The Light Heart (15 page)

“I keep telling you, it’s not my tummy, it’s my back,” said Oliver patiently. “Let’s not go into details, shall we, not at tea time, anyway. I’m supposed to be lucky not to be shut up in hospital for weeks on end.”

“Will this upset all your other plans?” Virginia dared to inquire, for they were all dying to know the worst and he had told them almost nothing since he came back from Yorkshire. “Will you and Maia have to postpone things, or hadn’t you set a date?”

“We can’t look far ahead on account of her father’s health.” Oliver replied without apparent effort. “But if both her old crocks can pull themselves together, and she can find someone to take over up there while she’s away, it will be sometime this autumn.”

“You’ll beat Phoebe, then,” said Virginia in all innocence. “She and Miles are going to wait till Christmas, so all the family can be there.”

“It’s always a good idea to have a gallery, I think,” Oliver remarked. “Maia wants the whole show—St. Margaret’s, red carpets, crossed sabres,
The
Voice
That
Breathed
o’er
Eden,
with all the stops out! I shall hear from the regiment about it, of course.”

“Shall you be able to come down for some cubbing before that, anyway?” Virginia insisted.

“Doubt it, you know. They’ve got some notion I shouldn’t ride.” He carried Phoebe’s cup back to her, his own in his other hand, and settled himself again beside her. “It appears I’m a very sick man and must be humoured, and I’ve a sudden fancy for Pre-Raphaelites, Phoebe,
will
you go to the Tate with me tomorrow?”

Phoebe said hastily that she would, and Virginia began to give her impressions, mostly adverse, of that year’s Academy,
and Oliver sat facing the room the rest of the afternoon and behaved.

The next morning when he put Phoebe into a hansom to drive down to the Embankment, he said, “I don’t really give a damn about the Pre-Raphaelites, but it was all I could think of which was sure not to interest Virginia. We now have a couple of hours to ourselves, with all London looking on, I feel like a schoolboy on a treat.” The cab turned into the lower end of Park Lane and he reached for her hands in her lap, gathering them firmly into his. “I am holding your hands in both of mine in a cab,” he explained simply, “because then whenever I cross this particular bit of pavement and look up at those trees in the Park, I can say to myself, This is where I held her hands in both of mine on the way to the Tate. And I thought of taking you there in the first place so that there would be one place in London where I could go by myself and remember that we were there alone together—how you looked, what you wore, what you said—it doesn’t much matter what you say, you know, it’s bound to sound brilliant and original to me!”

“Otherwise I would be afraid to talk!” said Phoebe, and they laughed together and their fingers tightened.

“And what are you wearing today?” he continued, while his eyes ran over her, asking questions. “A white straw hat with a bow and feathers—a blue dress—what’s it made of?”

“Shot voile, with shirrings. These are called pagoda sleeves,” she told him with amusement.

“Shot voile with shirrings, whatever they are, and lovely lace under your chin—” His eyes lingered on her chin. “And a blue parasol with a mother-of-pearl handle, and—” He looked to see. “—white gloves. I think I can remember all that, for the rest of my life.”

“Oh, Oliver, don’t make it sound so dreadfully
final!
”
she cried, and her eyes filled with tears.

“My dear, I’m not being dismal, just the opposite! I’m very—elated. I’ve got you all to myself—barring the cabby and the policeman on the corner and several dozen other people. We
can say what we like to each other, there is no dangerous
opportunity
to kiss you, and we don’t have to be back in Hill Street till lunch time! I think we’re very well off, if you ask me! Burne-Jones is going to be rather a bore, of course, but you’ve got to look at him because they’ll ask.”

“Have you been there before?” she inquired, and Oliver admitted that he had.

“With Clare,” he added quickly, so that Phoebe would be sure her image in that setting would not be impinged upon. “She made me go, as a gentle sort of outing last spring when I was getting well. And I thought at the time what a suitable place it would be for an assignation. Almost nobody one knows ever goes there! It’s not half as obvious as the British Museum, which must be quite crawling with people one would have to pretend not to see!”

