Authors: Mary Burchell
“No. No.” Cecile was terrified at the idea of someone else knowing more of the miserable situation. “I’m all right—see.” She even smiled
faintly at him. “Only I thought you had better know why I look a bit dismal.”
“Dear girl—” he sat down on the arm of the chair and put his arm round her—“if you want a shoulder to cry upon, take mine.” She managed to smile again at that, but it was a terrible effort. For it was not his shoulder she wanted. It was Gregory’s.
“It’s over now.” She gave a shaky little laugh. “Ought we to be going soon?”
“Perhaps we should. For I don’t imagine you’ll want to stay t
o
dinner, in the circumstances.”
“Oh, no!” The very idea horrified her.
“Well, the old man wants to see you before we depart. Would you like to go up now?”
“Yes. All right. Are you coming?”
“No. He wants to see you alone, for some reason. I think he’s had about enough of me today. And, to tell the truth,” Maurice grinned, “the feeling is mutual.”
So Cecile went upstairs alone, to the big bedroom with the elaborately carved double doors. And here she found Uncle Algernon in bed, attired in elegantly striped silk pyjamas which would not have disgraced a successful film star.
“Had a chat with Felicity?” he enquired, as she came and sat down by the bed.
“Yes,” said Cecile briefly. “And I hear you want to have a chat with me too. But not on the same subject, I hope.” She looked at him uncompromisingly.
“I don’t know what Felicity had to talk about. She never tells me anything.” He settled back among his pillows with an aggrieved air. “But then I don’t tell her much either,” he added, cheering up somewhat, “and she has no idea what I am going to say to you.”
No?” Ceci
l
e smiled slightly. “What is it, then?”
“I am going to make a new will on Monday and I’m going to put you in it.”
“But I don’t want you to!” cried Cecile, rather put out. “I told you before. I haven’t any claim on you, since you have relations of your own. And if you leave me a lot of money—”
“Who says it is a lot?” enquired Uncle Algernon disagreeably. “It may be only a hundred pounds, for all you know.”
“Oh, well—if it’s just a sort of token of friendliness, that’s different,” Cecile conceded.
“It isn’t a token of friendliness. I haven’t any friends,” Uncle Algernon was final about that, “and I don’t want any friends. If I leave anyone any money, it will be because I want them to go on doing what
I
want after I’m gone.”
“That’s a bit difficult to arrange,” Cecile remarked practically. “What do you want me to do for my hundred pounds?”
“It isn’t a hundred pounds, you silly girl. It’s fifty thousand pounds,” retorted Uncle Algernon smugly. “And what I want you to do is marry Maurice.”
“Marry Maurice! You’re crazy,” Cecile cried. “And you’ve been talking to Felicity,” she added quickly, thinking that she scented some collusion here.
“No, I haven’t. What had Felicity to say about Maurice?” enquired the old man, looking incredibly knowing and curious.
“Nothing. I was thinking of something else. But, anyway, I think your idea is quite mad.”
“On the contrary, it’s very sound. I want you to marry Maurice because I think you are the girl he needs for his wife.”
“Why don’t you tell
him
that?” enquired Cecile drily.
“I have.”
“Did you tell him about the fifty thousand too?”
"No. I don’t want him to marry you for your money. Any man would marry any girl for fifty thousand pounds,” declared Uncle Algernon uncharitably. “I want him to marry you for yourself. I told him you would make him the best wife in the world—that you’d make a man of him, and he’d be a fool if he let you slip through his fingers. That’s all.”
“It seems quite a lot. What did he say to that?”
“Told me to mind my own business.” Uncle Algernon pulled down the corners of his mouth disapprovingly.
“Good for him!” observed Cecile. “I’m glad he answered you back at last.”
“We’re getting off the subject,” said Uncle Algernon tartly. “I’m letting you know now that I’m putting it in my will that if you marry my nephew Maurice Deeping, you will inherit fifty thousand pounds. You don’t get it otherwise.”
