Such is love (9 page)

"I did, but " Gwyneth hesitated a second, and Van

supplied the explanation.

"Gwyneth took a great fancy to one of the children down at Greystones. His name was Toby and she thought he would like the jug. I suppose he was interested in it when he heard about it."

"I—see."

Gwyneth refused to look in her mother's direction. She knew quite well that those rather cat-like eyes were thoughtfully on her, but not by so much as a glance would she add to her mother's knowledge.

Van spoke casually of something else, the moment

passed And the next morning Mrs. Vilner left for

Paris, still without having touched on the subject again.

CHAPTER FOUR

After her mother's departure Gwyneth was conscious of an immediate lightening of her spirits. Breakfast alone with Van was twice as delightful as usual, and when he looked up from his post, he found her smiling slightly from sheer pleasure.

"Well?" He smiled, too, as he took his coffee from her hand.

"Nothing—except it's nice just to be by ourselves again."

He laughed then, and she knew he was pleased. And then she wondered if that would make him feel less inclined than ever to have Toby. She wished she could think of something clever and tactful to turn that around a little. But before she could think of anything, he addressed her instead.

"Could you find time to meet my young cousin Paula, one afternoon?"

"Of course, Paula? I don't seem to remember hex at our wedding."

"No. She was away in Brussels at a finishing school at the time. She has only just come home."

"Oh—^she's a lot younger than you?"

"Good heavens, yes! Much more like a niece than a cousin. In fact, most of my recollections of her centre round feeding her up with too much ice-cream on half-term holidays."

"But she is rather a favourite of yours?"

Again that slight smile showed.

"I have no favourites—except you." For a moment his dark eyes rested on her with extreme pleasure. "But she is a nice child. Gay and a little impertinent, but well-meaning and full of good spirits. Oddly enough, her parents are quite elderly people. They live in a large, gloomy house at Norbury."

"Oh, that isn't much fun for her, I should think," Gwyneth sgid with sympathy.

"No, that's how I feel about it. And while I deplore the phrasing of this appeal, I suppose I ought to do something about it." And rather amusedly he tossed over a sheet of thick cream notepaper, covered with large, round handwriting.

Van darling [Gwyneth read, with a certain amount of amused admiration for anyone who could address her forbidding husband in this extravagant style], do be an angel and come to my rescue! I'm awfully glad to be home from school and all that, but honestly, it's just about as lively as a morgue here. Daddy fixes chess and bowls as the very limit of riotous excitement, while Mother thinks an annual visit to a Shakespearean tragedy quite enough light entertainment for anyone.

I was thinking of taking to secret drinking or something of the sort to drown my sorrow and boredom— and then I thought of you. I know you've acquired a wife since I last saw you, but you must be getting a bit sick of each other by now. Wouldn't you like a nice, entertaining girl like myself to come along and amuse one or both of you?

Van, do take me out to something. You see, I'm quite shameless cadging, but what can a poor girl do? Anyway, the parents consider you old enough to be safe (forgive me if that adjective stings) and of course, as a married man you're doubly safe. Ask your wife if I may borrow you for once, will you? Thanks a lot. Paula.

Gwyneth put down the letter and laughed.

"But, my dear Van, it isn't me she wants to see. It's you." '

"Oh, I dare say." Her husband brushed that aside with careless determination. "Schoolgirl crushes are not in my line."

"But it's so much more fun when you're nineteen to be taken out by a distinguished-looking man than by a mere female cousin by marriage," objected Gwyneth, with 'some sympathy for the outrageous Paula.

Van, however, was not to be drawn.

"No, no. I'll take you both to the theatre in the evening, if you like."

"Very well. Though she'll probably put me down as a poor possessive creature who dare not lend her husband to an innocent young relation."

But Van didn't think that sort of thing funny. He just frowned and said: "If she's such a damned fool as to say

so, she can go back to Norbury and play chess with her father."

"Poor kid," laughed Gwyneth. "Phone her and ask her if she would like to come shopping with me one afternoon. I'll bring her back here for dimier and we can go on to a show later."

