“Good night,” she said, and went calmly towards the lift. And
no one—least of all Reid—could have guessed that her heart was dead within her.
CHAPTER TEN
“NO SMOKING! Fasten Safety Belts!” ordered the electric sign at the front of the aeroplane cabin. And Leslie, occupied though she was with her own private problem, could not suppress an instinctive thrill of excitement at this indication that her first flight was about to begin.
“All right?” Reid, in the seat beside her, smiled at her as the plane bowled forward over the field, bumping over the unevenness of the ground with a slow clumsiness which completely concealed the grace and speed which would distinguish it as soon as it was in the air.
“Yes, of course.” She smiled back at him. For was not their relationship one of pleasant friendliness? “I’m terribly excited, that’s all.”
He laughed indulgently and patted her hand, reminding her yet again of the time he had done that when first they met.
How angry she had been with him, that afternoon when he first asked her the way to Cranley Magna.
She remembered exactly the feel of his long, strong brown hand on hers then, and how she had resented the familiarity.
Now she loved to have him touch her. She loved everything about him, if only—
“We’re off,” he said. And she realized that they had left the ground without her even noticing the fact.
It was a perfectly smooth flight, almost monotonous in its early uneventfulness, until they began to cross the Alps.
Leslie thought that never in her life had she seen anything so beautiful as the scene spread below her.
The blues and purples of the mountain shadows, with the jewel-like gleam of a lake here and there. The great snowy peaks, gilded by the midday sunshine, rising on every hand. The green of thick vegetation in the valleys, when they came low enough to pick that out. And even an occasional stream and waterfall.
It was like some immense and beautiful toy, viewed from this height, and to look down upon it gave one an almost godlike sense of detachment and wonder.
“Oh, Reid! I’m so glad we came!” she exclaimed.
And he laughed and said, “I’m glad too. It’s wonderful, isn’t it?”
She wanted to ask if he had ever looked down on this scene, or any similar one, with Caroline. But she knew that even so prosaic a honeymoon as he evidently intended theirs to be could be ruined by a few foolish questions or comments. Caroline was definitely a subject to be left alone.
They arrived in Milan in time for lunch. But, as they had decided to go on to Verona the same day, there was time for little more than a stroll through the Galleria, a glance at the Scala and a breathless few minutes before the beauty of the Cathedral.
Then they were on their way again, this time by train.
It was Leslie’s first journey abroad, and she was fascinated by every detail. Just to have people round her talking a beautiful and unfamiliar language was exciting. And, since Reid appeared to know enough Italian to deal with most emergencies, she was able to enjoy the novelty of it all without any of the minor anxieties which usually beset an inexperienced traveller.
It was early evening by the time they reached Verona, but there was still enough light for Reid to point out the main features as they drove to their hotel.
Sharply etched against the evening sky, and dominating the town, rose the great broken arches of the Roman amphitheatre, and Reid promised her that they would explore this on the following day.
“We’re too late for the season of open-air opera that they do here in the summer,” he said. “But you’ll still have plenty of more informal music in the open-air cafes around the centre of the town.”
“It’s fascinating!” She was glancing eagerly from side to side at the curious, almost mediaeval streets through which they were passing. And when they drew up at their hotel, she thought the place looked more like a rather broken-down palace than any hotel she had ever been in.
There was nothing in the nature of palatial suites in this hotel. No private sitting-room. But they were shown into a couple of pleasant rooms, with a communicating door. And when the porter pulled up the green slatted sun-blinds, Leslie looked out into a romantic-looking courtyard, where vines were growing, and a beautiful, brown-skinned youth was twanging some stringed instrument and singing “O Sole Mio.”
It was all very picturesque and intriguing.
“How do you like it?”
They had been left alone now, and Reid had come in from his room to look round hers and see that she had everything she wanted.
“It’s enchanting. Do you think the boy out there is a special stage ‘effect’? Or did he just happen to be there?”
“Oh, just happened, I expect.” Reid went to the window and leant out to exchange a few laughing words with the boy, who almost immediately broke into the poignantly gay strains of “Marechiare.”
“It’s delightful at first,” Reid said. “They’re a bit inclined to keep it up to all hours, but that’s all part of the life here. Nearly everyone goes to sleep in the middle of the day because it’s so hot, and that means that they stay up late into the night. Even the children. You’ll see, when we go out to get something to eat.”
“Aren’t we dining at the hotel, then?”
“No, no. It’s more fun out of doors.”
She agreed that it would be.
“Give me twenty minutes to wash and change, and I’ll be ready for anything,” she promised. “I must get into something cooler.”
“But take a coat,” he warned, as he went back into his own room. “It gets cold very suddenly.”
As she changed, she hummed a soft accompaniment to the song outside and felt her spirits lighten. The faintly fantastic atmosphere here, so unlike anything she had ever known before, seemed to whisper to her that anything could happen, after all.
The warm night air, the music and something else quite indefinable seemed to combine to create a sense of drama and romance, and, like everyone else who has ever known the beauty of Romeo and Juliet’s city, Leslie fell a victim then and there to the purple twilight of Verona and the spell which it casts.
“There’s something about this place, Reid!” she declared, when she joined him later, cool and enchanting in a flowered silk dress, patterned in vivid blues and greens against a white background, which seemed to accentuate her fairness and make her look very young.
“That’s what Romeo thought, I guess,” Reid agreed, smiling his approval as he took her coat from her and tossed it over his arm.
“Do we take a taxi?”
“No. We walk. Everyone walks here, in the centre of the town. Lots of the streets haven’t even got a separate pavement and road.”
So they strolled through the chattering, laughing, flirting crowds who thronged the streets, until they came to the great Piazza Bra, where, sure enough, a band was playing, and under the artificial lights the trees and plants in the gardens looked like something on a stage.
