His voice went on and, to the best of her belief, she smiled and looked attentive. But nothing which he said really reached her. It was as though some small, vital connection were broken, and she sat there, isolated from the rest of the world by the immensity of what had just happened. Only some obstinate core of pride some instinct of self-preservation helped her to play her role so that Oliver should never, never guess what a fool she had been, or what a blow he had dealt her.
But she dragged her mind back from such reflections as that. Unless she kept every scrap of her remaining attention on what Oliver was saying, she would betray herself. And so, while part of her seemed to stand aside in stunned and leaden detachment, the rest of her played perhaps slightly over-played the role of the interested, sisterly confidante.
He was not, however, as she guessed, in a mood to be critical of a good audience. He wanted to talk of his happiness, and if she would listen and smile and put in a word here and there, that was all he needed. Indeed, it was not until she rose finally, and said that she must be going home, that he recollected affairs other than his own, and exclaimed,
“Good lord! I’ve done all the talking, I’m afraid. What was it that you were going to tell me, Leslie?”
“Tell you?” She looked vague for a moment, for she could not imagine there was anything she could have to tell the stranger that Oliver had become.
“Yes. You said you’d had some bad news at home or something.”
“Oh—Great-Aunt Tabitha died.”
She made the statement almost indifferently, for Great-Aunt Tabitha and her place in the scheme of things had shrunk all at once to inconsiderable proportions.
But Oliver was impressed. Living so close to the Greeves, and being so much one of them, he naturally knew all the implications which this announcement carried with it.
“It’s not exactly bad news, surely? I mean the old lady was a stranger really. And even the most tenderhearted and disinterested person never minded inheriting a fortune.”
“We haven’t inherited a fortune, after all.”
“What!”
“There’s a nephew or cousin or something.” Oh, she couldn’t go over it all again, she felt. Not now. With every feeling raw and protesting. So she compromised, hastily if a little untruthfully, by saying, “We don’t know the exact position yet. But we think it’s going to be rather disappointing financially.”
“Leslie, I am sorry!” He looked grave, and obviously made a valiant attempt to subdue his own radiant spirits to a level more in keeping with the misfortune of his friends.
“Oh, it may not be so bad as we feared at first.” She smiled with determined cheerfulness, because she longed now to escape, and her uppermost thought was that this conversation must not be allowed to take a new lease of life.
“How did your father take the news?”
“I’m not quite sure.”
“You’re not sure?” He looked astonished.
“I mean that I came away to meet you without having seen him after the news had been broken to him.”
“I say, it was pretty good of you to come here and listen to my vapourings with all that anxiety on your mind,” he exclaimed sincerely.
“Oh, no. I thought” She broke off and smiled vaguely, because that was the only expression with which she could hide the fact that her mouth was suddenly trembling. “I felt sure that whatever you had to say would cheer me, and”—supreme effort, but she made it—“it certainly has. I’m so glad for you, Oliver. But I must go now to the family,” she repeated.
“Yes, of course.” He took her hand and wrung it.
“Is there anything I could do? Would it be any help if I came along?”
“No, I don’t think so.” She managed to say that consideringly, instead of on a note of hysterical protest. “I’ll let you know how things are.”
“Very well.” He repeated his assurances of good will and, as far as she could remember afterwards, she somehow repeated her congratulations. And then, at last, she was free to go hurrying from him as though her remembered family responsibilities were what drove her on, and not just the terrible, devouring wish to flee from the scene where she had suffered such unutterable humiliation and shock.
Presently, when she knew she was completely out of his sight, she slackened her pace and, with a gesture of weariness and defeat, put up her hand to push back the heavy fair hair from her forehead.
But her hand never reached her hair. Instead, she suddenly found that she was desperately wiping the tears from her face while she sobbed aloud, and dropped to the ground.
“I ought to have seen what had happened,” she told herself fiercely. “I should have, but for our fatal family failing of ignoring realities and just waiting complacently for life to deliver the goods we most want. I’ll never, never, never be caught like this again! I’ll never believe anything I want to believe until it’s been proved to the hilt.”
The very intensity of her painful resolution forced another sob or two from her. And then to her horrified ears came a sound which drove her to the final depths of humiliation. Someone was coming towards her she could hear the light crackle of twigs underfoot as he came and she knew it was a contrite Oliver, coming to reinforce what he doubtless felt had been rather perfunctory expressions of sympathy.
