Tell Me My Fortune (7 page)

“I know—I’m a plausible scoundrel,” he said regretfully, and smiled at her.

“No, you’re not.” To her own great astonishment, she put up her hand and just touched his cheek. “You’re bold and perhaps a bit ruthless and cruelly realistic. But I don’t think you’re a scoundrel. You honestly think you have the greater claim on Caroline, don’t you?”

“Sure.” He was watching her rather closely.

“I think I think so too.”

“Come, that’s something.”

“And I do honestly believe that, in the long run, I could probably make Oliver happier than she could. Though of course it’s terribly easy to deceive oneself over anything that matters so much.”

“Terribly. But I’m sure you’re right there,” he said, smiling.

She paused, as though unwilling to follow the line of argument further. But, characteristically, he cleared the next fence for her.

“In fact,” he said, “you agree about the probability of its being generally desirable that I should marry Caroline, and Oliver should marry you, even if we argue from the highest motives. What really worries you is the idea of our achieving that by a bit of light-hearted deception.”

“Light-hearted?” She looked at him with rather shadowed eyes, and queried the word a little reproachfully.

“Certainly. Don’t you think you could rather enjoy being engaged to me on a purely temporary basis? If we do this thing at all, we may as well enjoy it.”

“I haven’t said I will do it,” she whispered hastily.

“No.”

He did not elaborate on that, as though willing to let her make up her own mind in the final analysis. And then he was so still that she had the curious impression that he was like a bird-watcher, who feared to make the slightest movement lest he should frighten away something he thought almost within his grasp.

“Reid—how long would we have to keep it up?”

“What, darling?”

He bent his head down to hers, because her question had been so low that it was almost impossible to catch.

She repeated the words, curiously aware of a nearness which was not only physical.

“The engagement? Not very long, I imagine.”

“And then, when it had served its purpose, it could be dissolved quite easily.”

“Of course.”

“I wish I didn’t feel so mean about it. As though my one thought were to take away the girl Oliver. wants.”

“Dear heart, you won’t take her away, if she truly loves him. Remember, if Oliver is the man she wants, your being engaged to me won’t make me any the more desirable to her.”

“No, that’s true.” Leslie glanced up with a relieved smile. “It’s only a sort of test.”

“If you like to put it that way.”

She thought she did like to put it that way and, though she drew a long sigh, a much more satisfied and contented look came into her face.

He watched her, with a sort of indulgent amusement.

“Well, when do we announce the engagement?”

“Oh.” Her glance came quickly to his face again then. “We shall have to do some leading up to it, Reid. After all, I only met you yesterday.”

“Did we? Don't you think I might have swept you off your feet?”

She smiled and said, “No.” But in her heart she thought he probably was the sort who swept one off one’s feet.

“Perhaps the real argument is that I’m not the kind to be swept off my feet,” she said. “Give me a few days, Reid.”

“Whatever you say. But don’t make it too long.”

“I promise,” she said rather soberly. And they went back into the house together.

Only Morley and Katherine were still in the drawing
room and, glancing round, Leslie asked absently,

“Where’s Alma?”

“Why, gone to bed, of course. Long ago.” Katherine looked at her curiously. And only then did it dawn on Leslie that she and Reid had been out in the garden a very long time, and that both her brother and sister looked a little oddly at her because of it.

“I didn’t realize it was so late,” she said, and felt a certain embarrassed annoyance that she should have put herself in that position. Then she realized that, quite unwittingly, she had planted the first interested sense of query in their minds, and she supposed she ought to be glad of it.

She went and sat by Morley, and asked him in a low voice how he was feeling, because once or twice during that harassing evening she had thought he looked more than ordinarily pale and drawn, and her anxiety returned in full force now that she saw him directly under the light.

He put down his book and smiled at her.

“Not too good. But not too awful either.”

“What about having Dr. Bendick look in tomorrow?”

“He’s going to. There’s a specialist coming down from London too.”

“Morley!” She was overwhelmed by remorseful anxiety, and her own affairs were completely forgotten. “Is there something wrong?”

“Not more so than usual. Don’t get excited.”

“But I didn’t know anything about this.”

