The Light Heart (16 page)

Virginia’s lease, already extended, on the Hill Street house expired, Archie’s club was closed for cleaning, and they all said how pleasant it was to be back at Farthingale again. Clare and Mortimer and little Lionel were at the Hall, with Edward and Winifred and little Hubert, though the babies were seldom seen except when they took their daily airings with their Nannies in the park, for they were kept stowed away on the rather barrack-like nursery and schoolroom floor in the west wing which Dinah had so recently left, and where young Gerald and his visiting chums still slept when he was home for the holidays.

The announcement of Rosalind’s engagement to Prince Conrad was not altogether unexpected, and there was no reason for it to take everyone who loved her by such outraged surprise, and yet that was the general reaction when it appeared in
The
Morning
Post.
The marriage was to take place during September, which was not the most fashionable time of year, but Mrs. Norton-Leigh dreaded that the death of Prince Conrad’s aged father in Germany might occur to diminish with mourning the splendours of a Royal wedding and its attendant festivities, and so she gave easy consent to what seemed to onlookers His Highness’s indecent haste.

When the promised visit to Farthingale had been ruthlessly cancelled because of the trousseau and other obligations in Town, a letter arrived from Rosalind in which she implored Phoebe on tear-blotted pages not to sail before the ceremony, because she had set her heart on Phoebe’s being one of the bridesmaids.

Phoebe showed the letter to Eden and entreated her for a postponement of their sailing date, which was more than a
week too soon as it stood. Eden showed the letter to Bracken, who said, “Poor little beggar, of course she must have Phoebe at the wedding if she wants her,” and arranged at once for them all to sail on a later boat. He also gave Phoebe a large cheque to buy a wedding present with, just as though it was her own money. “Find out what she would like from Dinah and me and let me know,” he said. “We must do this up right.”

Rosalind’s letter had said that the gowns and underclothes were all to come from
Lucile
in Hanover Square, which was of course frightfully expensive, but the trousseau was one of the gifts of the bridegroom to the bride, in view of the exalted position she would be expected to fill as his wife. Virginia looked dark when she heard about that. “And how does he know so much about
Lucile’s
underclothes?” she inquired, for it was the first London house to supply sets of rainbow-tinted cobwebs trimmed with lace in place of the fine embroidered linen and muslin which even Royalty wore. Most English wives considered them immodest and succumbed by degrees, a nightgown here, a corset-cover there, and then either a dozen of each or no more at all, according to their husbands’ reactions. Prince Conrad’s order for his bride was six dozen of everything, in tints to match the dresses, which were to be designed especially so as not to obliterate the lines of Rosalind’s lovely
fausse
maigre
figure—a job after
Lucile’s
heart, for she always leaned towards the theatrical, and even actresses had been known to hesitate at their own reflections in the mirrors of her little grey fitting-rooms.

There was some discussion, quite friendly and shameless, at Farthingale and the Hall of how Charles Laverham would feel about Rosalind’s engagement. Oliver, who alone really knew, contributed nothing, until Virginia taxed him with looking sphinxish.

“You men always stick together,” she accused him. “Have you seen Charles since it happened?”

“No.”

“Nor heard from him?”

“No.”

“Aren’t you going to
do
anything?”

“Dear heart,” said Oliver gently, for he was very fond of Virginia but found her rather difficult when she started asking questions, “there are times when one does best to mind one’s own business.”

“But
somebody’s
got to stop her!” cried Virginia.

“Abduction has gone out,” Oliver reminded her. “You can be put in jail for it nowadays. Besides—how do you know?—maybe Rosalind likes the prospect. It’s not every girl who has six dozen of everything from
Lucile
at the bridegroom’s expense, is it?”

Virginia said he had a vulgar mind, and gave him up.

The next day Oliver went back to London to see his doctors, he said, and there was Charles at the club.

“Thank God,” he said at sight of Oliver. “Look here, you’ve got to help me out, old boy. Reinforcements signalled for.”

