Authors: Mary Burchell
“That’s why I can say to you—” a sparkling and slightly conspiratorial smile came over her hostess’s face, “that I have something to show you.”
“Really?” Cecile looked amused and slightly mystified.
“Yes. Come with me.”
Mrs. Picton led the way along the upstairs passage to Gregory’s room at the end. The door was open and the room was empty. She went no further than the doorway, but there she stood, with Cecile beside her, and said in a tone of deep satisfaction, “You see.”
Cecile looked in.
“Well—no. I’m afraid I don’t.”
“It’s gone,” said Mrs. Picton succin
c
tly.
And then Cecile saw that indeed “it” had gone. Felicity no longer smiled coldly from the dressing-table.
“Oh!”
“Yes.” Mrs. Picton nodded in a satisfied manner. “He took it away last time he was here. I don’t k
n
ow what he did with it, and of course,” she said wistfully, “one cannot ask. But he no longer likes to have her looking at him. A very good sign. Take your time, dear, and come down when you are ready. Dinner won’t be ready for another twenty minutes yet.”
Left alone in her own room, Cecile spent some minutes sitting on the window se
a
t and gazing out into the very beautiful garden. But what she saw was the empty space in Gregory’s dressing-table
—s
ilent witness of the fact that, for good or ill, Felicity’s star had waned.
It was a delightful evening, with Gregory in a relaxed and amusing mood, and Mrs. Picton frankly happy to have them both there. She asked several things about Gregory’s recent case, with a depth of professional knowledge which made Cecile wish she knew more.
But at no time was she allowed to feel out of it, in any way. And when dinner was over, and Gregory went to his study to attend to some urgent letters, Mrs. Picton took her into the garden, and discoursed to her on her flowers and her plants, as though it went without saying that Cecile would be interested in whatever happened there.
And Cecile was.
“It’s so peaceful and lovely and gracious here,” Cecile exclaimed. “It’s as though one had always known the place.”
“Yes, yes. I knew you would fit in perfectly, from the first moment,” Gregory’s mother replied. And it was the contented significance in her voice which brought Cecile back to the inescapable falseness of her position—and the knowledge that she simply could not go on sinking further and further into a position which Mrs. Picton would obviously like her to occupy, but which her bargain with Felicity absolutely precluded.
“It’s sweet of you to—to say it like that.” Cecile heard the nervousness in her own voice. “But, you know, you mustn’t—plan or—or count on anything. I mean—”
“I love planning,” replied her hostess, unmoved. “And, though I wouldn’t be so impertinent as to count on anything which was not within my own power to decide, even the least interfering of mothers is entitled to have her hopes, you know.”
“Mrs. Picton—” Cecile pressed her hands together in her agitation—“you mustn’t even hope. Really you mustn’t. There is nothing—there
can’t
be anything—” Her voice trailed away, and for a moment there was silence.
Then Mrs. Picton spoke. “Why not, my dear? Aren’t you fond of Gregory?”
“I think he is the dearest and most wonderful person on earth,” replied Cecile, because she simply had to say it to someone, and who better than his mother?
“Well,” Mrs. Picton gave a relieved little laugh, “I don’t know what we are worrying about, then.”
“It’s something I can’t explain—something which doesn’t concern my feelings for him or—or—anything like that. It’s—well, it’s something I can’t explain,” she repeated helplessly, already aware that she should never have embarked on this conversation.
Again there was a silence, a longer one this time. Then Mrs. Picton said quietly:
“Is it because your mother is Laurie Cavendish?”
“Mrs. Picton!” Cecile stared at her aghast. “How did you know?”
“Simply by asking Gregory her name, of course.”
“Yes, but—but—You don’t know the significance of the name, do you? The—the part she played in your—family’s history?”
“Yes, my dear, of course I do. Gregory doesn’t think I do, and neither did his father. Men never think women know about things. They spend
a lot of time and trouble protecting us, as they think, from knowledge which we are far better able to bear than they are themselves. Nice men, I mean, of course,” she added in kindly parenthesis. “I knew perfectly well what part Laurie Cavendish was supposed to play in my poor Anne’s death.”
“Did you know all along?”
“No. Not until I came back to England a year or two later. Then of course a kind friend told me. There are always kind friends ready to make us a present of that sort of knowledge.”
“But—but how can you take it so calmly? How can you b-be so kind to me?” stammered Cecile, and the tears came into her eyes.
