Ever After (13 page)

“Well, I was wondering about the Major too,” she confessed, almost unwillingly. “It seems such a pity he has to give up his house just because he hasn’t got money enough to run it properly. The Army is badly paid, you know, it really isn’t fair. My brother Oliver is a captain now and even with his allowance from home he has a dreadful time to make ends meet.”

“Has to come down on Father now and then, does he?”

“Yes, and poor Father is as hard up as anybody!” she assured him carelessly. “That’s why we live down here in the country so much of the time, instead of in the house in Town. Of course I like it, and so do the boys, but it bores Clare.”

“We’ll have to try and liven it up for her. My sister likes living in the country, and she’s planning a lot of house-parties and
whatnot
.”

“Clare will be glad of that,” Dinah said. “Of course I suppose it is rather hard, if you’re beautiful and clever like Clare, not to have a lot of money and make a splash in London. Clare says she’s got to marry money, and how do they expect her to do it if they keep her bottled up in Gloucestershire! How old is your sister?”

“Eighteen. I’ll bring her to see you, may I?”

“She’d rather see Clare, I expect. They’ll have things to talk about.”

“And what do you do with yourself, Dinah, when you aren’t riding Thunderbolt?” It was the first time he had called her by her funny little name. He felt it in his heartbeats.

“Oh, lessons, mostly, and music. Only it isn’t often I can get the good piano downstairs.” She sighed and glanced disdainfully at the old upright in the corner of the room. “It’s not much fun practising on that thing.”

“What do you play?”

“Études.”
She made a face. “And now as a special treat, I’m learning
The
Harmonious
Blacksmith.
The name of it is enough to put you off, isn’t it!”

“And you live up here, all by yourself?” he said, trying to visualize her daily existence. “Don’t you get lonesome?”

“It is a bit bleak since Gerald started school and they let Nanny go. But I have Miss French, and she’s awfully nice, not like most governesses. After I come out I shall have a bedroom downstairs and take my meals in the dining room. I’m hoping for the yellow room, it looks over the sunken garden, but Clare says it’s for guests. I shall probably get something dull at the back.”

“What’s the yellow room like?” he asked, sitting very still, speaking very low, for now he was learning, now she was talking to him like an old friend, now he was getting some idea of what went on behind her unchildlike self-possession. It was too soon to say to her, When you are mine you shall have any sort of room you like, and do it up to suit yourself and spend all the money you please on it—when I have the right to give you things, all sorts of things, everything you ever wanted, Dinah, you only have to name it—oh, much too soon to say that. But he could learn, he could encourage confidences, and then some day he could wave his cheque-book like a wand—

“It’s Chinese Chippendale,” she was saying. “Chairbacks like mahogany lace, and the wall-paper has lovely long-tailed birds on a pale yellow ground, and the hangings are yellow silk. The sun always seems to be shining there even when it rains, because of the yellow walls. There’s the most enormous bed with a canopy, you could simply lie crosswise in it if you liked—”

“Any books there?”

“It has one of those circular bookcases in tiers. Of course my own books aren’t bound in fancy leather, I’d have to keep them out of sight!”

“What do you like to read?”

“That’s all my library.” She pointed to a shelf not far behind his chair and he leaned to squint at the titles. “It’s sort of handed down, some of Edward’s and John’s and all of Clare’s. Archie’s got lots of books in his room, and he gave me the Kipling for Christmas last year. Archie is my favourite brother, he’s studying Law up in London. He says he saw you at breakfast yesterday.”

“Yes, I liked him.” (Archie was the only one who had asked if she had hurt herself.) “Going to be a Q.C., is he?”

“Well, Oliver chose the Army, and John stood for Parliament, and that left the Navy and the Church and the Bar for Archie. He says he’d never be able to take himself seriously in Holy Orders, and judging by the way he feels on the Calais crossing the Navy would never do! Archie is awfully nice, he used to come and read to Gerald and me when we were little and got ill.”

“And do you like to go to plays?” Bracken asked, groping happily among revelations.

“I’ve never seen any, except once when Edward took us all to the pantomime at Christmas.”

“Next time you’re in London we’ll go to a play, shall we?”

