Tell Me My Fortune (13 page)

“I think we’ll have to push on to Laintenon soon, my sweet,” he said, frowning a little over the letter. “There are quite a number of things to settle still. This letter is from Aunt Tabitha’s lawyers, to remind me that, when I dashed off to England, I left a good deal undone.”

“Well” She looked up, smiling, from an originally spelt bulletin of Alma’s. “Whenever you say. However long I stay, I shan’t really want to leave here. But no honeymoon can go on for ever.”

“The honeymoon doesn’t have to stop, just because we shift the scene,” he reminded her.

“No? Maybe not.”

But she privately thought that neither Laintenon, nor any other place, would ever hold for her the charm and magic of this city where she had first come to know Reid as her husband.

“I’ll go and enquire about train times.” Reid got up. “Don t hurry. Stay and finish your breakfast—and your post.”

“There’s an incredible epistle from Alma which you’ll enjoy later. I never knew anyone more naturally resistant to education. Her spelling’s a disgrace,” Leslie remarked indulgently. “But I see there’s a letter from Kate too. That should have all the local gossip.”

When Reid had gone, she poured herself out another cup of coffee, and prepared to enjoy Katherine’s letter at her leisure.

Katherine, for all-her slightly languid beauty, was a clear-headed young woman, and always gave her news crisply and in what Leslie mentally called the right order of importance. Her letters were almost invariably a pleasure, because she told one exactly what one most wanted to know.

This one was no exception. In two pages, she had given Leslie a satisfactory account of the family’s affairs, and left her with the pleasant impression that life at Cranley Magna was easier and less problematical than it had been for many a long day.

In addition, she was able to report that Morley made continuously satisfactory progress, and that, within a week or so, the great effort was to be made to put him literally on his feet again.

Even to read about it brought such a lump into Leslie’s throat that, for a moment, she laid down the page and looked away across the sunny piazza with tears in her eyes.

Dear Morley! who had been so patient and so uncomplaining. If
he really regained the use of his legs, she thought she would never be able to ask more of heaven again. That—and to have Reid too! It was almost too much.

She picked up the last sheet of the letter, and in this Katherine had arrived at the general local gossip, as distinct from family news.

I met Mrs. Bendick the other day (she wrote).

Our Mrs. B., I mean—not Oliver’s glamorous lady. She told me that they didn’t have more than about four days’ honeymoon (I was glad to be able to report that you did much better) because Oliver hadn’t any more holiday due to him at that time. However, he has had his release now, and they’re off somewhere else, to make up for the short time they had in the beginning. Mrs. B. wagged her head and tut-tutted a bit about her new daughter-in-law. I think she considers C. rather a bird of paradise for any man to keep happily cooped up in an ordinary domestic pen. And I must say I agree with her.

Still, we won’t look for trouble. Oliver’s very steadiness may appeal to her, though personally I should have thought Reid was more her type. Not that I wish to suggest your Reid lacks steadiness. But he’s what the Victorians used to call “dashing” as well. And, unless I’m much mistaken, Caroline likes a little dash about her men.

Again Leslie put down the letter. But not with sympathetic tears in her eyes this time. She looked away across the piazza again, it was true, but now there was a thoughtful look in her eyes and they were a little narrowed. Like the eyes of someone who strives to see something just out of range.

Kate was smart, of course. She would see unerringly that Reid was more Caroline’s type of man than Oliver was.

And yet—Caroline had chosen Oliver.

If only one could be sure that she had chosen him coolly and with judgment. If one could be certain that there had been no element of pique, or disappointment, in her choice.

“But I shall never know that now,” thought Leslie. “And I shall be a fool if I let my thoughts dwell on that. She wondered if Reid sometimes went over and over the past in his own mind. He must, she supposed. And if he wondered uneasily whether Caroline had made her choice out of little more than pique, the reflection must cause him even more disquiet than it did her.

It was at that moment that Leslie took a very firm decision for the future.

When she and Reid finally settled in England they would not, she determined, make their home anywhere near Cranley Magna or, still less, Pencaster.

She would be terribly sorry not to be near the family, of course, and she knew that they probably expected that her future home would be at any rate within easy reach of them. She hated to have to admit so much fear of any woman—Caroline or anyone else—but there were risks which one should not take. Better to face the fact, and act accordingly, rather than ignore a known danger and pretend that’ bravado and pride could take one past it.