“I’ve been there,” said Phoebe, and, “I’ll bet you have!” Oliver laughed. “How were the mummies?”

“Very dead,” said Phoebe. “I liked the statues best.”

“You did?” He was interested at once, as always when she expressed an opinion. “Why?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps because I had never seen any real ones before. There was a head of Cæsar—” Phoebe frowned out at Hyde Park Corner, seeking words to convey to him what she had felt about the head of Cæsar. “He was good,” she said, groping. “If he looked like that, I mean. He would have been nice to know.”

“The Gauls didn’t think so,” Oliver suggested, watching her, and she shook her head gravely.

“I would have
liked
him,” she said, and turned to Oliver, her hand still in his. “I thought of you that day at the Museum, and I thought what fun it would be, to see the things with you. Shall I ever be able to enjoy anything again without wishing you were there to share it?”

“Perhaps not. Shall you mind that horribly?”

“No. It was before I met you that I was lonely.”

“We haven’t begun yet to be lonely, that’s all still to come,”
he said, much moved. But there was nothing gloomy in the way he said it, nor resigned. He was merely not unwilling to acknowledge the impending tussle with his own rebellious heart. And when she was silent, he said, “Now tell me what you’re thinking.”

She looked at him directly, without self-consciousness.

“I was thinking you didn’t know me very well,” she said. “And I was wondering how it is that someone who is practically a stranger could matter to you very much.”

“Know you? I was
born
knowing you!” he cried. “Else how does it happen that everything you do and say seems so exactly right to me, as though you couldn’t possibly have done or said anything else but that? How is it that when I come into a room where you are, I have come home, no matter whose house it may be? Why was I so sure from the first day I saw you that I wanted to keep you with me always, and do what I could to see that you were properly treated and had everything you wanted? My dear, I’ve known you since the beginning of time!”

There was a silence full of choking, forbidden things, and soon the cab stopped outside the imposing façade of London’s newest picture gallery.

They enjoyed themselves in the long, quiet rooms, which were not after all full of the Colonials and Americans Virginia had prophesied. Phoebe had not seen enough pictures to be surfeited, and it was always exciting to her to come upon the original of something she had seen reproduced in the books she had read and the engravings and postcards that had found their way to Williamsburg. To Oliver her fresh viewpoint and undisguised enthusiasms and sudden, instinctive, first-glance likes and dislikes were enthralling to explore, and he set himself by a receptive silence or a provocative question to draw out of her the characteristic comments he delighted to hear.

Sometimes as they paused before a picture his hand would rest lightly at her elbow. Sometimes as they moved on to the next her shoulder would brush his sleeve, and their eyes would meet and linger, and the smiles they shared had little to do
really with the words they happened to be saying, but were born just of their satisfaction at being together, their pleasure in each other’s looks, and the mutual knowledge that they were in love.

It was a clear, uncomplicated happiness which took no thought, for the moment, of any further fulfilment, and knew no regrets that it must end. What they said to each other mattered less than that they were able to converse together at all, and they talked sensibly enough most of the time so far as anyone could have overheard. And Phoebe was thinking, even while she laughed, Here it is again, like being drunk—not caring what went before or what comes after—not even caring that it won’t last—how can I be so
happy
when I know it can’t last—I never felt like this with Miles….

But she said nothing of that to Oliver, and if he saw her eyes cloud over briefly, and he saw everything, he was too wise to say just then, Tell me what you are thinking. The bad moment passed, and they went on into the Burne-Jones room and sagely appraised
The
Beggar
Maid
and wondered how long it took her to learn to behave like a queen, and if King Cophetua had ever been sorry for his impulse. And it occurred to Oliver that probably she had had the same look in the eyes that Phoebe had had at luncheon that day at the Hall, when there was nothing to do but undertake to look after them and see that they came to no harm; and he thought, At least Cophetua was free to follow his impulse….

