Victoria and the Nightingale (14 page)

She flushed. He had lifted his eyes to her and they were dancing with amusement. Despite Johnny’s presence he persisted in attempting to elicit from her what she thought he should have been doing instead of paying another visit to the cottage.

“Are you rather inclined to the opinion that the very first thing I should have done this morning is get in touch with a certain person by telephone and offer her my abject apologies? Because if that’s what you really think I should have done I’m afraid I have to disappoint you.”

“You mean you didn’t telephone?”

“I didn’t even send a hurried note round by Hawkins saying how very sorry I am for everything.”

“But. . . .” She prodded a sausage that was sizzling in the pan, and he asked politely if he couldn’t have two sausages—three if she could manage it. “You can’t mean that you—that you don’t intend to—to—”

“At the moment I’m free, and I’m enjoying my freedom. It’s because I’m free that I’m here. Didn’t I say to you last night that so long as I was free—” Johnny interrupted with a wide-eyed look.

“I didn’t know you were here last night!”

His guardian dismissed him amiably.

“If you’ve finished your breakfast, old chap, do go outside and get some fresh air. You can polish up the car for me if you like. I’m sure Victoria’s got a duster in the drawer.” Johnny was enchanted by the notion, and departed, taking his transistor with him. Victoria placed a heaped plateful of eggs, bacon, sausages and mushrooms in front of Sir Peter, and then stood looking down at him a trifle censoriously.

“Last night,” she reminded him, “you said I was to call you Peter because today you were going to do the right thing and apologize to Miss Islesworth and make everything up with her. You assured me that after last night everything would be as it was again.”

“And that was why I wanted to hear you call me Peter?” “Y-yes.”

“A condemned man’s last request before sentence was carried out!”

“I—I don’t understand you!”

She sat down at the kitchen table, and while he applied himself to his breakfast in a businesslike fashion—ever afterward she was to hold the belief very close to her heart that unless an Englishman is fed he is unapproachable—she played with the butter knife and watched him. He occasionally smiled at her in a detached manner, and finally agreed that they would discuss the problem later on.

“But for the time being I’m feeling too replete. Your cooking is excellent, Victoria.”

“You mean that you—you’re going to stay here?”

“I’m not going back immediately. As a matter of fact, I thought we’d have another picnic today—as it’s such a fine day. Would you like to pay another visit to the spot where we had our other picnic?”

“I—But do you think you ought to waste the time?”

“You forget that Johnny is my ward, and nothing is wasted on him. But wouldn’t you like it yourself?”

She carefully avoided his eyes, for the simple reason that this morning she didn’t dare to meet them fully ... or at any rate, not for long.

“Of course I’d like it. But you have other things to do!”

“The ‘other things’ can wait.”

For an instant she did meet his eyes, and to her astonishment the gray depths were pleading with her.

“Victoria.” He laid his hand over hers where it rested on the tablecloth. “Victoria, I want to forget everything today—everything but the things I wish particularly to remember. And among the things I wish to remember are the way you looked last night and the extraordinary effect moonlight has on your hair. Victoria!” He bent nearer to her, and she caught the fragrance of his shaving lotion. “Victoria,” a trifle huskily, “it’s such an absurdly formal name for such a scrap of informal young womanhood, but in my ears it has acquired a certain music. Will you take compassion on the condemned man today and accompany him back to that green bank where we disported ourselves before, and where Johnny ate so many sausage rolls and cheese straws and drank so much ginger pop that I thought he’d explode in the car when he got back into it? Will you, Victoria?”

She said breathlessly:

“My father used to call me Vicky.”

“I still prefer Victoria!”

“And you did say that after last night—”

“Forget what I said last night. Let’s go to the river, Victoria!”

She rose, half laughing, half protesting still.

“But what about food?”

“I have it in the car. Another hamper for the special delight of Johnny. How long will it take you to wash up? Or can you leave these things on the table as they are?”

“No, no, I’ll clear everything away and tidy up before we leave.”

“I thought you’d say that.”

“This doesn’t happen to be Mrs. Wavertree’s day.”

He smiled at her and she smiled back. For the first time she felt as if she had known him for the whole of her life. “I’ll wait outside,” he said.

In the road beyond the garden gate Johnny was working hard. With a yellow duster and a great deal of elbow grease he was achieving miracles ... although it was true the car had looked very bright and shining to start with.

When he heard about the picnic Johnny reacted, as always, in a completely normal manner. He wanted to start off immediately, but Victoria insisted on completing her normal round of housework before slipping into a cool, clean cotton dress that was an enchanting shade of apple-blossom pink and declaring she was ready to lock up the cottage.

Sir Peter looked at her, long and hard, as she turned the front door key, and he seemed to have some difficulty on concentrating on driving when they set off. Johnny had insisted on occupying the seat beside him at the wheel, and that meant that Victoria was once more relegated to the back, which didn’t seem to please Sir Peter at all.

“I do think, Johnny,” he said, “that you should allow a lady to exercise the power of choice. For all you know to the contrary Victoria may dislike sitting alone in the back of the car, and I may dislike having a small boy bouncing about in the seat beside me. Quite honestly, if I could choose, I’d prefer to have Victoria sitting beside me.” Johnny instantly looked dashed.

“But you said you’d teach me to drive a car—”

“One day I will,” his guardian promised. “But at the moment you’re far too small.”

Victoria protested from the back of the car.

“I’m perfectly comfortable where I am.”

But Sir Peter spoke inflexibly.

“Change over, Johnny. If you behave in an exceptionally exemplary manner I may allow you to sit beside me on the way home.” His expression was amiable, but that note in his voice was not to be ignored. Johnny executed the change without even a protest, and Victoria landed in the seat beside the driver. But she thought it necessary to continue her protest.