“My dear, dear child, do you really think anyone could suppose you carry the responsibility for something done when you were four years old—or whatever it was?”
“Not responsibility—no. But a—a sort of taint. An inevitable connection which one can’t overlook.”
“Nonsense,” was the kind but very firm reply.
“I can’t understand.” Cecile brushed away bewildered tears with the back of her hand. “You speak almost as though you—you hardly blame Laurie either.”
“My dear, someone once said—I have forgotten who, but he must have been very wise—that even God does not judge until the score is complete. I don’t
know
how much or how little your mother was to blame. But I knew Hugh Minniver quite well, and though I was very fond of him—one could not be otherwise—I know that he was perfectly capable of pursuing a selfish, hard and even cruel path without any pressure from anyone else. Why, then, should I assume that the blame is all someone else’s?”
Cecile thought of the fatal letters. But even they could not spoil her moment of relief and joy. She flung her arms round Anne’s mother and kissed her.
“You dear, good, generous woman!” she cried. “I could love you for that alone.”
“Well, well—” Mrs. Picton patted her head and kissed her in return, deeply touched but practical still, “I hope you always will. Does what I have told you help your problem?”
“I don’t know,” Cecile confessed. “I can only tell you that such loving generosity helps
everyone
to see things more clearly and steadily.”
“Then try not to worry,” Mrs. Picton said. “And remember that my Gregory can be generous and loving too.”
“I will,” Cecile promised. “I will.” And although this conversation did not in any way affect the Theo Letterton problem, somehow Cecile felt that the situation was much less terrible than she had supposed.
Quieter in her mind, she slept dreamlessly and restfully that night, happy in the knowledge that Gregory was under the same roof with her. And when they left the next morning, she hugged Mrs. Picton as she might have hugged her own mother.
“It was a wonderful, wonderful visit,” she told Gregory, as they drove away. “I couldn’t have had a happier time.”
He turned his head and smiled at her.
“I hope you will come often, Cecile,” he said. But fortunately he did not elaborate on future plans. For, if he had done so, Cecile simply did not know what she could have said that would not have been untruthful or ungrateful or both.
They stopped for lunch on the way, and lingered pleasantly in the garden of a country inn. But even so they arrived at Erriton Hall earlier than they had been expected, and were informed by the housekeeper that Mr. Deeping was finishing his after-luncheon nap.
“Perhaps you would like to go into the small drawing room, sir?” She was much more gracious to Gregory than she ever was to Maurice, Cecile noticed—possibly because he was unlikely to figure in any of Uncle Algernon’s wills.
She still gave the impression of hardly noticing that Cecile was there, however, and when she had conducted them to the pleasant room overlooking the terrace, it was to Gregory exclusively that she said:
“You will find the daily papers on that table.”
When she had gone, Gregory grinned, turned over the newspapers and remarked.
“I thought so. She doesn’t know of the existence of anything below the intellectual level of the
Guardian.
Well, well—I don’t think we shall be reduced to reading the daily papers. Tell me, instead—” he turned suddenly to face Ce
ci
le, “just why you sounded so—moved, I think is the word—when you spoke of the way you had enjoyed your very brief visit to us.”
“Mostly because of your mother, I think. She is such a wonderful woman, Gregory. I don’t wonder,” Cecile added with naive candour, and no sense of the part she was supposed to be playing, “that she had you for a son.”
“My dear girl! Spare my blushes.” Gregory laughed. “Without bringing me into it, I think we can agree on your other statement. Mother is a very remarkable woman, besides being a darling.”
“Yes. Did you know—” suddenly Cecile had to tell him—“that she did find out about Laurie? Not only about her being my mother, I mean. But about her—her possible connection with Anne’s death?”
“She did?” Gregory walked up the room and back again. “How do you know? Did she say so?”
“Yes—she told me.”
“
How
did she tell you, Cecile?" he asked curiously. “Sadly? Bitterly? What did she say?”
“She quoted someone. I don’t know who. But she said that even God doesn’t judge until the score is complete. I never heard anyone speak so kindly or so objectively of someone who was possibly responsible for a terrible injury. It made me hope that
I
could be as generous if I ever had to forgive someone.”
“Oh, Cecile—” he put out his hand, took hers and drew her gently to her feet—“my little Cecile—I’m afraid you did me much more than justice when you said I was a fitting son for her. You must see for yourself that I’m not half as big and generous as she. Don’t you remember—”
But she put her hand softly against his lips.