"I will." Van pushed back his chair and got up. "I must go. It's later than I thought." He bent down to give her that apparently careless kiss for which she waited each morning with an ever-fresh thrill of pleasure. "There's our official invitation to Founders' Day at Grey stones, by the way. I don't know if you stUl want to go."

"Van, of courser

She somehow managed not to snatch at the handsomely printed invitation card, but to take it instead with a moderate show of pleasure and interest. And then he went off, leaving her with the card in her hand.

She read the printed words again and again. So formal— but they were her pass to a stolen paradise.

She was determined there should be no risk of their not accepting that invitation, and by the time Van came in that evening, she had already replied to it. He was a little amused and said rather teasingly:

"Is your gruff-voiced admirer responsible for this eagerness?"

"Toby?" She contrived to sound mildly amused. "I like to see all the children—but he is the special favourite."

Van nodded, but did not pursue the subject. Instead, he said:

"I rang up Paula, and she will be very delighted to go with you on Wednesday if that suits you. I'll get tickets for the new revue at the Corinthian. I suppose that's the sort of thing she will like."

"I should think so. Everyone says it's splendid. Is she coming here to meet me?"

"Yes. I'll come in to lunch that day if I can, but if not, I don't think she will find much difficulty in introducing herself."

Nor, judging from the letter, did Gwyneth. And when Wednesday came and Van had to go to a business lunch after all, Gwyneth awaited, with a certain amount of curiosity, the advent of Paula.

Her gay, fresb voice in the hall was quite a fitting announcement of her arrival, and when Gwyneth came forward to welcome her, she saw that the newly-acquired young cousin was an extremely pretty girl.

She was dressed in a vivid simshine-yellow suit, which Gwyneth felt sure hailed from the Brussels rather than the Norbury part of Paula's existence, and on her curly dark head was perched a big yellow hat She had great dark eyes —not unlike Van's, except that hers sparkled impudently while his were cahn and usually a little stem—and her smile displayed the most perfect teeth Gwyneth had ever seen.

"How d'you do? You're Gwyneth, aren't you?"

Gwyneth's hand was grasped firmly, while she was subjected to the most frankly interested scrutiny.

*'Yes. And you're Paula."

"The enfant terrible of our family," Paula agreed, not without a touch of youthful pride.

"Rather more 'enfant' than 'terrible'T Gwyneth suggested with a smile. "Or do you regard that as an insult?"

Paula gave a surprised-little laugh as she dropped down comfortably into a comer of the settee.

"Maybe it's tme." She smiled at Gwyneth again with that undisguised interest. "I didn't expect you to be quite the sort to say that," she added candidly.

"No? What sort did you expect me to be?"

"Oh—aloof and correct and dignified."

"How horrid. What gave you that idea?"

"I thought that was the kind of wife Van would choose."

"Oh, come," Gwyneth laughed protestingly. "Do you think Van himself is so—^what was it?—aloof and correct and dignified?"

"No-o. But one feels his slogan is "Only the best will

do". I always expected that, having built up his big posi-

, tion, he'd suddenly think: "Dear me, what I want is a wife

to crown this edifice"—and then he'd look round and

select a Caesar's wife sort of person to pop on top."

"And, from your tone, I don't fill the bill?" Gwyneth suggested regretfully.

"You're much nicer," Paula said with such a frank smile of approval that Gwyneth's heart warmed to the absurd child in her stunning hat.

"She's terribly young," Gwyneth thought, "in spite of her confident air.**

Apparently Paula was thinking the same of her because, pulling off the hat and ruffling up her hair, she remarked;

"I know it's not the thing to ask such questions, but you're lots younger than Van, aren't you?'*

"I am younger," Gwyneth admitted.

"I'm so glad. It makes you so much easier to talk to.'* That was suddenly wistful rather than confident, and Gwyneth wondered curiously if Paula had the same doubts and problems which she had had at her age. Not quite such grim problems, of course, but the same feeling of insecurity.

She glanced at the pretty, rather clouded face opposite.

"What is it, Paula? Are you in need of someone to talk to, then?"

"Sometimes—frightfully."

