dreadful blunder of Toni's.

Restlessly she got up and walked to the window and back
again. "No, " she declared, with dogged resolution, "every thing
isn't all right. There's something else, " She came to a halt in front of
the picture of herself as a little girl, and before the level, friendly gaze of
the child that she had been, she felt her agitation oddly less.

"When did you have this moved in here, Franklin?"
she asked suddenly and irrelevantly.

"Half an hour ago." He got up and came
and stood close behind her.

"Half an hour ago?" She turned her head
and looked up at him. "But why just then?"
 

"Because that, " he said deliberately,
"was the moment when I had a sudden flash of inspiration, and to move your
picture in here was the only way of giving
expression
to it."

"I don't think I, understand."

"And I'm not sure, that I meant you to, just
yet, " he retorted, with a faint smile. "But if you look at me
like that, "

"Like what?"

"Like my sweet, enquiring, loving little
friend of many years, " he said quietly, and, putting his arms round her
from behind, he drew her back against and kissed her cheek softly.

"Franklin!"

The most incredible, unidentifiable
flood of emotion
swept through her.
For a moment if was like someone else, someone to whom everything was wonderful
and joyous and utterly right and lovely. But then sharp and terrible
recollection came her, and she knew that he was just being ridiculous impossibly
quixotic because of what Toni had said was living up to the role she had thrust
upon him'!

"No!" She tore herself away and turned to
face "You're not to do that! I don't want you to "Pretend?"

She had never seen his face dark and, angry before,
and the sight arrested her in the midst of her protests. "Who's
pretending? And how dare you
suggest I'd do
such a thing? It may be rather sudden.
Come to think of it, it's damned
sudden to me too. But can't a man make a monumental discovery from one moment
to the next?"

"But you didn't, " she said very quietly.
"You're just being generous and quixotic because, "

"I'm not being anything of the sort, " he
interrupted almost violently, "and I refuse to have such a ridiculous role
thrust upon me. I'm trying to tell you I love you and, oh, lord, I'm sorry, "
his voice dropped
abruptly from its angry
key, I'm shouting at you, and
I meant to be tender and coaxing and
reassuring. I don't know what's the matter with me, except that I suppose I'm
nervous and, "

"Nervous? Oh, Franklin, " she gave a
little laugh, "you don't need to be nervous."

"Yes, I do. It's taken me so horribly, ridiculously
long to see what I wanted most in the world,
when it
was right under my nose. And now I'm terrified, yes, terrified, that
I'm going to bungle things and lose everything that matters, just because I was
a blind fool.

Help me, Beverley, " impulsively he held out
his hands to her, "don't turn away from me. Please hear me, at least, and
don't accuse me of pretending."

"But, my dear, " she came slowly back and
put her hands into his, "I don't really understand, "

"It's quite simple, " he said, almost
humbly. "I love you desperately."

"But Franklin, do you mean that you, that you thought
of this before Toni spoke to you?"

"Toni? What's Toni got to
do with it?"

"Oh, you know, " she cried reproachfully,
afraid again that he was playing a part. "She, she told you, on the way
home from school today that she thought you were going to marry me."

"Yes, yes, of course, "
he agreed almost absently.

"It was Toni who suddenly blazed the light on
the scene. I'd almost forgotten that, in my own tremendous discovery. When she
said that about my marry
   
18
ing you, it was like a blind man finding, all at
once,
that he could see. I knew that was what I wanted above anything
else that life had to offer."

"But then you asked her how she knew. And she,
she told you the rest. Don't you remember?"

"Not really, no. I only asked her because I
had to say something, so that she couldn't see how she'd hit me between the
eyes. She trotted out some nonsense
about
old Revian having told her, and that he'd got it
from you. I didn't pay
much attention because it was
obviously an
invention of Toni's. And, anyway, nothing
else mattered beside the
discovery that I loved you."

"Oh, Franklin, " she went limp against
him suddenly, hardly knowing whether to laugh or cry, "didn't anything
else matter really?"

"No, of course not." He held her lightly,
as though he hardly dared to do so. "What else could matter?"

"I don't know, " she admitted, in sudden
capitulation to the wild up rush of happiness in her heart. "I suppose you're
right, my darling, and nothing else does matter, except that I love you too."

"Beverley!" He lifted her right up off
the ground and kissed her over and over again on her cheeks and her lips and
even her charming nose. Because lovers are
really
nothing like so selective about these matters as
the poets would have us
believe.

"Stop, let me breathe." She laughed in
indescribably rapturous, breathless gaiety. "I've still got something to
say, to explain."

"There's nothing that needs explaining any
more, " he
declared. But he stopped
kissing her, and just held her
and looked at her as though she were
indeed the most
precious thing in the world.

"It's about what Toni said, " Beverley
insisted. "It wasn't her invention. Franklin. It was my invention. I had
told Mr. Revian that you and I were probably going
to be married."

"But you didn't know then."

"No. Of course not. But it was when I broke my
engagement to Geoffrey, and he, the old man, I mean turned difficult because he
thought Geoffrey was
  
186
treating me badly. And, to smooth things over, I had to pretend that I
too had changed my mind and wanted to marry someone else. And then he pressed
the point and insisted on knowing who it was, and, I don't know how to
apologize or explain, on the spur of the mo
ment, I pretended it was
you." She stopped speaking, and there was silence for a moment. Then, plucking
up her courage, she glanced up at Franklin, and saw that he was smiling in a
contented, dreamy an uncharitable person might have said almost fatuous way.

"You mean, " he said, with a deep sigh of
satisfaction, "that I was the man who came naturally into your mind at
that moment? You couldn't have said a sweeter thing, my darling."