“Let’s not remember anything harsh or unkind. I only remember that, in the end, you did take Laurie’s outstretched hand, and that you have been good and kind and friendly to her since.”
“That doesn’t seem very much to do for the girl one loves.” His lips were against her hair now, and she knew that she ought to move away before his arms were round her. But then it was too late—and she was leaning there in the circle of his arms, happy and frightened, joyful and despairing.
“Darling, did Mother take you on a tour of the house again?”
“No. Of course not. Why should she?”
“I had an idea she had something she wanted to show you. Didn’t she even show you my room again?”
“Oh—that? Yes, she did pause in the doorway and—and point out that Felicity’s photograph was gone.”
He laughed outright then.
“And did she tell you—which is certainly the truth—that with that photograph went all the memories and affection that had ever been connected with Felicity? I don’t know why I kept it there so long when it had come to mean so little. But it is gone now. And you must know, better than anyone, Cecile, whose photograph I want in its place.”
“Oh, Gregory—” she began in frightened protest.
“Don’t be so hard on me.”
“Oh, I’m not hard! I’m not—only—” And suddenly she knew that she could keep up this pretence no longer. She flung her arms round him and buried her face against his shoulder.
For a long minute there was silence. Then he kissed her and said, teasingly but tenderly,
“Well, do I get that photograph—to replace the one of Felicity, which means nothing any longer?”
“Gregory—” She raised her head—and then her voice died in her throat, choked by the most acute terror she had ever known.
For she was looking past him to the french windows which led into the garden, and there, framed in the doorway, stood Felicity, regarding the scene with an expression which showed that she had heard exactly what he had said.
CHAPTER XI
F
or a moment longer Cecile stared back at Felicity, as though she were some terrible apparition—which, indeed, in a sense, she was. Then Felicity stepped aside and was gone.
“Cecile, what’s the matter?”
Gregory must have felt her stiffen, for he looked down at her anxiously. And then, since she was still gazing past him at the empty doorway, he turned his head.
“Nothing is the matter,” she said, and to her surprise, her voice sounded quite normal.
“But you look as though you’d seen a ghost.”
“Perhaps I did.” She passed her hands over her face, and felt that her cheeks were cold. “I think Felicity is in the garden, Gregory.”
“Damn,” said Gregory, softly but with feeling.
“Uncle Algernon said she wouldn’t be here. Either she has come, by some—some horrid mischance, or else he didn’t tell the truth. It would be like him. He loves to create awkward situations. I think we won’t discuss things any longer, Gregory. This isn’t quite the place for it.”
“I agree,” he said grimly. “I’m sorry, darling. Don’t look like that. It’s embarrassing, of course, but there’s nothing to be scared about.”
“No?” She smiled at him wanly, and thought how little he knew.
“Of course not!” He took her hand and chafed it gently, as though she might be cold. “For good or ill, Felicity and I parted ages ago. Neither she nor I has the least obligation towards the other.”
“No,” she said again, but mechanically.
And then the door opened and Uncle Algernon came in, leaning on the arm of his manservant.
“You were a bit early,” he remarked hospitably. “I said three o’clock. But never mind. That’s better than being late. Now, Cecile, you go along into the garden. Picton and I have some business to discuss. You can come back in half an hour.”
It was on the tip of Cecile’s tongue to say that nothing would induce her to go into the garden while there was still the possibility of Felicity’s being there. But then she thought, with a sort of desperate hope, that she might have some chance of—not exactly explaining away the situation, but at least mitigating Felicity’s wrath.
Steps led down from here to the garden, where paths led off in several directions. Cecile took one of these at random—and three minutes later, she found herself face to face with Felicity, who was sitting on a stone bench, set against a wall almost entirely covered by a magnificent peach tree.
In the initial shock of meeting, Cecile found no words. It was Felicity who spoke first. And what she said was,
“I warned you not to double-cross me, didn’t I?”
“I haven’t double-crossed you,” Cecile insisted eagerly.
“I’
ve done my very best, in the most difficult position, but—”
“That’s exactly what it looked like,” was the ironical reply.
“Wait a minute! You must let me explain—”
She paused, and Felicity said, “Yes?” skeptically, so that Cecile wondered what on earth there was that one could explain.
