Mine for a Day (8 page)

“Well, I’ll leave you two to have a chat.” She got up. “I’ve several things to do. Packing and—”

“Packing, my dear? You don’t have to leave us, do you?” Mrs. Morley’s tone was one of energetic protest.

“Well, there isn’t really any reason now why I—why I—”

“Oh, nonsense!” To her astonishment, it was Simon who spoke that time. “We don’t want you to go yet, Leila. There isn’t any hurry, is there?”

She longed desperately to ask him what were
his
personal reasons for wishing her to stay. But it was quite impossible to do that, of course.

“If you want to keep me, and I can be of any use, of course I’ll be very glad to stay for a few days. Anyway, until Mrs. Morley goes to the nursing
h
ome.”

“That’s settled then,” Simon stated, with decision.

Leila went downstairs slowly, and when she reached the bottom of the wide, shallow flight, she paused and looked thoughtfully across the sun-filled hall and through the open door into the garden.

How completely—how deliciously—her position in this household had changed during the last hour. She was no longer here on false pretences. She was to stay as a welcome guest, invited because she was approved and liked in her own identity.

And yet—so perverse is human nature, and particularly human nature in love—she wondered if, after all, she had not been happier in the perilous position of Simon’s secret ally, when he and she had shared something important from which everyone else must necessarily be excluded
.

“How silly I am,” she thought. “It meant nothing to him, anyway.” But the foolish idea persisted that it might have
come
to
mean something to him.

She went out into the garden after a few minutes, and as soon as she stepped out of doors she saw that Frances was at the far end the garden—picking runner beans, with a savage concentration which suggested either temper or unhappiness.

Leila hesitated a moment, then she went to her.

“Frances”—she began to pick beans, too, the
o
ther side of the row, but she came to the point immediately—“your mother knows the whole story about Rosemary and me now. She’s nothing like so upset as we feared.”

Frances’s busy, ruthless hands stopped.

“Who told her?” she asked, in a slightly breathless tone.

“I did
.”

“Why? Because you were afraid I should give you away? I shouldn’t have. Simon knew that. He knows he can trust me, once I’ve given my word.”

“I’m sure he does,” Leila said equably. “The fact was that your mother suspected something vaguely”—Leila saw no reason to
refer to Frances’s own suspicious behaviour—“largely because I didn’t fit her previous idea of me in any respect. She asked me some questions, and—oh, showed so much good sense and
self-control—that the whole thing became foolish and unreal, and I told her the truth.”

“You would have done better to do that from the start,” Frances remarked in a cold, unfriendly tone.

“Maybe.” Leila refused to be ruffled. “But, as your mother herself said, at least we prepared her well for the shock. And we did act from well-intentioned motives, you know, Frances.”

A sceptical silence greeted this. Then after a few minutes Frances went on picking her beans.

“How long are you staying, then?” she enquired, a little pointedly.

“Until Mrs. Morley goes into the nursing-home. A few days longer. I—I was asked to do so.” Leila wished she didn’t feel so shaken by this girl’s unfriendly air.

“By Mother?

“Yes.”

“How about Simon? What had he to
s
ay?”

“He—supported the invitation. He wanted me to stay.”

Frances gave a short, disagreeable little laugh,
and catching up her now filled basket she went off into the house, leaving Leila to look after her ruefully and reflect that she had not bettered her position much in that direction.

There was nothing to do about it. You couldn’t counter unreason with reason.

However, during the next few days, Leila found that Frances’s persistent enmity was not without its compensations. For one thing, Simon did not fail to notice it and resent it. And, in his anxiety to counterbalance it, he showed much more attention and personal friendliness to Leila than he might perhaps otherwise have done.

Mrs. Morley could not have visitors for long or frequent periods, which left the other three very much dependent on each other’s company. And since
Frances either would not or could not show cordiality to her brother, Leila found herself his natural companion during most of that weekend.