“It was necessary. Oliver arranged it all. He told me this evening that it was all fixed.”

“You mean that you’ve been feeling lately that you’re in need of
more—o
f different treatment? Haven’t you been as well as usual, Morley?”

“No. There’s been a slow deterioration and—”

“Oh, why didn’t you tell me, dear?” she exclaimed in a tone of loving concern.

Morley smiled at her.

“Because you girls get in a fearful flap over nothing,” he countered with brotherly candour. “Besides, we’ve none of us exactly needed something extra to worry over lately. There
was nothing you could have done, Leslie, even if you’d known. Except worry and I’d rather you didn’t do that. I only told you now because you’re bound to know about the specialist tomorrow, and it might be a bit of a shock if I’d said nothing in advance. But he’s supposed to be a splendid man—Sir James Trevant—and old Bendick seems to think he might not only be able to deal with the present trouble, but even perhaps do more for me than anyone’s managed to do before. So, for heaven’s sake, look on the bright side, and don’t think that the mere arrival of a specialist means something disastrous.”

Leslie paused when she reached the top of the stairs, because she saw that the light, was still on in her mother’s room, and the idea came to her that perhaps her mother most of all would need convincing whenever she declared her new-found passion for Reid. After all, to her mother she had been frankest about her feelings for Oliver. It was going to be rather difficult to reverse all that in so short a time.

Leslie knocked on the door and, in answer to the rather subdued “Come in,” she entered.

Her mother was not in bed. She was standing by her dressing-table and, as Leslie came in, she turned upon her daughter a face which bore faint but unmistakable traces of tears.

“Why, Mother, what is it? What are you doing?” Leslie came quickly across the room. But she fetched up short before the dressing-table and, silent in her turn, she stared down at what was spread out there.

A pretty, old-fashioned jewel-case stood open, and half its contents were spilled out, as though an eager hand had turned them over and rejected them. There was nothing there of genuine value. Only—in that most pathetic of phrases—of sentimental value. And even as Leslie gazed down at the pretty little oddments with a suddenly tightened throat, her mother said,

“They aren’t worth much, I’m afraid not any of them. Except to me. There’s my engagement ring, of course—” She turned it nervously on her delicate hand. But Leslie broke in almost sharply because she was so moved,

“Don’t be silly. Mother dear. We haven’t reached the point of having to sell your jewellery yet. Whatever made you think of it?”

“Morley.”

“You don’t mean he said something—”

“No, of course not! But he’s very ill, you know, Leslie. Much more ill than any of us realized. I spoke to Dr. Bendick half an hour ago on the telephone, when you were out in the garden. He thinks almost certainly that Morley will need immediate and expensive treatment—possibly even an operation.”

“I didn’t know.” Nervously and absently, Leslie fingered the trinkets in her turn. “But didn’t Reid tell Father that he wanted help? That he thought—”

“Morley wouldn’t have it.”

“But of course he would! How ridiculous!”

“He’s very proud, Leslie. In the way injured people are sometimes proud. It’s as though they can’t help making more difficulties for themselves. He regards Reid as a stranger. He wouldn’t take money from a stranger.”

“But Reid isn’t that! He’s a relation
—
well, almost a relation.”

“Oh, no, dear.” Her mother shook her head sadly. “We all repudiated that relationship when it didn’t mean any advantage to us. Morley isn’t the one to accept it now, just because we need money. Your father will be much easier to convince than Morley.”

“It’s absurd to call Reid a stranger, Mother,” Leslie reiterated almost angrily. “He doesn’t even feel like one. He seems like one of the family.”

Her mother smiled faintly but protestingly.

“I only wish he did, Leslie. I only wish he were one of us. I know I shocked you yesterday when I said I wished Katherine would fall in love with him and marry him. But when I think what it would mean to have him for a son-in-law, I can hardly keep myself from asking Kate if she doesn’t rather like him, after all.”

“Oh,” Leslie said. Then she looked at the coral brooch she had absently picked up, and she felt her colour rise as she forced a protesting smile to her lips “Please don’t say anything like that to Kate—”

“Oh, I shouldn’t really!”

“It makes me feel a little jealous.”