“Reinforcements dispatched at the gallop,” said Oliver sympathetically. “Tell me what I can do.”

Charles thought a couple of whiskies and soda might help them to think of something, and they sat down in a corner and went to work on it.

Shortly after noon the next day, at the hour when fashionable carriages turned into the Park at Grosvenor Gate for the daily drive, Charles and Oliver took up a casual-seeming patrol near the Achilles Statue to wait for the Norton-Leigh landau and matched greys. Both were grave, for Charles and Oliver, and as nervous as actors on the first night. Oliver’s task, and it was not an easy one, was to get the carriage stopped in order to pay his respects and take the opportunity to wish Rosalind happiness on her engagement—Charles was under no illusion that the carriage would stop for him alone, but Oliver was almost one of the family and was considered harmless by Mamma—and Oliver must then somehow hold Mrs. Norton-Leigh in conversation long enough for Charles on the other side of the carriage to get in a few unnoticed words with Rosalind.

As they paced up and down together, greeting even in their preoccupation the passers by whom they knew, Oliver was racking his brain for topics sufficiently interesting to enlarge upon, and inventing messages from Eden and Clare. Charles was rehearsing in his mind the fewest and quickest words in which to convince Rosalind that he must see her alone, somewhere, somehow, and soon. It wasn’t a very good scheme, or a very easy one to carry out, but it was the best they had been able to evolve.

“Here they come,” said Charles, looking rather the way he always looked when the first wailing notes of the
“Charge!”
fell on his cars in action. “Come on, old boy, buck up!”

Oliver stepped to the side of the road and raised his hat. The carriage slowed and came to a stop, and Mrs. Norton-Leigh extended to him a tightly gloved hand and began to inquire after the family at the Hall and how his poor back was….

When it was over and the Norton-Leighs drove on, Oliver was perspiring freely and Charles, rather white around the mouth, had extracted a promise from Rosalind to write him a note that very night telling him where he might see her for a few minutes without being overheard by Mamma. He had no idea where that might be, and hadn’t much hope of it, really, when he opened the note at his club the next morning.

Charles at once consulted Oliver, who raised his eyebrows.

“Sounds like a French farce,” he said. “Just the thing for Marie Tempest. Do I hide behind a screen?”

Charles called him all sorts of a fathead, and said if he were to turn up at Claridge’s in time to walk to Hanover Square with the two girls Phoebe’s Aunt Eden would surely seize that opportunity for a little peace and quiet on her own and not think it necessary to come along. Which proved to be the case. Bracken kept a hired motor car in London for his mother’s use, and when it had brought Rosalind to Claridge’s Eden took it on to Regent Street to accomplish some shopping of her own while Oliver escorted the two girls to
Lucile’s
on foot. The motor was to be waiting to drive Rosalind home when they finished.

So Charles found himself discreetly admitted to a small grey room lined with mirrors where Rosalind awaited him with her hat off, beside a rack of unfinished dresses to be tried on—among them the unmistakable silver tissue and Brussels lace of the wedding gown. The door closed softly behind the young saleswoman who had guided him there.

“Well, Charles, what on earth is it all about?” Rosalind demanded at once. “I don’t know how I ever dared to do this, Mamma would have the roof off if she knew.” And as he only stood looking at her helplessly from just inside the door, she went on almost impatiently, “What
is
it, Charles, you’re very odd, all of a sudden!”

Charles cast away his hat and gloves on to a small grey upholstered chair and took a step forward, looming enormous in the boxy room.

“Look here, my girl, you can’t marry this fellow, you don’t know what you’re doing,” he said abruptly.

It was the wrong beginning. Rosalind stood very straight facing him, looking cornered and defenceless, her small head with its heavy crown of dark hair held very high.