What would he think, finding her here in a passion of tears? What was she to say, caught thus at a complete disadvantage, and stripped of every shred of dignity or defensive pride?
Although she knew he had dropped down on the grass beside her, she resolutely kept her face hidden, as though by doing so she might put off the terrible moment when he must speak, and show in his embarrassed and horrified tone that he had guessed the truth.
To her despairing fancy, the silent moments measured themselves out to incalculable length, punctuated only by a couple of stifled after-sobs from her which betrayed the passion of her previous outburst.
And then he spoke at last, and it was not Oliver’s voice. It was Reid Carthay, who said on a note of not unkindly protest.
“Oh, come, honey, don’t cry like that. No lost fortune was ever worth so many tears.” And she was scooped up, a little unceremoniously but with some dexterity, and found herself leaning exhaustedly against the family intruder, who was regarding her with a sort of humorous dismay.
CHAPTER THREE
LESLIE’S first impulse was to exclaim that no mere lost fortune would have made her cry so tempestuously. But the next moment she realized that, all unknowing, he had offered her a straw at which her drowning pride might clutch. Neither he nor anyone else need ever know the tragic folly which had prompted these tears.
Mildly embarrassing it might be to be thought capable of weeping unrestrainedly over the loss of a hoped-for fortune. But that was nothing to the agony of humiliation involved in anyone guessing the real truth.
So, instead of pulling away from him with some indignant denial, she continued to lean against his arm for a moment not altogether averse to having this support in her limp and exhausted condition and said,
“I don’t usually cry about such things. But it’s a little frightening to realize how different the future is going to be from anything we ever expected.”
“Yes, I can understand that.”
“Kate and I can manage well enough, I don’t doubt. And I suppose Alma will just go on being at school. Though it may have to be a very different school, of course,” she murmured in parenthesis. “But Morley. And Mother and Father—”
“Um-hm,” he agreed, rubbing his chin reflectively. “I’ve gathered that your parents constitute a formidable part of the problem.”
“It’s easy enough to criticize them,” she exclaimed quickly and defensively and now she did pull away from him, sitting up and trying, with a hasty hand, to smooth her tumbled hair. “It’s true that they’ve lived a comfortable, unrealistic sort of life based on little more than fond hopes. You can say they’re silly and outdated and all that sort of thing, but—”
“I wasn’t, really going to say anything of the land, you know,” he put in mildly.
“But the fact is that they’ve made a lovely home-life for us here always,” she ran on, not heeding his interruption. “Except for what happened to Morley, we’ve been a completely happy family. I don’t think anyone can ever have been happier or more carefree.”
As she looked back on past contentment, unlikely ever to return, her voice trembled for a moment, and in her effort to steady it once more she achieved a hard, almost resentful tone. “You can’t say they’ve done nothing worthwhile, when they’ve made their four children happy all these years.”
“No one is suggesting they’ve done nothing worthwhile—least of all myself, my sweet,” he returned, and that drawl which tended to broaden his vowels at times was very marked. “I’m not here to comment on the past. I’m here to see what can be done about the future.”
“Do you mean our future?” she asked incredulously.
“Your future,” he confirmed easily.
“But we aren’t exactly our business, are we?”
“No?” He smiled at her, so compellingly that she blushed a little and looked away. “You’re my only relations so far as I know.”
“We aren’t relations!” Her father’s remembered insistence on that point gave added emphasis to her denial. “At least, it’s a relationship of the very remotest kind.”
“The best type possible,” he assured her, and that lazy smile seemed to travel over her again in a way no man had dared to smile at her before. “Just enough to constitute a claim to notice, and not enough to lapse into conventional dullness.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said quickly. But, suddenly, for no special reason, she had a clear recollection of Oliver saying she was like a sister to him, and she thought that in no circumstances whatever would Reid Carthay choose to regard her as a sister.
“I’ll explain in more detail, if you like,” he offered amusedly.
But she said hastily, “No, thank you.” And when he laughed, she added, “I don’t see what you think you could do about our future.”