“Mr. Murray, why do you—” She hesitated, her grave eyes upon him impersonally, her beautiful lips parted. For the first times she seemed a little embarrassed, a little uncertain of her next words.

“Why do I what?” he asked alertly.

“Well, why are you so kind to me?”

“Why should you expect me to be beastly to you?” he parried.

“Oh, not beastly, I didn’t mean that, but—you talk to me almost as though I was grown up.”

“How else would I talk to you? You’re nearly sixteen.”

“That isn’t considered grown up in our family. Are things different in America?”

“They seem to be,” he said, thinking of their spoilt, precocious Virginia. “My sister considered herself quite a débutante at your age, and was allowed at all informal parties till ten o’clock, if I remember rightly.” And what’s more, he added to himself, she wouldn’t have been caught dead wearing that thing you’ve got on. Couldn’t I send something pretty for Dinah to be ill in, he
wondered
. No, I suppose not. Must go slowly. Must behave like an uncle. Has she got uncles? Well, I’m the American uncle, and entitled to be a little peculiar. She’d look so pretty in Virginia’s clothes. How long must I wait? How careful must I be? What
can
I give her? Chocolates, books, but what does she want? How can I find out what she wants? “What would you like for your birthday present?” he asked suddenly, and Dinah looked surprised.

“It’s not till September.”

“But it’s your sixteenth. That’s important. Got to start thinking.”

“Will you be at Farthingale in September?” she inquired.

“Might. In London, anyway. Will you invite me to your birthday party? I suppose you’ll have a party?”

She shook her head.

“I never have had. Not till after I come out.”

“Then
I’ll
give you a party! Virginia always has parties on her birthday, or we’d hear about it! We’ll get her to help.”

“Are you going to stay in England long, Mr. Murray?”

It was the first flicker of personal interest she had shown in him, and the question was more puzzled than personal even now.
Nevertheless
Bracken seized it.

“Yes, you see, my father runs a newspaper in New York and I’ve come over here to start a London office. I shall be here for some time—unless I pop off to report a war now and then.”

“You mean you
write
newspapers?” Dinah was plainly startled.

“Well, not more than one. And not the whole thing. I’m a Special Correspondent. My present job is the Jubilee, in which all America takes a friendly interest.”

“But I think that’s wonderful!” said Dinah, and now her intense regard made him almost uncomfortable. “I never thought I’d
know someone who wrote things that were
printed
. Could I see something you wrote some time?”

“Almost any time. But I’m no Kipling, you know, just a run-of-the-mill journalist.”

The idea of a man who did anything so incomprehensible as journalism caught her eager, open mind. And now it was she who asked the questions, for she had never thought before how newspapers came into being, having accepted
The
Times
rather as she accepted the sunrise, as a natural phenomenon. Literature was an esoteric subject at the Hall, where books were encountered as lessons, or else shut up in the library as ornaments. Miss French had her favourites, of course, and Dinah had read
Evelina
and some early Victorian novelists. And Archie read other things besides Law, but Archie was different from the rest of them, he was the brainy one, and had chambers in London, and meant to become a barrister. In Archie’s bedroom at the Hall books lay about everywhere on the chairs and tables and were constantly used. Archie could quote from things besides Surtees and
Horse
and
Hound
, and Archie had tried, not very successfully so far, to instil into the young minds of Dinah and Gerald some idea of the solace and entertainment to be derived from just sitting down with a book. Here was another man who attached importance to them, and who not only habitually read the printed word but actually wrote it.

“Did you ever write a
book
?” she inquired finally, for anything was possible to him now.

“Not yet. I probably will, though, most of us do. My Aunt Susannah is quite a well-known authoress at home—though you’d never guess it to look at her, bless her little heart!” He scrutinized more closely the titles of Dinah’s nondescript library. “A lot of things are missing here,” he complained. “Archie must pull himself together. Didn’t they give you Miss Alcott when you were younger?”

Dinah had plainly never heard of Miss Alcott.

“Not too late now, perhaps,” said Bracken. “I’ll go into this with Virginia. And I’ll send you a thing called
The
Prisoner
of
Zenda
, with my compliments.”