“Felicity—” she sat down on the bench beside the other girl, “be reasonable. For heaven’s sake, even be generous! I can’t
help
it if he loves me. I’m not going to say I don’t want him to love me. Of course I do. But I didn’t try to make him. I tried everything on earth to put him off.”
“Including hanging round his neck?”
“I—That was at the very last—when I—I couldn’t keep it up any longer. Felicity, I don’t know what else I can say to make you believe me, or accept the situation. He asked me to marry him just a few hours after we had our—our other conversation. I refused him. I put him off as best I could.”
“Were you refusing him all over again when I saw you just now?” enquired Felicity contemptuously.
“I tell you—that was when my self-control gave way at last.”
“Strange that I should come along at just that moment.”
“Yes, it was strange,” retorted Cecile, with some spirit. “Uncle Algernon told me on the telephone that you had left, and that I should not have to see you here.”
“So you thought it would be safe to come down here with Gregory?”
“That was Uncle Algernon’s idea. He said he would like to see me, and when I had agreed to come, he told me Gregory was coming down this afternoon and he had better give me a lift. How do you expect me to talk myself out of that one, for heaven’s sake?”
“You could have remembered a previous engagement. If that’s your idea of doing your best in a difficult position, I don’t wonder that you’re more than half engaged to Gregory by now.”
“I’m not,” said Cecile slowly. “I could be—but I’m not. Because I refused him.”
“And beckoned him on with the other hand,” Felicity rose to her feet and stood looking down at Cecile with an expression of cold hatred. “That’s exactly what I warned you not to do.”
“But I
didn’t
do it deliberately!”
Felicity was stonily silent, and Cecile dropped her hands heavily in her lap and looked up at the other girl.
“What are you going to do?” she asked hopelessly.
“I don’t know. I haven’t decided yet. But I can tell you this; whatever I decide to do, you won’t like it.”
And then, before Cecile could say anything else, she turned and walked rapidly away toward the house.
Cecile half rose to her feet, her first impulse being to follow and plead again. But then either her pride or her common sense checked her and she sank back upon the seat once more. The moment for any sane discussion was past.
There must be some other way
—some
other way—to deal with her. Who, in all the world, had influence with her?
Was there any way in which she could enlist Uncle Algernon’s help? And, if so, was there any pressure he could bring to bear upon his great-niece?
“It’s the last resort,” Cecile said aloud. “And, if I fail—Uncle
Algernon could be nearly as dangerous, in his way, as she in hers. Dare I—dare I? But if I don’t, nothing can hold back disaster. If I can get him to myself—”
Even that was going to present a problem, with Gregory there. But, in face of the greater problem, Cecile felt she could surely solve the lesser one.
Presently she got up and began to walk back slowly toward the house. The business talk should be over by now, she judged. And, if not, they must put up with her presence.
When she got back to the small drawing room, she found that her minor difficulty at least had been settled. Uncle Algernon was there alone, turning over some papers and muttering to himself. “Where is Gregory?”
She spoke so abruptly in her nervousness that the old man looked up sharply.
“In my study. Drafting a letter in connection with the selling of your house. And don’t go disturbing him,” added Uncle Algernon virtuously. “Trustees have enough trouble without being interrupted in their duties.” And he looked down at his papers again, to indicate that he too was a busy man.
“I don’t want to disturb him.” Cecile came and stood squarely in front of the old man, so that he could not even pretend to ignore her. “I want to speak to you—alone. And it’s terribly urgent.”
“If you want money—” he began warily.
“No, of course not! Uncle Algernon, have you much influence with Felicity? Real influence, I mean. Could you make her do something she didn’t want to do, for instance?”
“It could be.” He was flattered, she saw, at the assumption that he might wield unusual power. “If I really tried, that is. Why?”
Cecile hesitated—trembling even then before the risk of taking so capricious a creature as Uncle Algernon into her confidence. But what else was she to do?
“Uncle Algernon, Felicity is furious because Gregory doesn’t love her any longer. He loves me instead. She thinks—at least, she thought—that if I were out of the way, she could get him back—”
“I told you you were rivals,” interjected Uncle Algernon triumphantly.
“Yes, yes. You were right, of course, though I didn’t know it then. She holds some letters—” the end of Uncle Algernon’s thin nose twitched, as though the first faint scent of scandal tickled it—“which reflect very badly on Laurie—on my mother. She could use them with disastrous results, and she is threatening to do so. Can you stop her? Please, please, can you stop her? First she tried to make me undertake to stop Gregory from loving me—”
“How on earth were you going to do that?” enquired Uncle Algernon interestedly.