“If you do that you’ll make it absolutely impossible for me to marry him, even if I do want to,” Cecile pointed out good-humouredly.
“Why?”
“Because everyone would think I took him for the fifty thousand pounds, of course.”
“Who cares?” Uncle Algernon sniffed. “And, anyway, they wouldn’t know. Because, by the time my will is read, you’ll be married to him anyway.”
“How do you know?” said Cecile. “I thought you told us you weren’t going to trouble any of us much longer and were going to die next week or something.”
“I’ve changed my mind,” replied Uncle Algernon crossly. “And, anyway, it’s very indelicate to talk like that. As though you
wanted
me to die next week.”
“I don’t want you to die next week. You’re much too entertaining,” said Cecile, and, laughing, she bent over and kissed the old man on his withered cheek. “But nor do I want your fifty thousand pounds. Either to marry Maurice or for any other reason. You leave me a hundred pounds, if you like, just to show we were friends. That will do nicely.”
“I’m not going to leave you a hundred pounds. I’m going to leave you fifty thousand,” retorted Uncle Algernon, in a great rage. “And you’re a stupid, ungrateful girl if you don’t marry Maurice.”
“I’ll think it over,” Cecile promised lightly. “Though I wasn’t aiming to marry anyone just now.” Then she caught her breath on a sigh—but not for Maurice. “I must go now. Maurice is ready to drive me back to town.”
Uncle Algernon sulked at this, and only melted very slightly even when Cecile kissed him goodbye.
“I’ll come again soon, shall I?” She stood by the bed, smiling down at him.
“It’s immaterial to me,” he retorted.
“No, it isn’t. You like to see me—just as I like to see you,” Cecile told him. “I’ll come and tell you how I get on at the business college, and you shall tell me how you get on with your new will.”
“You’re being very foolish about this,” Uncle Algernon assured her. “You don’t know which side your bread is buttered, young woman.”
“Well, maybe that’s better than trying to hog everyone else’s butter,” retorted Cecile. A view so novel and astonishing to Uncle Algernon that she left him silently thinking that over when she finally departed.
To her relief, she did not have to see Felicity again. She was nowhere around when they took their leave, and they drove away from Erriton Hall with no more than the wintry valedictions of the housekeeper to cheer them on their way.
“What did Uncle Algernon want?” enquired Maurice curiously, as they drove through the country lanes. “Or is it a secret?”
“Not so far as I’m concerned.” Cecile smiled. “He just wanted to talk about making a new will on Monday. But, to tell you the truth, I didn’t pay much attention to what he had to say about it. For I’m perfectly sure that whatever he does on Monday he will regret on Tuesday.”
“Did he say anything about putting you in the will?”
She saw Maurice could not take it all so lightly as she did. “Only on the lines of—if I were a good girl and did what he told me, I might hear of something to my advantage.” She laughed and shrugged carelessly. “I’m sure it didn’t mean a thing, Maurice.”
He looked at her, half amused and half exasperated.
“I believe you honestly don’t care,” he said. “Are you really quite indifferent to money, Cecile, and all the pleasant things it can buy?”
“No, of course not. I’d be just as pleased as the next person if I were suddenly presented with a fortune,” Cecile declared. “But I would never spoil the present by worrying about what the future might or might not bring. And, though I don’t want to sound trite or unworldly, I know from my own experience that there can be a great deal of unhappiness in a well-to-do household. While most of the things I love—and want,” her lips trembled, in spite of herself, “have nothing to do with money.”
“You’re a darling,” said Maurice unexpectedly. “And you make me feel a material-minded, over-anxious worm.”
“Maurice dear! How unpleasant. And what a very inaccurate impression to have of yourself.”
He laughed at that.
“I mean that when you talk in that wholesome, objective way, I know that I mind too much about the material things, and let the urge to them rule my life. I don’t love money in the way Uncle Algernon does—just for the pleasure of counting it and making people wish they could get it from him. But I do love all the pleasant things it can buy.”