Reid—and Oliver too—were, she was sure, the stuff of which faithful husbands are made. And, little though she wished to pay tributes to Caroline, she had no reason to think the girl was a wilful troublemaker.

But the whole situation was alive with danger. And when emotional gunpowder was lying around, only a fool struck matches.

By the time Reid came back, with the news that they could set off on their journey to Laintenon on the morrow, she had finished her coffee, read Katherine’s letter and put.it away in her handbag, and was ready to divert Reid with Alma’s illiterate epistle.

‘Had Kate any news?” he asked, looking up once, with a laugh, from Alma’s letter.

“Just general family gossip, and a cautiously expressed hope that Morley might try to walk sometime next week.”

“Good work! Don’t get excited in advance, sweetheart, in case there’s a disappointment. But, if it’s a success, we’ll have a long-distance call from Laintenon, and you can talk to Kate and hear all about it.”

She smiled at him. He thought of everything.

But she hoped he would not think of ensuring that they settled near her family in case she became homesick.

The next day they left Italy, and it was not until the early afternoon of the following day that they arrived at Laintenon. Laintenon was about ten miles in from the coast, and so exactly like what Leslie had always supposed a French country town would be that she could have laughed aloud with amusement and delight.

It was a little bigger than she expected and, because of some rather famous health springs in the district, there were still a good many tourists, even though it was strictly out of the season.

For them, however, there was no question of difficulties of accommodation, even apart from Great-Aunt Tabitha’s deserted villa. Reid drove straight to the tall, narrow house where he had lodged during the months he had lived in Laintenon, and was welcomed as a long-lost son by his voluble and sentimental landlady.

Leaving her to unpack, Reid went off immediately to see the lawyers and, with the aid of a good many gestures and a certain amount of schoolgirl French, Leslie managed to have a nice informative chat with Madame Blanchard.

Reid, she gathered, was all that was good, noble and generous, a reputation which he appeared to have established for himself during the year or so he lived there.

No one, it seemed, was better pleased than Madame Blanchard when “
chère
Monsieur Carte” (which was her version of Reid’s name) had inherited a great fortune from the mysterious old lady who lived in the Villa Rossignol. No—she didn’t know why it was called that. There had never been any nightingales there in her time. But perhaps when the old lady first came there as a bride there might have been. That would be seventy years ago or more.

The old lady had not been seen in the town for at least fifteen years before her death, but everyone said the villa was very handsome inside, and the grounds were beautiful, though out of condition now.

No doubt “Monsieur Carte” would be taking his bride to see the place. He had been very good to the old lady. Everyone agreed about that, and no one—if Madame Blanchard were to be believed—grudged him what she called his splendid inheritance.

Being naturally curious, she tried very hard (though with great politeness) to find out from Leslie how much the splendid inheritance had amounted to. But as Leslie really did not know, she was able to withhold this piece of information.

By the time Reid returned, Leslie and Madame Blanchard were firm friends.

“After we’ve had something to eat, we’ll go up and have a look at the villa, if you like,” Reid offered. “A good deal of the stuff won’t be much good to us, and will hardly have even a sentimental value for anyone in your family. But you had better have a look at everything. A few of the things are very beautiful, as well as valuable.”

Leslie was only too eager to accept the suggestion and, after an early dinner, they walked out in the cool of the evening to the Villa Rossignol, which stood about half a mile outside the town, almost hidden in a beautiful grove of cypress trees.

To Leslie, there was something melancholy, as well as intensely interesting, in this visit to the home of the legendary figure who had stood for so much in their family life.

The place must have been magnificent once, with the heavy magnificence of a past age. But now it was all so silent and dusty and lifeless. No one lived there any longer, except the elderly caretaker and his wife. And for years and years before that only an old lady, who had long outlived all her contemporaries, and a couple of ancient servants.

“It’s hard to believe that she came here once as a happy, youthful bride, isn’t it?” Leslie said, when they had seen all they wanted to see of the house itself, and were strolling through the vast, tangled “gardens.

“I suppose it is.” Reid held aside a great bunch of some sweet-smelling shrub so that Leslie could pass. “But she was quite happy, you know, even towards the end when she was getting tired and very old.”