She tried not to attach any real importance to this, but she could not help seeing that, the more he saw of her, the more he seemed to seek her company. And on the Sunday evening, when all their
nerves were becoming a little frayed over the nearness of Mrs. Morley’s departure for the nursing home, he suddenly said, without any preamble:

“You are wonderfully soothing and helpful company at a time of crisis, Leila. I don’t like to think what t
his weekend would have
been like without you.”

She tried not to colour and look as moved and delighted as she felt, and she hoped that the tone in which she said, “I’m so glad I was some help,
”
struck just the right note of kind and impersonal friendliness.

“You will let me know, as soon as you have any definite news, won’t you?” she said earnestly.

“Of course. I wish you were staying on here until the end of the week.”

“I wish so, too, but it isn’t possible,” Leila told him firmly. For, with Mrs. Morley gone, and Simon himself away a good deal of the time, it was unthinkable that she should extend her stay, when Frances so obviously wished her gone.

“I have your telephone number.” Simon fished out his diary, and verified Leila’s telephone number for the third time. “I don’t expect there’ll be any news by tomorrow night. They probably won’t operate until Tuesday,” he went on, though he had said that, too,
to her at least once before.

“But you will try to ring me on Tuesday evening?’”

“Of course.”

She could see herself, in the familiar room in her flat which she had not seen now for four or five weeks, holding the telephone receiver and listening to Simon. Knowing that he was speaking to
her,
herself—not just with a message to convey to Rosemary—not just with an enquiry about someone else—but speaking to
her,
telling her about his mother, because he knew that she shared in his hopes and his fears. It was going to be wonderful, and the thought of that took away something of the reluctance she felt in returning to the old, familiar life.

The next day, Mrs. Morley’s departure was delayed until the afternoon, and Leila spent a good deal of the time with her. They talked very cheerfully of the future, as though it would be a shared future, an
d
the last thing Mrs. Morley said to her was: “I hope to see a good deal of you, dear, once I am fully recovered.”

Leila eagerly echoed that hope.

Frances had accompanied her mother to the nursing-home, and Simon—quiet and at a loose end—said that he would drive Leila to the local station.

“If you like, I will drive you right up to town,” he offered, as he lifted her case into the car.

But Leila would not hear of that. She thought that Frances would need him—and have a right to him—when she came back from seeing her mother installed.

So Simon came with her to the station, and while they waited for the train they walked slowly up and down the rather deserted platform.

“Leila, I don’t know how to thank you for all you have done.”

“It didn’t amount to much in the end,” she protested, with a
smile. “We kept it up less than twenty-four hours, you know.”

“But you were prepared to go through with it for as long as was needed. I don’t think I realized until afterwards how much I had asked you to do. I was so crazy after—Rosemary’s going, and so unable to think of anything but how to save Mother from shock, that I took it for granted I only had to ask you and you would agree to anything. I’m ashamed now to think how little I considered you.”

“Don’t think any more
about it.” She put her hand on his arm for a moment and, though she could feel nothing more than the roughness of his coat-sleeve, the contact gave her pleasure. “You were very kind to me, and as I say, it lasted only a very short while.”

“It wasn’t only for that that I was trying to thank you,” he said slowly. “Afterwards—after we told Mother the real state of affairs, I mean—you were so sweet and helpful and—I suppose the word is ‘strong.’ You gave one such a feeling of security and support, Leila. I know it meant a lot to Mother. And I’ll never be able to tell you what it meant to me.”

She watched the plume of smoke from her approaching train, and wished that this moment could go on for ever.

She said gently and unemotionally: “I’m so glad. Please don’t exaggerate, though.” And she thought:
“
Darling, I’m so happy I could sing!”

The train drew into the station, and he handed her and her case into an empty compartment.

“When shall I see you?” he said, just as the whistle blew.

She wished there had been time to make some show of considering that—some decent interval which might suggest that she had not thought of any future meeting until he put the idea into her head. But there was no time. So she cried, eagerly and joyously:

“We’ll discuss it when you telephone me. It will be lovely to meet some time. Good-bye, Simon.”