“Jealous, Leslie! Of whom, my dear? I don’t understand.”

Leslie laughed nervously. And the nervousness was genuine, if the laughter was not.

“Why does Kate have to be the only one cast for the role? Why shouldn’t I be considered too?”

“You, my dear? But I thought—you told me—”

“Oh, Mother, I don’t know really what’s come over me,” Leslie cried, with enough genuine fervour to make that ring true. “But aren’t people sometimes swept off their feet?” Reid’s useful phrase. “Can’t you imagine that Reid might seem overwhelmingly attractive to some girls? I mean crazily attractive. To the exclusion of everyone else.”

“Yes,” her mother said slowly. “I can imagine exactly that. Only I shouldn’t have expected it to happen with you.”

“Nor should I,” Leslie said breathlessly. “But he asked me to marry him just now, Mother. And I said I would.”

“Leslie! Because you felt you should, or because you wanted to?”

“Because I wanted to. Because I love him,” Leslie said with complete recklessness.

And then her mother sat down and cried tears of such aching relief that Leslie could only stand and stare at her in unutterable dismay.

CHAPTER SIX

“DON’T, Mother,” Leslie said at last. “Don’t cry like that. It isn’t necessary. II thought you would consider my news good news.”

“But I do, darling!” Her mother dried her eyes and managed a pale smile. “You mustn’t think I’m unhappy. I was crying with relief, I think. Relief and a sort of dismay that it can mean so much to me that my daughter should marry a rich man. Oh, Leslie, are you sure?”

“Sure that he’s going to marry me?” Leslie smiled faintly in her turn.

“No, no! Sure that you love him. But how can you be, in so short a time? It’s absurd even to talk of it. But do you feel truly that you will love him? It’s not just that marrying him would be such a wonderful, wonderful solution of our troubles?”

“I’m not marrying him for his money. Mother, if you want my categorical assurance of that.”

“I can hardly believe it.” Her mother clasped her thin hands together and smiled less uncertainly this time. “Even Morley couldn’t resent help from his brother-in-law.”

“No,” Leslie said, and suddenly her lips went dry. For, in her eagerness to convince her mother, she had overplayed her part—laid the emphasis where no emphasis was due.

The term “brother-in-law” had roused her to a realization of the hollowness of the comfort she was urging upon her mother. Engaged to Reid she might be, for so long or short a time as was necessary to bring Caroline to her senses. But there was no question of a marriage.

Impossible to draw that delicate distinction for her mother. But Leslie could already see the complications ahead, already visualize the cruel disappointment which must follow on the false hopes she was raising.

“Well, I can’t help it,” she thought desperately. “Let Mother take what comfort she can from it while it lasts. I suppose I can. come to some sort of arrangement with Reid.
I
have no pride where Morley’s good is concerned. If anyone could make Morley well, I’d be satisfied to have Reid pay, in any identity—my
fiancé
, my husband-to-be—anything.”

Aloud, she said, “Go to bed, Mother dear. You don’t need to worry any more. Everything is going to be all right—you’ll see.”

Her mother kissed her lovingly.

“Leslie darling, you know I wouldn’t have you sacrifice your own happiness, even to give Morley the best chance in the world, don’t you? But if, in a little while, when you’ve given yourself some time to think things over, you are sure you love Reid, then nothing would make me happier. It isn’t only because of what it will mean to all of us, I think he’d make any woman he loved very happy.”

“Do you, Mother?” Leslie smiled as she returned her mother’s kiss, but she spoke a little too absently, too impersonally for a girl who had just fallen in love. “I wonder what makes you sure of that?”

“Reid himself, I suppose.” Her mother looked reflective. “He could make one unhappy too, I am sure, because of his obstinacy and his ruthlessness. But there’s an underlying generosity of spirit to which one could always appeal. If he truly loves you, you would be safe with him, Leslie. I know that.”

“I’m sure of it,” Leslie said, but again there was that slight nervous laugh.

“But all the same, dear, think a little longer before you become actually engaged.”

“Oh, no,” Leslie, who was at the door, turned quickly for a last word. “No, Mother. He is set on our announcing our engagement as quickly as possible. I want that too.”

