The girl in the blue dress (9 page)

He laughed at that and kissed
her again. "Then we're engaged?" he said.

"Yes, we're engaged, "
she repeated slowly. "I couldn't, have imagined, such a thing, when I
came down here this
evening."

"Shall I walk back with you and tell your
mother now?" he asked. "Or would you like to wait to tell people
until you have your ring?"

"I don't specially want to wait. I, I don't
even
mind if I don't have a ring. Or only a
very modest one, " she said earnestly. For it seemed to her that the
provision of an expensive ring might present a problem for Geoffrey, whom she
still regarded as a struggling artist.

However, he was emphatic about the necessity of a
ring. "Of course you will have one! Either you can have
one of your own choice, or else you can have the very
beautiful ring which my grandmother left me,
among her other possessions. It would need resetting,
I daresay. But it has a very fine diamond in it, and
a couple of sapphires, if I remember rightly."

Beverley said that she would love to have his
grandmother's ring. And indeed it seemed to her
that,
in owning a family ring, she
would feel a sense of permanence and continuity in her link with Geoffrey which
was just what her heart craved.

"Then come on' indoors now, and I'll show it
to you, " he said. And arm-in-arm they went into the house.

The ring, which he produced from a concealed
drawer in his writing-desk, proved to be beautiful
and o
bviously of value. The setting,
however, was rather heavy and old-fashioned, and Geoffrey immediately began to
make a sketch of how he thought it should
be reset.

She hung over, watching him, so close that her hair
brushed against his cheek. And once he turned his head and kissed her. "There,
how do you like that?" He held out the sketch for her approval.

"It's wonderful. It makes it more my
ring."

"Then I'll take it into Castleton tomorrow, "
Geoffrey said. "And I'll insist that they have it ready at, any rate in
time for you to wear it at the dance."

Her eyes sparkled.
"Shall we, keep the news
of our engagement to
ourselves until then?" she suggested. For suddenly.
she felt nervous at the
thought of having to mention her news perhaps at Huntingford Grange on the
morrow.

"If you like. Except that I think we should
tell your mother."

"Oh, of course!"
Beverley agreed.

And so presently they
strolled back to Beverley's home together, to break the happy news to her mother
and her aunt.

Mrs. Farman had, of course, known
-Geoffrey well
for
years. And, looking at her daughter's "flushed and
happy face, she expressed the
utmost pleasure over the engagement. And even Aunt Ellen, though she
looked unsuitably glum, produced
some delicious home-made wine, in which to drink a toast to the
occasion.

For half an hour Geoffrey stayed, while they talked
happy generalities. Then he said goodnight and went away, leaving Beverley to
the more particular ques
tions and comments
of her mother and her aunt.

"I suppose, " Mrs. Farman said pensively,
"that I
ought to have asked him if he
could provide properly for you, and so on. Since your father is no longer here,
maybe that was my business. But, it seems out of date, somehow, to ask these
things nowadays, when young people make up their minds first, very properly, and
tell their parents afterwards."

"Oh, it's very out of date, " Beverley
assured her hastily.

"It is, however, very practical and to the
point, " said Aunt Ellen. "Can he provide properly for you?"

"I suppose it depends what you mean by
providing for someone, " Beverley replied dryly.

"I mean what the expression has always meant, "
Aunt Ellen stated obstinately. "Can he
assure you a home and an income on which you can both live in reasonable comfort,
according to what you've been
used
to?"

"He has a home, as you know, " Beverley
said rather coldly.

"That tumbledown cottage?" Aunt Ellen
sniffed eloquently. "I wouldn't want to live there."

Beverley was sorely tempted to observe that no
one had invited her to do so. But she bit her lip,
in order to keep silent, and her mother said pacifically,

"It will be wonderful to "have you so
near, darling.
Have you made any plans
yet about, about when
you intend
to marry?"

"Oh, no!" To Beverley the idea of being
engaged
to Geoffrey was, in itself, so
difficult to believe that she could not yet go on confidently to contemplate the
particular circumstances of married life with him.

"Will you go on working?" enquired Aunt
Ellen, who had a great talent for asking the things that were better left
unasked.

"I suppose so. In fact, yes, of course I
shall. Why not?"

Aunt Ellen did not answer that in words, but she
shook her head and sighed, which Beverley found
so exasperating that, if she had not caught her mother's amused and sympathetic
glance, she would probably have been really rude to her aunt at that moment.

However, nothing could cloud her spirits for long.
Not even the faint undefined sensation of worry which
lingered still in the background of her mind because of what Toni Wayne had
said.
With all her common sense and determination she
suppressed that occasional quiver of anxiety. For
in what way could the melodramatic confidences of an
imaginative little
girl count against the solid, wonderful fact that Geoffrey had asked her to
marry him?

She slept, dreamlessly that
night, and woke to a
glorious morning
which seemed a fitting accompaniment to the radiant discovery which broke
afresh upon her as she rose to consciousness.

"I'm engaged to Geoffrey!" she thought, as
she
opened her eyes to the sunlight which
was pouring in through the bedroom window:" "He asked me to marry
him. There is nothing to worry about any more.
"I'm engaged, to Geoffrey."