“No?” He punched little holes in the turf with his thumb and smiled to himself. “The situation isn’t all that obscure, you know. You folk have always expected to have the money that has suddenly come to me. It seems you even had very good reason to feel that way. That being so, I can’t do less than see you get some of it, surely.”
“Nonsense!” She was startled, and a little indignant again. “Father wouldn’t hear of such a thing.”
Reid Carthay looked sceptical.
“He’s in a rather nasty spot if he won’t.”
“I’m sure he is. But that wouldn’t make him take money from a stranger. He’s quite proud in his own way, you know.”
“I’m glad you had the grace to hesitate before handing me the word ‘stranger.’ ” He glanced up at her with a grin. “But, apart from that, your father has quite a strong moral right to some of this money, by any standards.”
“He wouldn’t think so,” Leslie insisted. And she hoped rather agitatedly that she was right, for it made her feel oddly uncomfortable to think of their being under a great obligation to this bold, smiling man.
“Then will you tell me what he—indeed all of you—can do as an alternative?”
The question was not offensively put, but it had a sort of good-humoured, irresistible logic about it. And she was silent, because, of course, there was no easy answer to that.
“It’s too early to say,” she declared at last. “We haven’t had time to do more than take in the essential fact.”
“Well, at least promise me not to cry about it any more,” he said, getting up and holding out his hand to her.
She longed to tell him, even then, that she had not been crying about that, for she hated to be thought so spineless. But the alternative of even hinting at the truth was so unthinkable that she could only put her hand into his and allow him to help her to her feet, while she said,
“I shan’t cry any more.” And in her heart she added rather bitterly, “Not even about Oliver.” For he belonged to someone else now—to Caroline Frenton. And to cry about some other girl’s man was the final humiliation.
When they reached home, she could hardly believe that it was only just supper-time. It seemed to her that she had lived through almost a lifetime of experience since she had left the house. And now here was Alma hopping up and down on one foot and chanting, “Cold chicken for supper,” just as though the world had not been turned upside down.
Somewhat to the embarrassment of the younger Greeves, neither of their parents appeared at suppertime, and they were left to entertain the stranger as best they could.
And then at last supper was over, and when Katherine suggested they should have coffee in the drawing-room, to the profound relief of everyone Reid replied that he didn’t want any coffee, but would take his car and drive around and have a look at the district.
After he had gone, they all remained silent for a few minutes. Then Alma said rather defiantly,
“I like him.”
“Do you?” Katherine flicked her gold-tipped lashes effectively. “I can’t help feeling what a relief it is to have our home to ourselves again!”
“But I think he means well,” Leslie said.
“A confoundedly dull tribute to pay anyone,” declared Morley. “I hope he isn’t going to thrust his money down our throats. I’ve always had a sneaking sympathy with the nouveaux riches before. But really they mustn’t be quite so nouveaux or quite so riches.”
And, for a moment, he looked extraordinarily like his father.
“I don’t know.” Suddenly Leslie felt a most rare irritation with her family, and more particularly with Morley. And because the last thing she wanted was to make Reid a bone of contention in the family circle, she got up and said, “I think I’ll take a tray up to Mother and see how she’s feeling. I do wish she wouldn’t behave as though there’d been a death in the house, poor pet.”
The others laughed. But with an air of surprise and indulgence. For they were still judging the situation from the family standard of values, while she, Leslie realized with surprise, was beginning to wonder how these things would appear to an outsider.
Puzzled and faintly disturbed by the discovery, she arranged a tempting little meal on a tray, and went upstairs.
“Come in, darling,” her mother’s voice said plaintively, when she knocked at the door of the pretty, pastel-tinted, Greuze-like room which presented such a perfect setting for its owner. And, as Leslie entered, her mother turned a faintly tear-marked face towards her, and languidly shifted one or two of the frilled pillows of the sofa on which she was reclining.
“How do you feel, dear?” Leslie’s voice instinctively softened and took on an indulgent note.
“I’m all right, Leslie. It’s your poor father I am thinking about. And Morley.” Tears came again into the beautiful dark eyes.
“Yes, I know. It’s been a bad shock for us all. But I have a feeling things aren’t going to be as bad as we feared,” Leslie insisted cheerfully, as she propped up : her mother against the cushions and gave her the tray.