But there was nothing in his lean brown face to show the stab of angry frustration that shot through him as he realized anew how he had tied his own hands and made himself useless to Phoebe before he ever saw her—she needed him, and reached out to
him as Maia never would, but now she must be allowed to put her funny little chin in the air and keep her word to Miles, while he fulfilled his own pledge as per
The
Morning
Post
and
The
Queen:
The
engagement
is
announced
and
a
marriage
will
take
place
between
Captain
the
Honourable
Oliver
Campion
of
the
25th
Lancers,
brother
of
the
Earl
of
Enstone,
and
Maia
Marguerite
Douglas,
only
daughter
of
Francis
Merton
Douglas,
of
Merton
House,
Darceydale,
Yorkshire
….

When they came out of the gallery they walked for a little way along the Embankment, strolling with the noonday sun warm on their faces, and Oliver thought, I can come back here too—flecks of shadow on her blue dress from the leaves—tiny spangles of
sunlight through her hat-brim on her face—I should have kissed her chin when I had the chance that night—I shall always see her looking up at me if I come and stand here—do I
want
to be haunted like this?—damn my back….

Phoebe saw his mouth straighten with pain, and said
anxiously
, “Oliver, ought you to walk any more? Let’s take a cab.”

“Not just yet,” he said, and drew her over against the stone wall above the water. “Just stand there a moment and let me look at you. Would you do me the favour to smile?”

Phoebe smiled, and then they laughed together, and guiltily remembered the time, and when they were in a cab driving north, Phoebe asked again about his back. Though it had been aching like a bad tooth for the past half hour Oliver said, “Darling, I’m perfectly all right, it’s just those silly asses at the Medical Board,” so convincingly that she believed him and though no more about it, and everything shone and sparkled again all the way to Hill Street.

G
OODWOOD
without the King was dull and the weather was beastly. The polo season at Hurlingham finished with the Hurlingham team defeating the Horse Guards, the sacred Blues, six goals to four, and Charles took a bad spill over the boards and everybody said he could have broken his neck. One of the last brilliant affairs of the waning Season was a reception at the German Embassy in Carlton House Terrace, which Bracken and Dinah attended and to which Rosalind and her mamma were invited at the request of Prince Conrad. He danced three
times with Rosalind—the absolute Diplomatic limit—and took her in to supper and saw that she met everyone of importance, and she was taken special notice of by the Ambassador. Prince Conrad also arranged that the Norton-Leighs should be invited to visit after the Coronation at the same country house in Scotland where he himself would be staying, and Mamma allowed herself further glittering dreams of tiaras and sables and motor cars on a Royal scale.

On August ninth, when Phoebe at the window of Archie’s club in St. James’s Street actually saw the King returning, crowned, from Westminster, Oliver was beside her to point out Charles Laverham riding in the escort, or she could not have been sure which one of the magnificent mounted figures in plumed helmet and shining cuirass she knew.

“How can you
tell
which is Charles?” Virginia asked
unbelievingly
, for they all looked alike to her.

“By his place in the guard,” said Oliver. “But even without that, you can always tell a man you know on a horse as far as you can see him—by the set of his knees, and the line of his shoulders, and the way he holds his elbows—”

“That one holds his elbows just like all the rest,” said Virginia captiously, and Oliver laughed and said So he did, and let it go.

“It
is
Charles, though,” said Rosalind, watching him out of sight. “Somehow you can’t miss him, but how do we
know?
”

“Perhaps because we love him,” said Oliver very low, and Rosalind replied without embarrassment, “Yes, we do, don’t we. There’s nobody quite like him.”

Oliver glanced at her as though he was half-minded to say more, but held his tongue. Her pure little profile was towards him as she watched the distant, red-plumed rider that was Charles turning into Piccadilly. Oliver knew that her words had been the simple truth with no secondary meaning for Rosalind. Anyone who had known Charles for years, as she had, knew that there was no duplicate, on or off a horse.

London emptied very fast after the Coronation, and they
began at once to take down the stands, which added to the general desolation. The King went off in his yacht for a cruise along the Scottish coast. The Norton-Leighs departed for the house-party in Scotland in Prince Conrad’s reserved compartments, with the understanding that they were to come to Farthingale for a week later on, before Phoebe had to sail.