The Light Heart (3 page)

Bracken pricked up his ears at this.

“Is Phoebe writing?” he broke in.

“Yes, she is,” Sue told him. “It’s a secret so far, but it needn’t be much longer. She’s doing very well. All she needs is a little experience—a little life.”

“Good,” said Bracken, who had printer’s ink in his veins. “Let me see something sometime.”

“Not yet,” said Sue. “After she’s been to England, maybe.”

“Well, I—I’ll ask Miles what he thinks about it when he comes next week,” said Phoebe, still dazed and sparring for time.

There was a silence. Bracken felt that Sue wished he wasn’t there, and sat as still as possible, effacing himself. They all knew that Phoebe was in love with Miles, and that Miles wasn’t doing anything about it, and it must be pretty embarrassing, but Phoebe herself had brought it up. He saw Susannah make up her mind to deal with it.

“I’m afraid it doesn’t matter what Miles thinks in this case,” she said gently. “Though of course he will want you to go when you have the chance. Let’s see, the party is on Thursday, isn’t it—I shall write Eden today that we will be ready to go with her when she returns to New York. That will give us plenty of time to get your clothes before sailing.”

“B-but I never do anything without asking Miles—” Phoebe objected unhappily.

“I think it’s time you did,” said Sue, and they both stared at her, Bracken in delight, Phoebe in amazement. “Besides, I’m sure Miles would be the last person to stand in your way. Now, Bracken is going to have lunch here with me, and then we’ll come over and talk to your father about it.” Sue seemed to get her breath and relax a little, now that the first round, as it were, was over. She went to where Phoebe stood, still too transfixed to find a chair, and put her arms around the girl’s waist and kissed her. “Well, we did sort of spring it on you, I know,” she admitted ruefully. “Bracken had just sort of sprung
it on me when you came in, and once you knew he was here we had to think of something—I mean, there wasn’t much sense in trying to keep it from you for a few more days, you were bound to wonder why he had come.”

“I was in Washington,” said Bracken, rising to the occasion. “I knew I couldn’t get away again next week for the party, so Mother thought I had better run down now and bring you my present—just a little something extra. Shall we let her have it today?” He put his hand in his pocket and glanced at Sue, who hesitated, for presents ahead of time were against the rules.

“Well, perhaps—just this once,” she agreed as she was dying to see it herself. Bracken’s presents were always fabulous, just as his father’s had been in the old days.

Bracken drew out a flat jeweller’s case wrapped in white paper and tied with gold cord, which Phoebe pulled off
excitedly
, clumsy with eagerness. Inside, on a bed of white satin, was a pendant made of turquoises, diamonds, and pearls, with whole pearl drops and a jewelled filament of chain.

“
Oh,
Cousin
Bracken!
”
cried Phoebe, and went speechless and misty with pleasure.

“Let’s put it on,” he suggested, lifting it out with practised fingers.

“In the m-morning?” said Phoebe, fascinated.

“It ought to go pretty well with that dress you’ve got on. Turn around.”

He dropped the chain over her head and slipped the clasp home. Phoebe flew to the mirror above the mantelpiece to gaze at herself. The pendant from Tiffany’s shone against the mended lace yoke of her last year’s blue and white printed muslin as though it was lying on the very latest garden-party frock designed to be worn at Buckingham Palace. Phoebe’s eyes were wistful.

“Would I see the King?” she asked, still looking in the mirror. “Would I really
see
him?”

“I don’t know why not. I saw the Queen the year I went,” said Sue.

“You’ll certainly see the Coronation Procession from the best seats there are,” Bracken promised. “It’s too late to arrange for a presentation this year, I’m afraid. But we can go to Ascot and Goodwood—he’s sure to be there, he never misses a horse race.”

“It isn’t just any king,” said Phoebe, at the mirror. “It’s the King of England. I wouldn’t go across the street to see the King of Italy or—or the Kaiser.”

“Wilhelm would hate to hear you say so,” Bracken grinned.

Phoebe turned to them, standing very straight and proud, because of the pendant, with wistful eyes.

“Did
you
go to Ascot?” she asked Sue.

“I did. He was the Prince of Wales then, and he recognized Virginia all the way across the Lawn, because he had danced with her at a State Ball and she was saucy to him. He knew her, and they laughed like old friends.”