Oddly enough, she had no special urge to share
this wonderful fact with anyone, no special temptation
to tell anyone she knew who was with her on the bus that morning. It was enough
that she knew about it herself, and could hug to her the heavenly knowledge
that, even that very day, Geoffrey would go into Castleton to have his
grandmother's ring reset as her own engagement ring.

As she walked up the lane to Huntingford Grange,
her new inner happiness tended to be slightly
over cast by the strong impressions which she associated with the Grange.
Somehow, it was not so easy in this setting to be sure that Toni had been wrong
in her conjectures or to know that Geoffrey loved her, and
had loved her for years.

On the contrary, she thought, with disquieting
clarity, of how Sara had run from Geoffrey's
studio,
flushed and agitated, and
with every air of having passed through some emotional scene. And she asked
herself
how she was to reconcile this with the coolness of Geoffrey's own references to
Sara, and the fact that she herself was the girl he had asked to marry him.

Fortunately a very busy day lay ahead of Beverley.
And not only was there no question of her talking
to anyone about her own affairs, even had she wished to do so, which she did
not, but, in addition, she
even had
very little time to think about them herself.

Towards the end of the afternoon, however, the
dance dresses for Sara and Madeleine had
progressed
as far as a final fitting.
And the unfeigned delight of the two girls with her work certainly warmed Bever
ley's heart.

"You clever, clever
girl!" cried Madeleine, with generous enthusiasm. "I simply adore
this uncluttered line. I don't know when I've looked so good in anything.".

"You're much too beautiful ever to look less
than
good, " Beverley assured her
frankly. "But I do agree
that
this particular style brings out all your best
points."

"Isn't it wonderful, Mother?"
Madeleine turned
eagerly
to her mother, who had come in to watch
and to appraise while the last fitting was made.

"Very beautiful, "
Mrs. Wayne agreed, in an extremely satisfied tone. "You couldn't have done
better, Miss Farman. And, Sara dear, you were quite right to have that chiffon.
Franklin will love you in all
that floral femininity."

"I hope he will love me
in anything, " retorted Sara, but a trifle carelessly. "I'm delighted
with it, though, Miss Farman. You have even a touch of genius, I
think."

It was impossible not to be
delighted with all these
I compliments. And Beverley felt so happy and so
well disposed towards them all
that she almost became expansive enough, on her side, to tell them her
own good news.

But some lingering doubt of
the way they might
receive
this held her back. And so she just smiled, and coloured slightly and
becomingly, and said she was very glad indeed that they were all so pleased.

"I think Toni's party
dress is going to be lovely too, " she added, as that young woman came
bounding in, just returned from school. And, at Toni's urgent and rather
maddeningly reiterated requests, this
dress also was tried on and pronounced ideal.

"You are clever, Miss
Farman. I think you ought to have a specially nice tea, as a reward, "
declared Toni.

And although they all laughed
a good deal at this point of view, Beverley had the conviction that there would
be no querying of her "high prices, "
when her bill came in.

Perhaps Toni was not the only one who felt vaguely
that some special acknowledgement of the first
suc
cess would not be out of place. At
any rate, just as
Beverley was
thinking of packing away her work for the day, Sara came upstairs again and put
her head
round the door.

"Miss Farman, are you in any special hurry to
get
home? Because Franklin, Mr. Lowell, has
just come, to drive me over to his place to see about
some alterations which the builders have been
doing.
And he suggests that you
might like to take the opportunity of coming to see your portrait."

"Why, how kind of you!"

Beverley was a good deal touched by the
friendliness of the gesture, and the fact that Sara, as well as
Franklin Lowell, seemed to think it was perfectly
natural to change a casual suggestion into a definite invitation.

"I'd love to come, " Beverley admitted.
"I'll be ready in five minutes."

"All right. Come down when you're ready. You'll
find us in the little drawing-room, " Sara told her.

She went away again, and Beverley hurried"
with
her clearing-up operations. The
invitation was very welcome, in more ways than one. Quite apart from the fact
that it would really be delightfully interesting to see Geoffrey's picture of
her once more, she thought suddenly that the chance of seeing Sara and Franklin
Lowell together in their future home might do more for her than anything else
to set her mind finally at rest about Toni's confidences. She might, once and
for all, see that Sara's appar
ent indifference was no more than a
reserved manner. And she might conceivably find, in the contemplation of the
two of them together, something entirely re assuring to set against that
disagreeable recollection of Sara outside Geoffrey's studio.

When she came downstairs, she found not only F
ranklin Lowell and all the members of the Wayne family
whom she already knew, but also, for the first time, Mr. Wayne. He had, she had
gathered, been away on some vague business trip abroad during her first week or
so at Huntingford Grange. But now that she saw him, she remembered immediately
what his second daughter had said about his being a darling but quite unpractical.
And she thought that, whatever his trip abroad had included, good, hard, practical
business affairs had not been to the fore.

He was an exceptionally
handsome man, it was obvious where the Wayne girls got their looks, and he had
a genial, charming, all-embracing manner which was in curious contrast to his
wife's cool reserve. On being introduced to Beverley, he welcomed her more as a
friend of the family than a casual employee, and she very much doubted if he
had even noticed the few words of explanation with which Mrs. Wayne had
amplified the introduction.

All he appeared to have
caught was the fact that she came from Binwick, and he immediately launched into
an eloquent appreciation of the beauties and the historical significance of
Binwick, delivered in a rich and flexible voice to which one could only listen
with admiration and pleasure.