“Was she, Reid? You made her happy, didn’t you?”

He smiled.

“I had something to do with it. She was a lively old lady, and used to say that she could still enjoy active life at second-hand. She used to like me to come up to the villa and talk to her—tell her stories of what I had done in the years before I came to Laintenon. I knocked about the world a good bit, you know, and she enjoyed a good story better than almost anyone I ever knew. I wish she could have seen you,” he added suddenly. “She’d have liked you.”

“Would she?” Leslie was indescribably gratified. “How do you know?”

“She used to say she knew the sort of girl I ought to marry. And she used to describe something very like you.”

“She didn’t like Caroline,” thought Leslie, with inner conviction. “I suppose he brought her here once or twice, during their engaged days.”

Ridiculously, she felt a sudden kinship with old Great-Aunt Tabitha, which had nothing whatever to do with their very flimsy relationship in fact. And she was very glad she had come to the villa and seen it for herself.

When they finally left the place, she was smiling a little, so that Reid put his arm round her as they walked down the hill to the town again. It reminded her of the first magical evening in Verona, and she thought, “I am going to be just as happy here.”

She even wondered why she had been
so
foolish and so cowardly as to have doubted her happiness at any time, because everything seemed simple and then she looked up, and coming along the road towards them was Caroline, dressed in white, and swinging a beach-hat by the strings, for all the world as though she had walked out specially to meet them.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

FOR A few seconds, Leslie stared at the advancing figure. Then she said in a queer, matter-of-fact little voice, “Why, there’s—Caroline,” almost as though she had been expecting her. As perhaps, in a way, she had.

“Caroline!” exclaimed Reid. Then he said, “Hell!” And for the first time since she had known him, Leslie detected a note of something like alarm in his voice.

By that time, Caroline had come right up with them, and she took off her sun-glasses and exclaimed,

“Well, for heaven’s sake! Look who’s here. Where did you two spring from?”

And then she laughed. But she could afford to laugh, thought Leslie. It was not her life that was in ruins.

Then Leslie heard herself laugh too, and say something about ridiculous coincidences. So apparently she was doing quite well too. And Reid was joking and speaking in his usual half-flippant manner. Only his arm round Leslie’s waist was uncomfortably tight.

“You’re staying at your old place, I suppose?” Caroline looked at and spoke to Reid as someone who knew all his usual haunts and habits.

“Yes, of course. Madame Blanchard has gathered us both under her wing by this time. Where are you staying?”

“Oliver and I are renting the smallest villa ever We were lucky to get it at a few days’ notice, of course. It’s not fifty yards along the road. You must come back with me for a drink.”

Leslie would have given anything to say that unfortunately they were going on somewhere else But they were not going anywhere else, and if she said they were, Reid—and perhaps Caroline too—would know that she was running away.

So they turned back and fell into step beside Caroline, who was busy explaining what Leslie already knew from Katherine’s letter—that, as soon as Oliver’s replacement arrived, they had decided to have the second instalment of their honeymoon.

“But why Laintenon?” Reid asked dryly.

“I had a fancy for it,” Caroline retorted, and for a moment her strange, significant glance drifted over him, expressing something which Leslie felt she herself could not understand. “I knew how attractive it could be at this time of year, you see.”

“Yes, of course.”

Usually Reid’s voice was full and expressive. Now it sounded flat and without any overtones.

They turned in at the gate of a small, white villa, set in a pretty formal garden, and Caroline led the way round to the back of the house. Here, sprawling comfortably in a deck chair on the verandah, was Oliver, looking exactly as though he were at home in Cranleymere.

To see his familiar figure in these utterly unfamiliar surroundings seemed so much the last touch of fantasy that Leslie began to think she must be in some dreadful sort of dream.

But there was nothing dreamlike about the way Oliver sprang to his feet at the sight of them, and came forward exclaiming with obvious pleasure.

There were the same incredulous questions and the same half-joking answers as there had been with Caroline, and everyone made at least a very good appearance of being delighted to see everyone else.

And then Caroline said that she would bring drinks out on to the verandah, and suggested Leslie might like to come into the house and help her collect things.

They went indoors and, for the first time in their short acquaintance, Leslie realized, she and Caroline were alone together. Somehow the situation embarrassed her, though she hardly knew why. But evidently there was nothing in it to disturb Caroline.