“I know quite well,” she said. “I shall have a most interesting life, marrying into the Diplomatic Corps. Vienna may be our next post, and I shall hear the best music in the world, there. And if ever Conrad should be sent as attaché to Washington I could go and visit Phoebe, because she lives in the same state.”

They were such pitiful, childish reasons for marrying a man you were not in love with—couldn’t possibly be in love with, Charles thought, watching her. If she had said money—titles—the famous castle at Heidersdorf—the prestige and luxury of Prince Conrad’s station in the world—but to hear music in Vienna—to visit Phoebe in Virginia—they were fairy tales to amuse a little girl.

“But you don’t understand,” he tried again. “This man is a stranger to you, in all his ways—he’s a Continental—he’s a
German!
Their ideas are very different from ours, you don’t know what you’re getting into!”

“I think I can take care of myself,” she insisted with pathetic dignity, and Charles blundered on with no one to tell him he was taking the wrong line entirely, to question her judgment, when he might have said instead that he loved her and had always wanted to marry her himself.

“You’re about as able to take care of yourself as a three-weeks-old kitten,” he asserted. “You haven’t even had the chances most girls do to find their feet and get their eyes open. If he was one of our kind, I’d bite on it, I promise I would. But this fellow is a damned outsider, and I’m damned if I’m going to take it lying down!”

“
Charles!
What language!” Rosalind covered her ears, and he reached her in two strides and took her hands down, imprisoning them in his.

“Rosalind, you’ve got to listen to me—seriously—”

“Don’t, please—” She pulled her hands away from him and backed against the wall. Her blue eyes were dark and shadowed in a face suddenly gone white. “You’ve no idea how I hate being pawed,” she said, and Charles’s expression went from astonishment to compassion to despair.

“Oh, my God!” he said, just above a whisper.

“Will you please stop s-swearing at me?”

“It’s not swearing, it’s praying,” said Charles. “Have you said that—about being pawed—to his Nibs?”

“Mamma says it will be different after I’m married.”

“Why?” said Charles.

“You’ve got no right to come here and ask impertinent questions!” she cried, and her lips were quivering.

“Of course I’ve got the right, I’ve loved you ever since you wore your hair down your back, and I’ve never thought of marrying any other girl but you!”

She stared up at him incredulously.

“B-but, Charles, that’s impossible, you haven’t—you couldn’t—”

“I couldn’t afford you,” said Charles steadily. “Yes, that has been made quite plain for years. I was trying to hold my tongue so as not to make trouble for you, but this is too much, I can’t have this.”

“You m-might have said—something—in time—”

“Well, what was the good of my saying anything, I should only have been warned off! Then I saw this fellow was after you, and I knew you were being thrown at his head. But I couldn’t believe it would really happen, at least not so fast. I thought something might save you. Rosalind—think. His father will die, and he’ll go home to his estates, and you’ll have to go with him. You’ll have to live there, in Germany, your children will be German children, you won’t hear a word of English spoken from one week’s end to the next—”

“I’m allowed to have an English maid,” she interrupted quickly. “And he has promised we’ll come home to England every year, no matter where we may be.”

“Then he’s lying,” said Charles, and fear suddenly showed in her white face—livid, childish fear that wrung his heart.

“Oh,
no!
” she cried. “He
promised!
” And she caught at Charles with small, cold, fumbling hands, her face upturned to his as a child looks for reassurance. “Charles, you’re only trying to scare me out of it! You must do him justice, he’s been very kind, very—respectful. He says I may always do exactly as I choose, and we’ll have a house in England for the hunting! I didn’t ask him, he suggested it himself, he wants me to be happy, he said—” She tore herself out of Charles’s cradling hands and dropped down on
the nearest chair with her arms across the back of it and her face hidden against her wrists. Charles stood where he was, looking down at her.

“Child, you can’t do it,” he said in his light, slurred voice with its casual-seeming but perfect articulation. “You must tell them—at once. Whether you marry me or not, and I mean to do what I can about that, you must get rid of this blighter today.”