Phoebe sighed.

“I
would
like
to see the King,” she said. “Just once before I die.”

“You mean before
he
died,” said Bracken, but with
understanding
. “You’re a much better risk than he is—the old boy’s getting on a bit!”

“What do you wear at Ascot?” Phoebe asked, fingering the pendant.

“Frills,” said Sue. “Big hats. Feather boas. The best you’ve got. It’s terrific fun.”

“I haven’t got a big hat and a boa.”

“You wait,” said Bracken. “Just give Mother a chance. Time hangs heavy on her hands since both the girls got married. She needs another debutante to dress, to keep her spirits up.”

“Oh, I’d never be like Virginia,” Phoebe warned him. “I’m just a country cousin.”

“So was I,” Sue reminded her. “But you’ll forget about that. You’ll have the time of your life. I did.”

“Couldn’t you come too?” Phoebe suggested, holding out a hand to her.

“Only as far as New York, honey. I can’t be spared here, longer than that. But you’ll be all right with Aunt Eden.”

“I think I’d better go round by the office and tell Father now—before lunch,” Phoebe said.

“Tell your mother first, honey,” said Sue, and Phoebe’s eyes met hers gravely. Mother was a dear. But Father was so exciting sometimes you almost forgot her. Cousin Sue had always taught them it didn’t do to let Mother feel left out.

“All right. But then she’ll tell Father when he comes home to lunch, and it won’t be the same.”

“Not quite, but it’s better that way,” Sue insisted quietly. “It’s bad enough already that Bracken came to me before he saw them.”

Bracken winced at this barefaced saddling of himself with a guilt which was not his, but Phoebe’s glance was commiserating and innocent. She knew how that was too. You always went to Cousin Sue first. She talked people into things for you. It occurred to Phoebe belatedly that Cousin Sue had just talked her into going abroad right over Miles’s head. Bemused, and fingering the new pendant lovingly, Phoebe set out for home.

In the drawing-room Bracken looked at Sue, one eyebrow aslant.

“
Well!
” he said admiringly. “You do think fast!”

“Eden won’t mind, will she? She’s always saying how dull it is without Virginia.”

“She’ll be delighted. Don’t know why we didn’t think of it ourselves.”

“I shall pay for everything,” said Sue firmly. “With
Gratian
’s money, I mean. He would be glad if it gave Phoebe a good time, wouldn’t he?”

“Undoubtedly. But you haven’t disposed of the money, you know.”

“I want her to have lots of clothes,” Sue said extravagantly. “I want her to be dressed the way Virginia always was. Furs, even. And
all
her travelling expenses, mind.”

“But, honey, if the legacy is properly invested here, Phoebe’s holiday and wardrobe will all come out of the first year’s income, no matter what you do.”

Sue stared at him.

“As much as
that?
”

“Quite a lot. Farthingale wasn’t a cheap house, it was fully equipped and in excellent condition.”

“Well, it’s all going to be Phoebe’s, anyway,” Sue said decidedly. “You’ve got to spend it on her, and invest it for her, without anybody knowing anything about it. Phoebe is the nearest thing to a daughter of my own I’ll ever have, and I want her to—to—” She hesitated. “Well, to have
everything
,” she finished abruptly.

“Am I to buy her a husband too?” he asked, and Sue’s eyes were unflinching.

“You’re to buy her a chance to fall in love with someone besides Miles, yes.”

“Well, I
am
surprised!” said Bracken. “I thought—”

Sue interrupted him levelly.

“Bracken, when I said I wanted Phoebe to have everything, I meant everything I have missed. It’s all right in my case, because with me it was for Sedgwick. But you know as well as I do that Miles isn’t Sedgwick. Miles isn’t—
enough.
Nobody ought to be an old maid because of Miles, it’s—it would be too lonely.”

He put his arm around her and his cheek against hers.

“I see what you mean, honey,” he said.

“Don’t think I’m sorry for myself, because I’m not.” But she clung to him a moment gratefully. “What Sedgwick and I have had, all these years, has been—worth it. But that’s not for Phoebe. Gratian is going to give Phoebe what he couldn’t give me because it was too late.”

“And what about poor Miles?” said Bracken. “If he sees danger of her being snatched away from him like this mightn’t he pull up his socks and ask her to marry him?”