“Good-bye, my dear. And thank you for everything.”

The train was moving now. She waved a friendly hand, and subsided into a corner seat. She would be seeing him again. He
wanted
to see her again.

The train was a slow one, and it was early evening by the time Leila reached London. But nothing could disturb the happy tranquillity of her mood. She took a taxi to her flat, determined to deposit her luggage and then go out for a meal, since it was too late to buy any provisions for home catering.

As she entered the building, she thought: “It’s rather nice to be home, after all. I wonder if Simon would like to come and have dinner here with me one night?”

As she started to go up the one flight of stairs to her flat, someone called her by name and, turning, she saw the housekeeper had come out of her doorway.

“Oh, Miss Lorne,” she said, “I’m glad to see you back. Was it all right to let the young lady into your place? I hesitated, because I didn’t know her. But she seemed to know all about you and said you were expecting her.
”

“A young lady—” repeated Leila. And then something seemed to warn her to make no fuss about this. “Oh, how long did she stay?”

“She’s there now, Miss Lorne. She came only an hour or so ago.”

“I see.” A peculiar chill of apprehension crept over Leila, and she ran upstairs as fast as her case would allow.

Her hand was quite steady as she put her key in the door, but she was trembling a little as she set down her case in the hall and went over to the open door of her small sitting-room.

Everything was quiet there, almost completely undisturbed. Only, beside the electric fire which glowed cosily, Rosemary la
y
asleep in a chair, her hair tumbled over the cushion, and a
n
expression of exhaustion on her unnaturally pale face.

CHAPTER VI

FOR almost a whole minute Leila stood and regarded her sleeping cousin. So innocent, so weary, so harmless Rosemary looked, lying there. But she represented such a threat to Leila’s newborn happiness that she was literally afraid to go forward and wake her cousin, for fear of what Rosemary might tell her.

It was much less than a week since Rosemary had stolen away in the early dawn, with the avowed intention of linking her life with Jeremy’s in defiance of all family wishes or advice. If the plan had worked out as it should, surely she would not have sought out Leila—or anyone else—so soon?

And, if the plan had not gone well, why was she here?

Suddenly, Leila knew that she passionately wanted that particular plan to have gone well. She wanted Rosemary’s desertion of Simon to be a completed thing. She didn’t want her to turn up again. She had voluntarily relinquished her place in Simon’s life, hadn’t she?

Frightened and angry, Leila found herself posing and answering a dozen questions, while she watched Rosemary’s sleeping face.

She tried to tell herself that it was for Simon she was anxious—that he had suffered enough, and that any doubts now about Rosemary’s attitude would make him wretched and unsettled. But she knew quite well that the overwhelming emotion which was gripping her at the moment was plain, unadulterated fear that Rosemary’s presence must deprive her of her dawning friendship and intimacy with Simon.

And then quite suddenly, as though she had sensed Leila was there, Rosemary sighed, opened her eyes and sat up.

“Oh, Leila! I’m so glad to see you!” The moment her eyes were open she lost something of the pathos with which sleep had invested her. “I didn’t know
what
I was going to do, if you didn’t turn up.
”

No apology, no explanation. Just an exclamation of thankfulness that Leila’s actions had not run counter to her own planning after all.

“You seem to
have managed quite well up to now,” Leila heard herself say, in a more guarded tone than she usually used to her cousin. “What made you tell Mrs. Boothby I was expecting you?”

“Who? Oh, the housekeeper? Well, she wouldn’t have let me in if I hadn’t, would she?” Rosemary said naively.

“No,” agreed Leila dryly, “I suppose she wouldn’t.”

Rosemary glanced at
h
er quickly.

“Leila, you aren’t
angry
that I came to you, are you?”

Leila tossed off her hat, sat down opposite her cousin, and regarded her.