“That’s just being human, I guess,” Cecile smiled at him.
“All right. But you seem independent of that. I long for leisure and travel and a good car and a high standard of living. I see it all dangling there, in Uncle Algernon’s grasp—and I can’t be indifferent to the fact that he has it in his power to bestow it or withdraw it.”
“Well—you’ve been a great deal nearer to the enticing prospect than I have,” Cecile conceded. “Perhaps that makes it harder to be indifferent. But don’t
think
of it so much, Maurice. Think of all the other things that matter.”
“What, for instance?” Maurice asked skeptically.
“Oh—I don’t know. Being well and young and having at least an adequate income, and possibly sharing all that with someone who makes life doubly rich just by their sheer presence. These are the things that can happen to anyone, any day—without any Uncle Algernon to say them yea or nay.”
“It’s the last thing you listed which counts most, you know.” Maurice looked thoughtfully ahead. “The sharing it all with someone who makes life rich. Perhaps I’ve never put a sufficiently high value on that before.”
They were silent for a moment. Then he said abruptly, “Would you marry a comparatively poor man, Cecile?”
“If I loved him—yes.”
“Even if he had no Uncle Algernon prospects?” He turned his head and grinned at her, but she saw suddenly that he was more than half serious.
“That wouldn’t make any difference at all, I’m sure,” she said quietly. “But I’m speaking quite academically, because at the moment I’m not going to marry anyone. I’m giving myself some time with Laurie, so that we can both be happy together.”
“I see.” Maurice was looking ahead again, rather soberly. And she thought, with an irrepressible flash of humour, that it was impossible to tell if he were regretting a lost opportunity or congratulating himself on a narrow escape.
They were a good deal delayed by the Saturday traffic as they neared London, and when they finally arrived back at the flat it was later than Cecile had intended. She had hoped to have half an hour with Laurie before it was necessary for her to leave for the evening performance, but now, Cecile knew, her mother would have already departed to the theatre.
However, the prospect of some hours alone was suddenly a welcome relief, and she refused Maurice’s invitation to dinner, saying that she had something of a headache after the long drive.
“Give me a call and we’ll do a dinner together another evening,” she told him. “And—thank you, Maurice, for being such a sympathetic and understanding companion.”
“Was I?” Maurice smiled a bit dubiously. “I have an idea that I handled something badly. But there’s always another day. Sleep well, Cecile dear—and forget about Felicity.”
If only she could! thought Cecile, as she went up the stairs to the flat. But day and night she must remember Felicity, and the ever-present danger that she represented.
On the table in the sitting room she found a note from Laurie. “We are all invited to supper by Sir Lucas, after the show,” Laurie had scrawled, in her large, flowing hand. “Gregory Picton will be fetching you. Wear something nice and look your best. It just might lead to the kind of job you want.”
Cecile, who had never felt less like going on show and trying to be bright and attractive, groaned aloud. But then she reminded herself that at least she had an hour or two in which to prepare for the test.
And test it would be. Looking back at her mother’s note, she saw only the words that Gregory would be coming to fetch her. And, with an indescribable sinking of her heart, she realized that this very evening she would have to begin to adopt the attitude which was to drive Gregory away from her. Somehow she must convey to him that a sort of indifference was growing up on her side.
But how was one indifferent to someone who had come to mean so much? In principle, she had accepted this bitter and unwelcome role. How she was to play it she had, as yet, no idea.
Presently Cecile had a leisurely bath, did her hair a new way, and put on a becoming flower-printed dress, in the hope that all this would make her feel better able to tackle whatever ordeal awaited her.
Then she remembered that she had had nothing to eat since teatime at Uncle Algernon’s house. But she felt little hunger, and she contented herself with going into the kitchen and pouring herself a glass of milk. She was standing by the table drinking this when Gregory rang.
For a terrified moment she thought she could not go on. Then a sort of cold calm settled on her, and, going out into the little hall, she pressed the lever which opened the street door and set the flat door open for him.