“Poor Johnny! If you knew what a very great treat it is for him to sit beside you!” she said indignantly.

Sir Peter glanced at her sideways and smiled a little

peculiarly.

“I like to have a young thing in pink sitting beside me,” he remarked. “By the way, you should wear it more often ... although I think, when you’re sitting in the moonlight, blue is the color for you. That nightingale last night obviously agreed with me.”

Victoria said nothing, but she was beginning to feel a trifle self-conscious ... in fact, rather more than a trifle selfconscious. And despite Johnny’s disappointment she felt suddenly almost as excited as she had felt for a brief while the night before. Quite unreasonably excited, of course.

They took the same route to the river that they had taken before, and when they reached it they followed the same procedure as before. The hamper was unpacked, the contents disposed of, and after that Johnny wandered away and left his two elders. While he hunted for frogs instead of butterflies this time Victoria repacked the hamper and Sir Peter packed a pipe with tobacco and looked along the stem of it thoughtfully before applying a match.

He had done this on the previous occasion, but he had done it while he was lying flat on his back and displaying every intention of enjoying a short nap. But on this occasion there was no drowsiness in his eyes, and there was certainly no evidence of drowsiness in Victoria’s ... so he lowered his pipe and reached over and took the damask tablecloth away from her and flung it carelessly aside on the bank before he pulled her to her feet.

“Why should Johnny be the only active one among us?” he asked. “Let’s explore the woods.”

Victoria followed him into the woods, and obediently halted when he halted, and continued when he advanced. It was really far too hot for constant movement, and when they reached a kind of clearing where the ground was soft with pine needles and the rays of the sun were excluded by a lacy canopy overhead Sir Peter once more took the initiative and flung his coat on the ground for Victoria to sit on.

She was about to protest—and she had done a lot of protesting that day so far—that the pine needles were soft and inviting enough without his coat when she accidentally stumbled, and he caught her and held her for fully twenty seconds before they both realized that it was a somewhat unconventional pose. Victoria detached herself with primness and sank down on the pine needles, feeling a little breathless as he folded up his coat.

“So you decline to sit on it?” he said. “You’re an obstinate young thing, Victoria!”

They talked—both of them making an obvious effort at first—about all sorts of things they had never discussed before, and Victoria learned a good deal of his boyhood and his parents and his general background, while he heard about her parents and the comparatively lonely, and certainly insecure, life she had led since she was deprived of them.

“And instead of doing the sensible thing and taking a sensible job with prospects you attempt to burden yourself with Johnny,” he said censoriously. “You must be mad!”

She shook her head.

“I don’t think so. You see, Johnny hasn’t anyone and I haven’t anyone.”

“He has now.”

“Yes; he has you. . . . ”

“You say that as if you consider me a dubious acquisition.” She turned and looked at him, and in her harebell blue eyes he detected a certain amount of consternation because that wasn’t what she had meant at all. What she had meant was that he wasn’t free to attach himself to Johnny, and in the interests of fairness Miss Islesworth had every right to object to him making the effort.

“How you will insist on dragging in Georgina,” he observed with a frown, as he leaned on one elbow and lighted himself a cigarette.

“But she has to be dragged in,” she insisted.

“She doesn’t. Because I’m not going to marry her.”

“You’re—not going to—marry her?”

“That was what I said.”

“But—”

“How full of buts you are!” He ground out the cigarette he had only just lighted, taking care it should not in its turn ignite the pine needles, and sat up and leaned toward her. He possessed himself of one of her hands, and while he examined the delicate fingernails and the insides of her slender wrists he told her somewhat jerkily why it was that he proposed terminating his association with Miss Islesworth. In actual fact, he did more than that. He accused her of breaking it up.

“That night you and Johnny turned up like a couple of waifs at the Park I knew that it had to end. The reason that it had become an established fact had ceased to exist! Before you came, Victoria,” bending her knuckles very slightly and gently, “my only interests were Wycherley and what was best for Wycherley, and that meant marriage and a suitable wife. Georgina, from most people’s point of view, I suppose, would make me a very suitable wife, and although she’s not in the least in love with me she does love the country and all that goes to make up a country way of life. In a way I admire her tremendously, and I’m lost in admiration when I see her on a horse, and that sort of thing ... but I’ve never had the smallest illusion about how much I love her, or how lost I’d feel if I had to do without her.” Victoria attempted to interrupt again, but he held up a lean brown forefinger.

“No! Not until I’ve said my piece and made everything clear!” He fumbled automatically for his cigarette case, then realized that he had just discarded one, and put it away again. “The night you and Johnny arrived we had been celebrating our engagement with a party. There were only a few of our special friends, but they were the ones who had been awaiting our engagement for a long time. Some of them no doubt thought I’d been a bit tardy in putting the question, but they couldn’t possibly know that even I, fairly prosaic chap that I am, had had my dreams occasionally.”

He smiled a little twistedly, and his gray eyes forced Victoria’s to meet them.

“When I was twenty-one I dreamed quite a lot and my dreams always had something to do with a slip of a girl like you—one for whom the nightingales would sing even if they wouldn’t sing for other people, and who had moonbeams in her hair when there wasn’t even a gleam of moonlight! That night of the accident, when Johnny was deprived of his father and I had suddenly become officially pledged to marry someone, you turned up out of the night and I simply couldn’t believe that you were real. Then, when it got through to me that you were real enough, it also got through to me that I was no longer free. I had been just that little bit too precipitate. So I thought up the next best thing to keep you near me. I decided to adopt Johnny, and as you were so attached to him I counted upon you being eager to stay and take charge of him ... at any rate for a time. When that time had expired I suppose I understood perfectly that I would have to let you go.”