She opened cupboards—still obviously unfamiliar to her—and searched for what she wanted, and all the time she kept up a desultory stream of conversation.

It was natural for her to refer to Leslie’s wedding, of course, but Leslie felt herself almost wince when Caroline remarked casually,

“In the end, Reid and you made nearly as much of a rush job of it as we did, didn’t you?”

“Not quite. We did fix our wedding date about a month ahead, which gave me a little time for preparation. Here’s the corkscrew, if that’s what you’re looking for.”

“Oh, thanks.” Caroline was arranging her tray with apparent carelessness but completely efficient result. “We settled things in a matter of days, in the end, you know.”

“Yes, I know,” Leslie said. “Why?”

The question—curt and almost rude though it might be—was out before Leslie could stop it.

But Caroline did not seem to mind. She laughed, with a sort of reminiscent amusement, and said,

“We had a row, as a matter of fact. And then a making-up. And—you know how these things are—suddenly we found ourselves arranging to get. married the first moment we could. It’s funny—quarrels sometimes clear the air, don’t they?”

“Sometimes,” Leslie agreed. “This isn’t your—first visit to Laintenon, is it?”

“Oh, no. I was here in the days when I was engaged to Reid,” explained Caroline, who had no inhibitions about past loves apparently.

“I see,” said Leslie, who had. And then they went out into the garden again.

Both men sprang to their feet. But it was Reid who came to take the tray from Caroline. And Leslie called herself mean and petty because she could not help noticing that his hands almost closed over Caroline’s as he did so.

Oliver, meanwhile, was setting a chair for her and asking her how she liked her first glimpse of France.

Again there was something completely unreal
about the
scene. By every association of childhood and girlhood, she was much nearer to Oliver than she was to Reid. And, knowing, as she did, the link between Reid and Caroline, she could not help finding it horribly natural that they should be laughing over the same tray of drinks, while she paired off with Oliver.

It was like some stage comedy in which two couples had got mixed, but would probably sort themselves out in the last act.

“But what will the ‘sorting out’ amount to in our case?” she thought unhappily. And she looked at Oliver, very charmingly playing host to her, and wondered what she had ever seen in him.

Naturally, he was intensely interested in everything she had to tell him about Morley, and usually Leslie would have asked nothing better than to talk of her beloved brother. But all the time she was dreadfully aware of Reid and Caroline, sitting side by side, laughing and talking, recalling shared experiences and exchanging common allusions.

She knew she was being absurd. They were. not saying a word which could not easily be heard by herself and Oliver, if they cared to suspend their own conversation and listen. It was impossible to suppose that they were indulging in any more than lively social chat. And yet, she could hardly keep her attention on her own talk with Oliver, and it was all she could do to look interested and natural.

Oliver did drop his voice once, but only to say, in the amused, teasing kind of way that is permissible between life-long friends,

“You solved the Aunt Tabitha problem very satisfactorily in the end, didn’t you?”

“The Oh—oh, yes. Reid has been wonderfully generous.”

“Someone taking my name in vain?” Reid looked up at that moment, and Leslie managed to smile at him quite naturally.

“I was only telling Oliver how generous you were over Great-Aunt Tabitha’s fortune.”

“What was that?” Caroline pricked up her ears.

“I like to hear about fortunes. The trouble is—they never come my way.”

There was an odd little silence. Then Leslie said, with a composure which surprised herself.

“Didn’t Oliver ever tell you about my Great-Aunt Tabitha—and how we always expected her to leave her fortune to us, as a family?”

“No. Don’t tell me there was nothing in the end. I couldn’t bear it.” Caroline smiled her lazy smile.

“She left it to Reid instead.”

“Reid!” Caroline, who had been lounging in her chair, sat up suddenly. “Do you mean to say you had a fortune left to you, Reid, and never told me about it?”

“It was after your time, my sweet,” Reid said composedly.

“I wish he wouldn’t call her that,” thought Leslie angrily. “She isn’t his ‘sweet’ now.”

“But tell me now.” Caroline seemed extraordinarily interested. “Leslie’s relation went and left you her money?”

“Well, she was—very remotely—related to both of us, you see. She was the old lady at the Villa Rossignol.”