"It isn't a bad thing to confide in one's parents." Gwyneth felt something of a hypocrite as she remembered the relationship between herself and her own parents, but she didn't want to encourage this charming, tiresome young creature to beUeve she was misunderstood at home.

"But there are some things you can't discuss with parents," Paula objected.

"Are there?"

"Oh dear—did you discuss everything with yours?"

There was a slight pause.

"No. To be quite truthful, I didn't. But then my mother and I were never very close together."

"I've not much in common with mine, either."

Gwyneth rose to her feet with some decision.

"Look here, my chUd, we're getting on rather doubtful ground. I may be very sympathetic and all that, but I'm not going to play the role of listener While you grumble about your parents. If we're going shopping, we had better go now."

"I wasn't grumbling," Paula assured her, as she got to her feet more slowly. "They're rather dears, as a matter of fact, my parents. Only they're very remote from anything I feeir

Something in that struck an answering chord in Gwyneth's heart. It was difficult when you couldn't find

people who shared your feelings. On a most unusual impulse, she put her arm round the girl.

"Well, my dear, if you want to regard me as a suitable confidante, I'm very flattered. Perhaps I am near enough to your age to share your feelings better than an older person. Any time you want to use me as a safety valve, you're welcome to. Is that what you want me to say?"

"Yes. You're a darling, Gwyneth. No wonder Van adores you.'*

"How do you know he does?" Gwyneth laughed, but she flushed slightly, too.

"He said so."

"When?"

"In the letter he wrote in answer to my congratulations. At least, he said you were as near perfect as a woman could be without becoming uninteresting."

"He said— thatV There was pain as well as pleasure in Gwyneth's exclamation. She wondered with what imaginary virtues he endowed her when he ranked her so near perfection. It made one a little afraid.

She found Paula an excellent companion that afternoon —gay, sweet-tempered and amusing, and by common consent, they cut short the shopping and motored out down the river to have tea at some quiet spot where they could talk without interruption and get to know each other better.

"Do you always drive your own car?" Paula wanted to know.

"Usually. I drove a good deal before my marriage. We lived in the country, you know, and I had to. I got used to it."

Paula seemed to consider the general scheme of Gwyneth's life before she was married, and suddenly she came out with:

"You were a Canon's daughter, weren't you?"

"I was."

"Did you have to be awfully circumspect and well-behaved?"

A faintly bitter smile just touched Gwyneth's lips at that, but she suppressed it at once. The child couldn't know how ironical that was. *

"I had to have some regard for appearances, if that's what you mean. But that isn't a bad thing, you know, Paula. Sometimes it keeps one from doing rather silly things."

(And sometimes it didn't, of course.)

Paula frowned slightly.

"I suppose you met Van in a very correct and conventional manner?"

Gwyneth raised her eyebrows slightly, and even Paula seemed to become aware that curiosity was outrunning good manners.

"I'm sorry, Gwyneth. Mustn't I say things like that? Only I really had a reason for asking."

"Had you? Well, I met Van at a perfectly conventional New Year party, if you must know. Why? Do you think it's more romantic to meet unconventionally?"

"Don't you?" , "No, I don't," Gwyneth said, with a painfully sharp remembrance of a sunlit glade and a romantic little fool listening to pleasant stuff about enchanted princesses.

"Oh dear! Are you very sticky about that sort of thing?"

"Meaning?" Gwyneth smiled a little at the disconsolate tone.

"Gwyneth, do you think it's—cheap, to get to know anyone without all the usual introductions and that sort of thing?"

"Well"—Gwyneth began to see the red light flickering— "it's a pretty safe general rule, you know—not to make casual acquaintances, I mean."

That sounded dreadfully smug and sedate, she thought. But one had to remember the dangers one had known oneself.

"Oh yes—as a general rule." Paula sounded profoundly indifferent to general rules, and Gwyneth's blue eyes were rather troubled as she gazed ahead. She didn't attempt to say anything else until they were seated opposite each other at a veranda table overlooking the river. Then, having ordered tea, she looked across calmly at Paula and said:

"I think you'd better tell me the circumstances of the particular case before you trap me into any more of those * ngerous generalities about introductions and no intro-auctions."