Ever After (20 page)

“Yes, thank you, Edward.”

“Don’t thank me, thank your friend Murray. It was his idea.” Alwyn turned it over in his mind and decided to be clever. Cleverer, anyway, than Bracken Murray. “Queer chap,” he went on loftily. “Americans are all dashed queer, of course, one expects that. This fellow’s wife seems to have left him.”

“Why, I didn’t know he was married!” cried Dinah in quite natural surprise.

“To a Catholic, apparently. That rather rules out divorce, you know. Seems a pity, what?”

“Yes, doesn’t it.”

But Alwyn had not been quite as clever as he thought. Dinah, who had never before thought of Bracken Murray as much but a pleasant phenomenon in her monotonous existence, now suddenly began to think of him as a man with a broken heart, who was being so brave and cheerful you would never guess.

In attempting to block off supposititious romantic yearnings on Dinah’s part, Alwyn had instead brought Bracken into focus for the first time and roused her compassion for him. She remembered that Virginia said he had had a lot of worry and was working too hard and needed rest. And this evening while they danced, he had asked her, Dinah, to be friends with him, after his womenfolk went back to America. Even with all that money to spend, even in spite of his jokes and carefree ways and thoughtfulness for other people, and his light-hearted enjoyment of life as it came, there was some kind of tragedy behind him, and he must often be lonely and sad inside, and too proud to show it. Dinah could appreciate that.
No matter how badly your feelings were hurt, or how blue you got, or how sick you felt about the way somebody treated you, you mustn’t ever show it. You had to keep your chin up and look people straight in the eye and not let them know your inside felt like a mass of screaming jelly. Bracken Murray had had to learn this too. Bracken Murray was better than anybody at looking people straight in the eye as though nothing was wrong with his inside. And he had asked her to be his friend….

Womanhood stirred in Dinah. She wondered what sort of creature could have failed to be happy with so kind and lovable a man as Bracken Murray. And she was sure, passionately sure, that whatever happened, he was not to blame.

“O
NE
would think I had leprosy at least!” Virginia remarked when she and Archie had danced in silence for a full minute, and he glanced down at her in amazement, holding her off a little farther to see her face better under the becoming Stuart cap.

“I beg your pardon?” he said automatically, for surely she had not said what he thought she had said.

“Well, so you should. I’m not accustomed to have to wangle the privilege of dancing with someone I happen to like.”

“Meaning me?” He still looked somewhat stupefied.

“Meaning you.”

“I thought you were booked.”

“Well, you could have un-booked me!
I
did!”

“Should I apologize, or something?”

“You certainly should!”

“Then I do.”

She stole an upward look at him, through her lashes. Seen close in the dance, he was almost too handsome, his lean, fine jaw and brilliant blue eyes framed by the white wig and lace jabot. His mouth was like Dinah’s, with long lips evenly divided. Virginia yielded herself a bit more to his arms, and his response was involuntary and quick. She smiled beneath his chin. Human, after all.

“Why do you avoid me so?” she murmured.

“But I—”

“Yes, you do, too!” she insisted crossly. “I can tell!”

“Well, if you must know, you’re too attractive.”

“Are you practising to be a monk or something?”

“No. Only a barrister.”

“That seems to be the next thing to it.”

“Yes, doesn’t it!” His encircling arm was once more impersonal, his face with its clean, sculptured lines was inscrutable.

Thwarted, Virginia danced in silence again to the end of the waltz. He thanked her formally and moved with her towards some chairs.

“Aunt Sue was here a moment ago. She must have gone outside. Oh, don’t bother about me if I bore you so!” she cried, rounding on him fiercely. “I’ve got lots of other partners—
willing
ones!”

He looked as though she had hit him.

“Please, Miss Murray, I—”

“Ah, here you are, Virginia,” said Alwyn’s arrogant drawl just behind them. “All right, Dinah—now you can take on Archie again, what? This is a supper dance, I believe.”

Virginia took his arm, leaving Dinah beside Archie, who stood looking after them.

“Archie, what
is
it, did she hurt your feelings?” Dinah asked.