Couples strolled arm in arm in the darker paths of the gardens, plump, motherly-looking peasant women sat on the benches and knitted and gossiped as though it were early afternoon. And everywhere the dark-eyed, golden-skinned “bambini” tumbled and played and laughed and cried and got in everyone’s way.
“They ought to be in bed, surely!” Leslie exclaimed. “They’re just babies.”
“They’ve done a good deal of sleeping during the heat of the day, I expect,” Reid said. “They enjoy the cool as much as anyone else now. And if it seems an odd way to bring up children, by our standards, they none of them seem any the worse for it.”
That was true enough. Leslie thought she had never seen prettier, happier children. And presently, when she and Reid sat down at a table on the pavement and proceeded to have their supper, she divided her attention almost equally between her excellent meal and the charming, amusing children, who appeared to be kissed or slapped with equal impartiality by their fond parents.
Gradually any sense of time slipped away. One had the absurd and pleasant feeling that one could go on like this all night. And when, after a while, they rose to go, Reid said,
“You don’t want to go in yet, do you?”
“Oh, no. I feel I should be missing something.”
He laughed.
“We’ll stroll some more.” No one seemed to think in terms of anything more hurried here. “And I’ll show you one or two places that we can glance at now and explore better by daylight.”
As they walked along, he slipped his arm round her, partly to keep her near him when they came to crowded places, and partly because it seemed the natural way for couples to walk if they were young and happy.
She looked up at him and laughed a little, responding to the pressure of his arm with an eagerness she would not probably have shown if they had been at home. in England.
“Decided you aren’t frightened of me, after all?” he enquired, with an air of not unkindly teasing.
“Frightened of you! I’ve never been frightened of you,” declared Leslie with truth.
“Oh, yes. You were frightened of me yesterday evening. Kept on giving me nervous, wide-eyed looks, until I began to feel like the villain of the piece who’d threatened to ruin the old homestead if the heroine didn’t come to heel.”
“Reid! I’ve never looked like that in my life.”
“Then what was the trouble yesterday?”
“Why, I—I—there wasn’t any.”
He didn’t dispute that. He let them walk in silence for a few moments longer. Then he said, quite gently,
“Do you feel this marriage is a little too much for you in some ways, honey?”
“No, Reid.” She spoke softly, but without hesitation. “Not in any way at all.”
“Not even if I tell you that no man would bring his wife to Verona, of all places, and not expect to make love to her?”
“Not even then.” She was smiling, and some of the sweet confidence which had come to her during her wedding returned to her now.
He laughed softly, and bent his head to kiss the side of her cheek—a proceeding which was watched with approval and no surprise whatever by a plump, elderly Italian who was passing.
“Aren’t you going to tell me what was wrong yesterday?”
“Just that I thought—when I saw that great suite—and you were rather matter-of-fact about everything—and I remembered about—Caroline—”
“Why the hell do you want to quote Caroline at this moment?” he demanded, but not angrily.
“I don’t! It was just that—Oh, I didn’t know how you regarded me, Reid. I got nervous, if you like. But only in case you had some idea that the marriage was truly just one of convenience, and—and—”
“You’ve been reading too many modern novels, my sweet, all about people who behave any way but the normal one,” Reid assured her good-humouredly. “You don’t really think any man would marry anything as pretty and sweet as you are, and then decide to be brotherly, do you?”
She laughed, even a little more than the occasion demanded. For, out of the past, there had risen the ridiculous memory of Oliver saying she was like a sister to him. It had hurt so unbearably at the time, and now it hurt no longer.
And with that memory went the further recollection that she had drawn some sort of comparison even then, and told herself that in no circumstances whatever would Reid regard her as a sister.
“It’s all right,” she said happily. “I expect I was silly and fanciful. It isn’t always easy to—to understand someone else’s reactions, even when you know them very well.”
“And you consider that you know me very well?”
“Pretty well.”
“But you’re satisfied with the idea that you should know me better.” It was almost a statement, rather than a question.
“Yes, Reid,” she said, and for a moment he tightened his arm round her.
Then he paused to point out to her the beauties of some twelfth-century church they were passing, and they didn’t talk any more about their inmost feelings or reactions. They might have been any couple of interested tourists taking their first enchanted look at one of the old Italian cities.
Except that there was a glow of happiness in her face not achieved by all tourists.
They stayed in Verona for about ten days, visiting Venice and Padua, and hiring a car sometimes and driving out to Lake Garda when it became too hot to be comfortable on the plains.
If the scene had been dull and humdrum and the weather disastrous, Leslie would still have thought it the most wonderful place in the world, and this the most wonderful holiday. For in her new-found happy intimacy with Reid she had discovered, it seemed to her, an entirely new meaning to life.
She had always been of a reasonably happy nature, and her home background had been—in spite of Morley’s tragedy and her father’s weaknesses—a very contented one. But it seemed to her now that all the years before she had known Reid had a pleasantly negative quality. She had been happy, of course. As happy as she knew how to be then.
But as Reid’s wife she had discovered a source and spring of such radiant, positive happiness that she sometimes wondered how she had been able to bear life before she knew him.
She made no attempt to discuss it with him. To do so would have been to betray more to him than she felt she safely could as yet. But she could not know him as well as she did now without realizing that he too was happy.
How far it went with him, she could not tell. His relationship with her might well supply no more than the “negative content” she had known herself before she met him. It was possible that for him the heights could only be touched with Caroline.
So far as Leslie was concerned, they could have stayed there for weeks. But one morning, when they were idling happily over their breakfast of coffee and rolls, creamy butter and cherry jam, their post was brought to them, and Reid’s included a letter which had been forwarded on from France.