“Oh, I don’t know. But whatever I tried didn’t work.”
“Made him all the keener, I suppose,” remarked Uncle Algernon knowledgeably.
“Well—yes—perhaps it did. And then, by the most miserable mischance, she came here today—”
“No right to come! I haven’t invited her,” was the rather annoyed reply. “She’s much too thick with that housekeeper of mine.”
“Perhaps. I don’t know. Anyway, whether by chance or design, she came. And she—she saw Gregory kissing me—”
“What did he want to do that for? Can’t he do enough of that in your home or his?”
“I didn’t ask him why he did it,” retorted Cecile, at the end of her patience. “The fact was that he
did—
and Felicity saw. And nothing will convince her that I haven’t double-crossed her—”
“Well, haven’t you? Just on a point of accuracy.”
“Not intentionally,” said Cecile wearily. “But she doesn’t believe that. Or her fury at losing Gregory makes her refuse to accept my explanation. She means to do all the damage she can with those letters.”
“What are the letters exactly?” Uncle Algernon asked, with a sly glance at Cecile.
“Do you have to know that?”
“If I’m going to be able to help you—yes.”
It sounded genuine enough, Cecile thought. And, after a moment, she said briefly.
“They were written by Laurie to Hugh Minniver, and, according to Felicity, they show clearly that she pressed him to ask for a
divorce from his wife, who—who then took an overdose of sleeping tablets.”
“Yes, yes—I know. She was Anne Picton before her marriage, wasn’t she? Shocking business. Who is she going to show them to? Gregory?”
“I suppose so.”
“And then Gregory won’t want to marry you? Is that what you’re afraid of?”
“No,” said Cecile slowly. “That isn’t my chief fear now—though it was once, I suppose. I think it would take more than that to stop his loving me now. But it would reopen all the old wounds, and excite all the old enmities—”
“I wouldn’t exaggerate that. People forget—even their worst enemies and, still more, their best friends,” declared Uncle Algernon cynically.
“Maybe. But I can’t doubt that the effect on Laurie would be terrible. She is just emerging from the shadows—beginning to believe that she has lived down the past. I don’t know
what
it would do to her if all this were thrown up at her again. And she is going to be married. To a very nice, straightforward, decent sort of fellow. Oh, they’re all going to be made utterly wretched, if you don’t do something. Uncle Algernon—please! If ever your skill and power were needed, they are needed now.”
“You’re asking something very difficult, of course.” He rubbed his chin meditatively.
“Yes, yes—I realize that. That’s why I’ve come to you. No one else—absolutely
no one
else—would be any good.”
Uncle Algernon did not actually purr. But he cleared his throat and smiled smugly.
“I could threaten to disinherit her,” he said thoughtfully.
“But would she believe you?” Cecile looked doubtful.
“Of course she’d believe me,” said Uncle Algernon crossly. “They always believe me. That’s why they come rushing round me, until I put them back in my will again.”
“But perhaps she would count on your doing that anyway.”
“It never does to count on anything with me,” declared Uncle Algernon pontifically. “She knows that.”
“Do you think—forgive the expression—mere money would influence her?”
“Mere money?
Mere
money?” Uncle Algernon gave her a glance of genuine anger. “You can take it from me that mere money is the strongest argument that anyone can advance.”
“Is it?” said Cecile humbly. “Well, you should know best. Then would you—would you—try? I’ll be grateful to you all my life, if you will.”
“Nonsense. No one is grateful all their life,” declared Uncle Algernon. “Most gratitude doesn’t last longer than a few weeks. But—” he looked down at her bright head with a sort of reluctant indulgence, “perhaps you’re different.”
“I hope so.”
“And you want Gregory Picton very much?”
“So much.” She put her head down suddenly against the old man’s knee. “So much. But I want Laurie’s happiness too. She made her mistakes, Uncle Algernon, but she’s paid for them over and over again. She doesn’t deserve to have her little bit of late happiness snatched away from her now. Will you please help her—and me?”
She thought she felt his dry old hand on her hair for a moment. Then he said, “I’ll do my best. Now sit up. There’s no need to have a scene. Scenes are bad for me. They give me palpitations.”
So Cecile sat up, and smiled at him through a few tears. And when Gregory came back into the room a minute or two later, she and Uncle Algernon were talking quite cheerfully and normally.