“I’ll read anything you want me to,” she promised devoutly.

Heavy footsteps crossed the passage outside and Alwyn swung into the room, puffing a little from the last flight of stairs.

“My dear fellow,” he greeted Bracken with outstretched hand, “it’s no end good of you to come up and entertain Dinah like this! I’m sorry we ware so long, but it’s a goodish drive from the Towers.”

“I’ve been quite happy, thank you,” said Bracken firmly. “Dinah and I have been getting acquainted.”

“Yes, well, come along down and have some tea, it’s just coming in.”

“No, really, I had no intention—”

“But of course you will, old boy, Clare is expecting you in the drawing room this minute! Where’s Miss French, Dinah?” His stone-grey gaze ran swiftly over the room and to the doorway of the empty one beyond.

“Gone to the village for some knitting wool,” said Dinah
tonelessly
.

“Oh. Well, I dare say your tray will be along soon. Say
goodbye
to Mr. Murray now, and thank him for sitting with you.”

“Goodbye, Mr. Murray. Thank you for sitting with me,” said Dinah obediently. Her eyes as they met Bracken’s ironical glance were empty of any expression except a studious politeness. It was impossible to tell if she resented being treated by her brother like a negligible child who was not quite bright, or whether she was so accustomed to that attitude from her elders that she was unaware of it.

Bracken held out his right hand and waited till hers came into it.

“Goodbye,” he said. “And thank
you
for letting me come up.”

He followed Alwyn down all those stairs in what was becoming a chronic state of exasperation. It had been on the tip of his tongue to demand a nursery tea from Dinah’s tray, out of sheer perversity at being bundled off to Clare so high-handedly, but he was doubtful if the repercussions would be advisable. He was prepared to dislike Clare by now. And at the back of his mind there stirred a suspicion that he had been already looked into, and the Murray money brought to light, and that Clare was going to be thrown at his head.

When they reached the drawing room floor, Alwyn turned left and threw open the door of a room with blue damask walls and a mirrored rococo mantelpiece that was like woven icicles. No one was there, and the hearth was cold.

“Oh,” said Alwyn, backing out again. “You never know, do you! Thought they said tea was in the blue drawing room, but it must be in the white one. Can’t think why, the wind is from that side today.” He led the way to open another door. “This looks more like it, what?”

The white drawing room was about the best the Hall could do. It faced west and south above the sunken garden. It had an Adam ceiling and crystal chandeliers. It was so long it required two mantelpieces, each of them supported by classic busts, on tapering pedestals, each with a roaring fire. Gainsborough had done the mantelpiece portraits, and the large family group at the end of the room was Hoppner. The furniture was in Adam’s airiest design, and the brocades and needlepoints were cream and rose.

It was the perfect setting for the blonde Lady Clare, who presided over the tea-table set in front of the nearest fire. She still wore her hat, a delightful affair trimmed with pale blue ostrich-tips and a white veil which she had rolled up so that it formed a misty frame for her face. Her cheeks were pink from the wind, and she
welcomed
Bracken like an old friend.

“Forgive me for not being changed since the drive,” she said as she gave him her hand. “But Edward is such a tyrant, he said there wasn’t time before tea. I do think it’s charming of you to come and inquire about that naughty girl, don’t you, Archie?”

“Rath
er
. Must have bucked her up no end. How’s the poor little soul managing?”

“Well, it’s tough, having to keep your leg up,” Bracken said cautiously.

“Oh, damn’ dull, I quite agree!” old Lord Enstone said heartily from a sofa by the fire. “I broke an ankle once, out with the
Heythrop
. Almost went out of my mind before it mended!”

“Don’t I remember!” said Clare, turning up her eyes. “We
all
nearly went out of our minds!”

“I’m a bad invalid, I admit,” her father conceded complacently. “Had so damn’ little practice, for one thing! You were out with us that day, Edward, it was on that Meon Hill run. Very fast sixty minutes, but heavy going after a rain.”

“That was the time you came to grief at a wall, wasn’t it, sir? A very bad peck. It was that damn’ horse you would ride—too long in the leg for this country. I told you. We got rid of him soon after. Good thing too, might have killed you the next time!”