“She had a right,” he said after a moment. “It’s the only thing I can do, though.”

“Are you going to let Edward marry her?”

“
Let
him!” he repeated with irony. “Edward never waits to be let, does he? Besides—” He stopped.

“Well, of course, Edward has got the title and all,” she agreed understandingly. “But people do make money at the Bar, don’t they?”

“Sometimes. By the time they’re ninety. Would you like an ice?”

“Mr. Murray says I’m to have supper with him. Won’t you join us?” She laid her hand on his sleeve urgently. She was suddenly shy of Bracken now that she knew about his wife.

He came up just then, dodging through the dancers at the edge of the floor, and said, “Hullo, Archie, may I borrow her till supper? Join us then, won’t you?”

“Thanks, I will.”

Archie watched them dance away. Dinah thought he looked rather forlorn, standing there alone, and much too thin. He must be studying too hard.

“You’re very silent,” said Bracken. “Aren’t you having a good time?”

“Oh, yes, lovely,” she answered absently. “I think Archie and Virginia have had a quarrel.”

“Oh, that. He missed his cue. Didn’t ask her to dance. She’ll get over it.”

“Do you think she’s in love with Edward?”

“I don’t know.” He had nearly said, I hope not. “Do you?”

“I hope not,” said Dinah. “Archie is much nicer. For marrying, I mean.”

“Just what are your requirements for marrying, Dinah?”

“I’ve never thought much about it. Except—”

“Yes?” he encouraged her.

“I’d never marry a man I was afraid of.”

“Naturally not.”

“People do, though. Iris did. I’m sure she’s terrified of John sometimes. It sends cold shivers down my spine, the way she looks at him when he starts bullying her. Perhaps I shall never marry,” said Dinah, quailing suddenly before immensities.

“That’s a strange thing to say at your age,” he remarked lightly.

Dinah felt the subject might be painful to him and ought to be changed. Already the idea of his mysterious wife was clouding their relationship, which had been so uncomplicated and serene. She glanced up to find him looking down, and his eyes were just the same as before Edward had spoken. She considered that Edward had betrayed him to mention his private affairs even to her, and a quickening, protective affection for him ran through her. She would do everything she could to spare his pride, and would never let him know that she knew. Perhaps some day he would speak of it to her himself, if he really thought of her as a friend. How could he smile like that, with a droll, slanting eyebrow, after what he must have been through? She smiled back, hesitantly, and Bracken, conscious of a new warmth in her steady regard, which he took to be gratitude for a happy evening, caught her closer in an exultant pirouette.

“Glad you came to the party?” he whispered, his lips near her hair.

“Oh, yes! And it was a good idea to ask Archie to have supper with us. Let’s be very gay so he doesn’t miss Virginia.”

“Let’s,” said Bracken, and once more he wondered if Archie was going to have to be seriously reckoned with, and his eyes fell on Virginia who appeared to be sulking in Alwyn’s arms as they danced. “There will be you and me and Aunt Sue and Sir Gratian and Archie—and lots of champagne.”

“Do you think I could have some?”

“Champagne? Certainly.”

She looked up at him again, gratefully.

“You make everything seem so
simple
!” she marvelled.

“A little champagne never hurt anybody.”

“Have you ever been very, very drunk?” Dinah asked seriously.

“Will this be used against me?”

“No. I just wondered.”

“Well, then, I have,” he confessed. “But don’t you try it. It’s not worth the hangover. I’m warning you.”

“I do like the things you say!” she laughed.

“And have I said that I like the way you look tonight?”

“Am I really all right?” she queried anxiously.

“You’re sweet, Dinah. You’re a credit to me.”

“I’m glad.”

Still no coquetry or self-consciousness, no apparent awareness of him as a male. Virginia at fifteen would have bridled and made eyes. He didn’t want that from Dinah, but at the same time he found the total lack of it discouraging.

Sue was being, in her own quiet way, one of the belles of the ball. Sir Gratian had managed to secure her for the supper dance, and before it began they went out on the terrace under the moon and among the coloured lights, and he allowed the talk to run on freely, enjoying her confidence that he was going to make no more embarrassing proposals. It wouldn’t do to chivvy her, but his time was running out.