“I don’t really want anything to eat,” Mrs. Greeve said sadly. But she looked with interest at what her daughter had set out, and presently she began to do reasonable justice to the meal, while Leslie sat on a low seat near the sofa and made encouraging comments from time to time.
“I’m glad you feel so hopeful and cheerful about things, darling,” she said, looking with an air of melancholy indulgence at her daughter. “But then, of course,” she added with a sigh, “all this won’t affect you so deeply as the rest of us.”
“Oh, Mother! Do you think I don’t share the family anxieties?”
“Of course, my dear. But you have other plans to make you happy. You haven’t actually said anything about it, I know. But you and Oliver—”
“Oh, no!” Leslie cried sharply, and her mother stopped and looked at her in surprise.
Leslie bit her lip and tried to smile quite casually. Deep down in her heart was a sort of relief that she had not been the only one to read the situation wrongly. If her mother too had thought Oliver loved her, then perhaps she had not been so foolish and self-deluding to allow herself that belief. But she could not allow her mother, or anyone else, to continue in that fond error. And so, after a moment, she managed to say,
“Don’t make any romances between Oliver and any of your daughters, darling. He’s just got engaged to some girl in Pencaster and her uncle is going to take him into partnership and everything in his particular garden is just fine.”
“But, my dear—” Leslie wished her mother would not look quite so dismayed and astonished. It recalled for an agonizing moment what she. herself had felt when Oliver first told her of Caroline Frenton. “I felt certain—I thought you did too—” Mrs. Greeve stopped again, and suddenly her whole manner changed. Her vague and elegant melancholy was gone, and for a moment she became any mother anxious over her hurt child.
“Was it a great shock to you, darling?” she asked, so simply and tenderly that Leslie put her head down against her mother’s arm for a long minute and was silent.
“One gets over these things,” she said at last, without looking up. “You mustn’t think my heart’s broken or anything like that.” Somehow she must minimize things if she were to save her mother further anxiety. “But I was very fond of him, of course. More like a sister perhaps.” She even forced herself to say the hated word. “But I was rather shaken when he told me.”
“When did he tell you?”
“This evening.”
“Oh, dear” Mrs. Greeve stroked the bright head against her arm. “Everything seems to be happening at once.”
“Maybe it’s better that way, so that they can cancel each other out,” Leslie suggested, with an unsteady laugh.
“I wish there were something to help cancel out the shock your father has had,” Mrs. Greeve said with a sigh.
“Oh I meant to tell you. Reid had a talk with me. He has an idea that Father ought to have at least some of Great-Aunt Tabitha’s money. He says he has a moral right to it.”
Her mother made no scornful protests about that, as Morley and even Leslie herself had done. She thoughtfully considered what her daughter had reported.
“He is right, of course,” she said finally. “But I doubt if your father will see things that way. His pride has been terribly hurt over being omitted from the will, quite apart from the financial disaster involved. I don’t think he’d agree to take money from a stranger, even in the present dreadful situation.”
“Reid isn’t exactly a stranger,” Leslie found herself saying.
Her mother regarded her consideringly, as though she were mentally measuring her husband’s obstinacy—against that of the newcomer. But when she spoke what she said was,
“I wish he’d fall in love with Kate.”
“Mother, what an extraordinary thing to say!”
“And she with him, of course. Then he could marry her, and it would keep all the money in the family without hurting your father’s pride. Or Morley’s,” she added as an afterthought. “Morley is going to be very difficult too.”
“Yes, I know. He’s shown signs of it already.”
“Well it’s hard for him,” Morley’s mother said with a sigh. And they were both silent, thinking what it must be like to be the one young man in the family and virtually helpless in this crisis.
“Has your father had any supper?” Mrs. Greeve asked at last.
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Then I’d better go and see what I can do with him.” And in one graceful movement Mrs. Greeve rose from the sofa.
And Leslie, picking up the tray and preparing to follow her, wondered if, after all, their mother were quite such a sweet and helpless creature as they all supposed. Or was it that those very soft and feminine women had hidden strength and understanding where their own were concerned?
Leslie returned the tray to the kitchen, noticed that it was past Alma’s bedtime, and routed out her younger sister and despatched her, protesting, to bed. Then she went to her own room where, for half an hour at least, she could be alone with her thoughts and take mental stock of all that had happened on this most momentous day of her life.