“I hope not,” said Sue gravely. “I do hope he won’t ask her before she goes. It may be very wrong of me, Bracken, but I want Phoebe to have something—well, something
more
than Miles!”

T
HE
decision had been made before Bracken left Williamsburg that evening, but there was still time to write to Miles before he arrived for the birthday party. As she sat at the little desk in her bedroom, tearing up sheets of notepaper and beginning again, Phoebe found it a very difficult letter to compose.

She felt a necessity to apologize to Miles for not consulting him—and at the same time there was no real reason for Miles to object, as there might have been if, say, they had been
engaged
. This sudden, drastic break in their established routine underlined uncomfortably the equivocal position she was in with Miles. In her own mind she belonged to him, and had no existence separate from him. And yet because he had not claimed her, either openly or in private, she had no official standing, even with herself, as his property. She was actually quite free to go to England, quite free to fall in love with somebody there as Virginia had done, if it came to that—except that she preferred to consider herself dedicated to Miles. But the letter she wrote to him now must carry no assumption that he couldn’t get along without her, or would miss her unduly. Likewise, it must not contain any indication of her own growing exasperation, amounting almost to humiliation, that she was so willing and anxious for an understanding between them which he was too indifferent to make concrete.

By the time she had finished and sealed the final version she was very nearly fit to dispense with Miles voluntarily—tired of a
bondage
of her own making, tugging crossly at chains which were invisible to everyone but herself—even, apparently, to Miles.

The letter took Miles by surprise, and roused in him old, uneasy memories. First of all he found himself wishing that the Murrays would stop throwing their money around and leave things alone. And then his fair, well-balanced mind reminded him that Phoebe had a perfect right to go abroad in luxury if she got the chance, especially since she wanted to write novels like Aunt Sue.

After that, his thoughts lingered unwillingly, unhappily, on Virginia Murray, who was now Virginia Campion. He had, he thought, got used to the idea of never seeing her again. In fact, he preferred never to see her again. Virginia was nothing to him. She had never been anything to him but a bright comet flashing across his calm, studious horizon. She had looked up at him through her dark lashes, smiled at him her closed, curved smile which was always as though she knew something you didn’t know—she had waltzed in the circle of his stiff, careful arm, and chattered to him of her curtsey before the old Queen, and the conquests she had made in London the summer of the Jubilee. He was on his way to Cuba then, and you couldn’t ask a girl to marry you when you might be blown to bits a month later—at least not a girl like Virginia Murray.

He had returned from Cuba without a wound, but was tormented by that persistent fever and a digestive ailment which came of the food and water he had had on the
campaign
. Before he had begun to get himself together again Virginia was off once more for England, where she suddenly married Archie Campion without even coming back home first. Miles was at that time a very sick man, with nothing to do but lie about and brood. In normal circumstances he might have got over it in a normal way, and seen for himself that Virginia would never have made a college professor’s wife. As it was, with his health broken and his mind insufficiently occupied, Miles became a blighted being who had loved and lost. Because she was now unattainable, Virginia increased proportionately in desirability until he had convinced himself that she was the only woman in the world, La Belle Dame Sans Merci, Circe, Dulcinea, Eurydice—Miles’s love-making, if he had ever got down to it, would have taken a very classical turn.

So, during a slow and tiresome convalescence with many relapses, Miles came to live more and more in a misty world of his own, nursing the might-have-been, coddling bereavement, dwelling on frustration, courting heartbreak—he was still young enough, at twenty-two, to dramatize a thwarted love,
and his dreamy, bookish temperament was favourable to
solitary
yearnings. He even, at one time and another, contemplated the monastic life.

His parents very wisely, at first, let him alone, hoping he would right himself as his health returned. But there was created, between his mental depression and the recurrent bouts of fever, a sort of
vicious circle, and instead of getting well Miles showed a tendency now, at twenty-five, to become a chronic semi-invalid, patient, studious, self-effacing—half alive.

Through it all, Phoebe had stood by him staunchly, always sympathetic and soothing, ready to read aloud to him till she was hoarse, anxious to absorb books he had already read and listen to him discuss them for hours, always serious-minded, undemanding, considerate of his feelings, tacitly recognizing his broken heart, and offering with both hands her generous, flattering friendship as a makeweight in his celibacy. And now she was going to England. Suppose, like Virginia, she never came back….