And then she went away, before her mother could say more, aware that she had burnt her boats with a speed and thoroughness beyond anything she had intended.

She thought of seeking out Reid, late though it now was, and telling him that they were already completely committed to their faked engagement. But she suddenly felt so limp and so emotionally weary that she knew she could handle no more scenes of this sort. Certainly no scenes with anyone of Reid’s vitality and exuberance.

Tomorrow would be soon enough to tell him. Tomorrow would be soon enough to enter on the dangerous piece of make-believe which they had undertaken.

In spite of a restless night, Leslie was up early and, having already seen from her window that Reid was out in the garden, she went downstairs and out into the bright morning air.

“Reid.” She came up with him, where he was .standing watching, with a good deal of amusement, the indefatigable labours of a large striped spider.

“Hello, there.” He threw a casual, friendly glance at her. “Come and look at this fellow. If we carry out our intentions with half his persistence we shan’t do badly.”

”Aren’t spiders usually supposed to be ‘she’?” Leslie said. But she came up and stood beside him.

“You’re probably right at that.” He grinned, though he did not take his eyes off the spider. “That probably accounts for the persistence. I’m going to rely a lot on you in the coming weeks.”

“You may,” she said quietly, and he glanced at her quickly.

“You haven’t changed your mind, eh?” He smiled and drew her arm through his.

“On the contrary, I’ve already made a good beginning with the job of telling the family.”

“Good God!” His admiration was unmistakable that time. “And did they believe you?”

“Certainly they believed me.”

“I’m a little surprised that they should.”

“Oh, no. In Morley’s case, it was only a question of accepting a first suspicion of the truth—I mean of what we wanted him to think the truth. And in Mother’s case—” She stopped, and then her voice dropped a little as she said, “Mother so terribly wanted to believe, poor darling!”

“Because of your father?”

“No. Because of Morley,” Leslie said. And then told him what her mother had told her the previous evening.

He listened in silence. Then he said,

“You know I will do everything he will let me do, don’t you?”

It was almost matter of fact in its simplicity and its completeness, this undertaking of his. And suddenly she found herself remembering what her mother had said about his having an underlying generosity of spirit.

She pressed Reid’s arm, with more intimacy and gratitude than she knew.

“It isn’t incumbent on you, you know. Mother said that Morley probably would accept help from his brother-in-law. But you and I know that you’ll never really be in that position.”

“Hell! What does that matter?” Reid retorted with careless impatience. “I’ve been trying to hand back some of this damned money to your family ever since I acquired it. Don’t spoil a good opportunity by saving it doesn’t really exist.”

Leslie laughed softly. She was beginning to know by now that even when he swore it usually meant either that he was moved or in high good-humour. She could not imagine that he ever swore in temper.

“Mother says you have an underlying generosity of spirit,” she said thoughtfully. “I think I see what she means.”

“Nonsense.” He spoke a little roughly. “I usually get a good return for anything I do.”

She looked
sceptical
and, for some reason, a trifle amused.

“Is that so? What return are you expecting for helping me?”

“Well, you’re obliging me pretty handsomely, aren’t you?”

“By becoming engaged to you? I thought that was for our mutual pleasure and advantage.”

He laughed reluctantly, gave her an odd glance and said,

“I don’t know you in this mood.”

“No,” Leslie said with a slight sigh. “I don’t know myself very well either. Perhaps I’m demonstrating that Oliver was wrong when he declared I was too nice and naive to keep a man like you in his place.”

“He said that? The man’s a fool,” Reid declared contemptuously.

Leslie flushed and pulled her arm away, indescribably annoyed by this insult to Oliver.

‘He is nothing of the sort! And he knows me a great deal better than you ever will,” she cried angrily.

“Then he should know that you could manage most men with one hand tied behind you,” was the astonishing thing Reid said.

“You
think that?” Her anger was quenched in her surprise, and, to tell the truth, in a peculiar feeling of gratification too.

“Of course,” he said, but a little disagreeably for him. “Shall we go in and receive the family’s congratulations?”

“If you like.” They turned and strolled towards the house together. “But Mother may not have told them yet.”

“Then we will tell them.”