‘Wow!” Caroline seemed really impressed. “Oh! and I never bothered to make her like me when I was here—she might have left me something, if I had—”

“Don’t be such a shameless hussy,” Oliver put in affectionately.

And Leslie thought, “They’re both playing up to her now!

Aloud, however, she only said,

“I’m surprised you never happened to tell Caroline our family story, Oliver.”

“I thought she might set her cap at Reid and his fortune if I did,” Oliver replied promptly. “And see how right I was. She’s displaying a dreadfully mercenary streak at the moment, aren’t you, darling?”

Well, no one likes to think they’ve let a fortune slip,” Caroline objected. “Leslie will sympathize with me, won’t you, Leslie? She knows what it feels like to see a fortune vanish.”

“She doesn’t need to worry. She brought it back into the family again, by marrying my charming self,” Reid pointed out.

“So that was it!”

Leslie dug her nails into the palms of her hands to keep herself calm and smiling. She knew they were all chaffing each other, and that there wasn’t a word of serious meaning in the whole conversation. But oh, it was too near the hurtful truth! She felt she could hardly bear it.

And even as she told herself it was all just flippant nonsense, something deep down inside her protested that perhaps there was a grain of truth in it all.

Perhaps Caroline would have chosen differently, if she had known Reid was a very rich man.

But, in that case, why had Reid not told her? He had had opportunity enough. Or, if not, he could have made an opportunity. His silence was less understandable than Oliver’s, now she came to think of it. And perhaps he was bitterly regretting his silence by now.

She told herself that she must leave the subject alone. That all these delvings into the recent past were dangerous. She thought she had convinced herself of the wisdom of this. And yet, when at last they were on the way home, almost the first thing she said to Reid was,

“Don’t you think it was odd that Oliver hadn’t told her—told Caroline, I mean—all about Great-Aunt Tabitha’s leaving her fortune to you?”

“Not particularly.” He grinned and switched lightly at the tall grass by the roadside with a stick he was carrying. “No man actually advertises the attractions of his rivals.”

“He didn’t know you were a rival of his,” she said almost coldly.

“That’s true. But he might have thought that news of the inheritance would turn me into one,” countered Reid, still smiling.

She longed to be able to smile and joke about it with him. Or else she longed for him to be serious about it with her. She was not quite sure which.

What she did know was that, however unwise it might be, she had to ask that other question—about his own reactions.

“Reid,” she said, and she was glad that she kept her voice light and steady, “why didn’t you tell her yourself? It—it might have made a difference.”

“I didn’t want to be married for my money, my love. We all like to preserve the fond illusion that we are loved for ourselves alone,” he pointed out, still in the same half-laughing tone.

She didn’t laugh, however. She said, slowly and almost sombrely,

“And you were very anxious for Caroline to love you for yourself alone, weren’t you?”

He looked at her then, with a sharpened attention of which she was immediately aware. And when he spoke his voice was just a little dry.

“Look here, honey,” he said, “do you really think there’s any good purpose in raking up the past like that.”

“I didn’t rake it up,” she exclaimed bitterly. “It came to meet us, of its own accord. Oh, why did they have to choose here, of all the places in Europe? Why couldn’t they have gone anywhere else?”

“Yes, I guess it was a nasty back-hander of Fate,” he agreed. “But it might not be a bad thing, in the end, you know. There’s something to be said for facing out a situation and taking stock of it, instead of perpetually running away from it.”

“Oh, that’s taking things too far! I didn’t mind the thought of—of meeting them later on, in my own home circle. But here on our honeymoon—the only other people in the place whom we know! It’s—it’s too much.”

“Darling, I didn’t realize it was so unpleasant for you.” He put out his hand towards her but, for the, first time since she had said she would marry him, she flinched away angrily from the contact.

“No, don’t touch me, or—or pet me! I couldn’t bear it just now.”

“All right,” he said, in the most matter-of-fact tone possible, and they walked on in silence. A silence during which she was able to review her disastrous behaviour of the last ten minutes.

How could she have betrayed herself like that? How could she have lost her self-control so hopelessly?

She had behaved like a jealous, over-fond creature, instead of the cool, intelligent companion she had tried to be to him.

What was he thinking now? Was he appalled at the revelation that she minded enough to be jealous?

He was sauntering along beside her, a little serious, but otherwise much as he usually was. But what was he thinking, what was he thinking?