Sue had, it was true, regained a feeling of security with him, and decided that he had accepted her refusal with resignation. She was so without conceit or experience that it did not occur to her that she might be worth a little caution and manœuvring and then another try. She convinced herself that he had proposed to her on an impulse and that by now he was glad she had not taken him up on it. The strong attraction between them was still there, in his lingering gaze, in her own heightened pleasure in his company. But she had been through all that with Sedgwick, and it had never come to anything more. So she was caught off guard when he said, quite casually:

“My orders came today, Susannah.”

“Oh, does that mean you must go?”

“The end of this month.”

“Back to Egypt?”

“And on up the Nile towards Omdurman, dragging the railroad with us.” He sighed. “I dread to think of your leaving England, even though I shan’t be here to see you go.”

“It will be sad, in a way, for me to go. I’ve come to feel very much at home.”

“Perhaps if I could have given you Farthingale along with my worthless self I might have kept you here,” he suggested ruefully.

“Oh, Gratian, I won’t allow you to say such a thing, even in fun! Farthingale has nothing to do with it!”

“Susannah, they say the British never know when they are beaten, which is why they usually win. I’m afraid I haven’t been able to give up hoping—”

Sue rose hastily.

“Sh! There’s Archie, looking for us, I think. The music has stopped. It must be supper.”

Sir Gratian said something under his breath, and then Archie was upon them.

“They sent me to find you, sir,” he said. “Bracken and Dinah are saving places for us with them.”

There was no opportunity for Sir Gratian to speak to her alone again during the rest of the evening, but she knew now that she was in for it. They reached Farthingale in the carriage in the early summer dawn, sleepy and silent and Virginia a little cross, and separated to their rooms with brief good nights.

But Sue, over-stimulated and over-tired, could not go to sleep. Soon after the sun was up she got out of bed and sat at her window in a dressing gown, apprehensive and unhappy over what was before her with Sir Gratian. Phrases formed themselves neatly in her mind—but suppose he said something quite different from what she expected and the phrases wouldn’t fit. She wasn’t writing him in a book.

Then for a time she tried, deliberately and in cold blood, to picture what her life as his wife would be—how it would feel to see Virginia start home without her, with Bracken as travelling
companion
while she herself stayed on in England—how it would seem to own allegiance only to a man who a few weeks before had not entered her life—how it would be to have to write a letter to
Sedgwick
to tell him she wasn’t coming back…. It was there that panic set in, and all she could think of was Sedgwick’s face at the station in Washington when he said, “Don’t get lost—” and turned and walked away from her.

Finally she went to her desk and took a sheet of notepaper.

Without even reading it over she put it in an envelope, sealed it, and leaving herself no time for indecision tiptoed down the passage and slid it under his door.

As she reached the door of her own room again she heard his door open behind her and faced about with a little gasp. He stood there, the envelope in his hand, fully dressed in his country tweeds for an early walk. Like herself, he had not slept.

For a moment they gazed silently at each other, the passage between them. Then she went into her room and closed the door.

Leaning against the inside of it, she heard his footsteps go past, with a heart-stopping pause opposite her threshold, and on down the passage towards the stairs. When she moved away from the door at last her cheeks were wet.

Bracken slept, for Dinah had given him back his rest along with his zest for life. But he woke quite early and lay congratulating himself on a successful evening all round. He had, he felt, made some progress with Dinah, even though she did not blush and stammer when he paid her a compliment. She seemed to be getting used to him, that was the thing. And she had seemed to absorb the idea that they might keep an eye on each other in a friendly way. Also, he reflected with some satisfaction as he rang for his shaving-water, he had settled Alwyn’s hash.

Finding himself the first one down, he went out into the yew walk to admire the bright new morning, and there he came suddenly around a corner on to a bench where Sir Gratian sat with his head in his hands. It was too late to retreat unseen, and as Bracken hesitated the Major looked up, his face drawn and tired in the revealing light.