The family were already gathered at the breakfast table when they came in, Morley’s place only being empty. And when Leslie saw the ceremonious air with which her father rose to address her, she realized that he at least needed no telling.

“My dear, this is wonderful news,” he began.

But his wife caught his arm and said urgently, “Richard, I told you Leslie may not want it to be public property yet.”

“We don’t mind,” Reid said, with a smile at her.

“What isn’t to be public property?” demanded Alma, who had prete
rn
aturally acute hearing where
semi secrets
were concerned.

“Dear Leslie and Reid—”

“If I may be allowed to make my voice heard,” boomed Richard Greeve in rich, but slightly sulky, tones, because he was annoyed at having his speech of congratulations mangled like this, “I should like to congratulate my dear daughter”—he put a paternal hand on Leslie’s shoulder”—and my good friend Reid”—by reaching rather uncomfortably far he was able to clap his other hand on Reid’s shoulder”—on their engagement. I can only say that it is a marriage that will give me the very greatest happiness and satisfaction.”

The news of Leslie’s engagement, viewed through the rosy spectacles of Alma and her father, proved something of an antidote to the news about Morley
—
broken now for the first time to Alma and Katherine. But afterwards Leslie’s elder sister caught her by the arm and drew her into one of the window alcoves, and demanded with some urgency,

“You aren’t marrying Reid in order to repair the family fortunes, are you?”

“No, of course not, Kate. Why should you think so?”

“Well, you know we did talk over the idea of acquiring rich husbands a night or two ago.”

Leslie laughed.

“And you didn’t show any signs of being shocked by the prospect then,” Leslie reminded her. “In fact, you were rather frank about your plans for yourself.”

“Oh, for myself
,
yes,” Katherine agreed almost naively. “But you’re made for something different. I don’t think you’d be happy, Leslie, if you married for anything but love.”

“Well, I’m marrying for love,” Leslie retorted. And she spoke with a sudden fierceness, so that Katherine fell back, almost literally, in surprise, and somehow found herself unable to continue the discussion.

It was an anxious, uncertain day, until Dr. Bendick and the specialist should have come and given their verdict on Morley. Leslie particularly, consumed with loving care for her brother, found it increasingly difficult to remember that she was also supposed to be the happy, newly-engaged girl, with sweet distractions to temper her sisterly anxiety.

Only Reid’s watchfulness and, to tell the truth, his tact kept her from giving herself away on more than one occasion. He did also offer her some very real comfort when he heard who the specialist was whom Dr. Bendick had summoned.

“Oh, Trevant is reckoned to be almost a miracle-man at his job,” he assured Leslie confidently. “Do you mean to say you’ve never heard or read about him?”

“Only to remember the name. Is he really so good, Reid?”

“He has a tremendous reputation—both as a personality and as a surgeon. A very handsome man, you know—rather like an elderly film star from all accounts—and something of a show-off. But a genius. Even his most jealous rivals concede him that.”

When Sir James Trevant arrived, Leslie caught a glimpse of him before he was taken into Morley’s room, and the little she saw confirmed much of what Reid had said. The famous surgeon was a tall, handsome, picturesque figure. But there was about him also that indefinable aura of success and calm confidence which belongs only to the man who knows he cannot fail.

Even so, Leslie remained in a state of nervous suspense, and she passionately wished it were she, rather than her parents, who would have a chance of speaking to him afterwards. Would her mother, in her anxious diffidence, or her father in his pompous attitudinizing, make it perfectly clear that no expense was to be spared in the effort to make Morley better?

“The ideal would be, of course, to have Morley removed to Trevant’s own nursing home for a few months,” Dr. Bendick said after Sir James had left.

“But
I don’t know
.
” He fondled his chin meditatively and looked round sympathetically on his old friends, with an expression which showed plainly that Oliver had told him of their recent reverse.

“Then please make the arrangements as soon as possible.”

It was Reid who spoke, and Dr. Bendick swung round in his chair to regard him.

Mrs. Greeve murmured a belated introduction, and her husband, in the tone of one who endorsed what his personal representative had said, remarked,

“To be sure. Let the arrangements be made as soon as possible.”