The girl in the blue dress (20 page)

Together they mounted the stairs to the sewing-room,
meeting no one else on the way. And, once
they were there, Mrs. Wayne shut the door and said, with a
dramatic
simplicity worthy of Toni herself, "Miss Farman, Sara has broken off her
engagement."

"Yes, I'm terribly sorry.
As a matter of fact, Toni
did tell me
just the salient fact, " admitted Beverley. "But is it absolutely
final, Mrs. Wayne? I mean, many girls do have last-minute doubts or a feeling
that, "

"She says she won't even discuss it."

"Does she give any reason for her
decision?"

"Only that she simply
doesn't want to marry him,
after
all." Mrs. Wayne raised her hands and let them fall again, in a gesture of
helplessness. "I don't under stand her. He is kind, he's rich, he's a very
decent fellow, and he is much the best match in the county. What does she
want?"

"Perhaps, " suggested Beverley, unable to
keep back the words, "she wants someone else."

"Someone else, Miss Farman? But who else could
she want? There is no one in our circle even comparable with Franklin, from the
point of view of marriage."

"She might, " Beverley said doggedly, "have
found she is really in love with someone else. Someone not
specially suitable, perhaps, but someone that she
wants.
These things do happen. Has she never given any indication of
such a thing?"

"No. Of course not." Mrs. Wayne looked as
though Beverley had suddenly broken into a foreign language which was not very
familiar to her. "She has been engaged to Franklin for months. Eithorpe
Hall has been renovated to suit her wishes. More than half her trousseau is
made, as you yourself know. How could she suddenly find that she wanted someone
else?"

"Perhaps, " again Beverley spoke rather
as though she could not help it, "perhaps it was not so sudden."

"I don't understand you."

"Oh, it was just an idea, " All at once, Beverley
was frightened at the way she had let the conversation
get out of hand, in her irresistible desire to put her own
doubts
to the test.

"Do you mean, " said Mrs. Wayne slowly, "that
she might have been fond of someone before Franklin came along?"

"It's, possible, isn't it?"

"But I think she would have told me."

Beverley was silent, surprised that Mrs. Wayne could
know so little about her own child. For if ever anyone kept her thoughts to herself
it was Sara.

For a moment Mrs. Wayne too said nothing. Then she
roused herself from what were evidently unpleasant reflections and spoke again.

"If this really is final, of course there
won't be any, any need for the elaborate trousseau we had planned. But, at the
same time, I don't want to seem to accept this ridiculous decision of hers.
Perhaps it would be best not to start anything new, Miss Farman. But I would
certainly like you to complete whatever you
have
already begun."

"That will keep me busy for at least ten days,
" Beverley assured her.
   

"And by then perhaps Sara may have come to her
senses, " Mrs. Wayne said, but without much optimism in her voice.
"Well, Miss Farman, we shall just have
to wait and see what
happens."
She turned away.

But, as she reached the door, it opened suddenly
and Sara herself came into the room. "Oh" she drew back slightly at
the sight of her

mother, "I, I didn't know you were here."

"I was just going." Mrs. Wayne spoke a
little coldly.

"And if you came to tell Miss Farman that your
trousseau will not be needed, I have already discussed this matter with
her."

"Oh, no. It wasn't that." Sara looked
only slightly abashed. "It was that I, I just heard her news from Toni, and
I came to find out if it were true."

"Miss Farman's news?" It was obvious that
in her
preoccupation with her own unhappy
problems, Mrs.
Wayne had not taken in much of what her youngest child
had so eagerly poured out. "Has Miss Farman
some news?"

"Why, yes. I, believe so." Sara looked at
Beverley, with wide eyes.

"I think, " Beverley heard herself say in
a calm, voice, "you must mean the reconciliation between Geoffrey and his
father. In an indirect way, I suppose it is my news too."

"Geoffrey? Geoffrey Revian?" Miss Wayne's
tone expressed the minimum of interest. Indeed, a sort of annoyed surprise
crept into her voice, as though in protest that anyone should put forward this
item of news as noteworthy at a time when so much else of import was happening.

"Then it's true?" Sara said quickly.

"Yes. It's true. Geoffrey was sent for last
night, as his father was very ill. There was a complete reconcili
ation, it seems, and today his father is a little
better.
He, sent for me, as he wanted to see, " she raised her eyes
and looked across at Sara, "the girl Geoffrey
was going to marry."

"And you, went?"

"Of course."

"And he, liked you? He could hardly do
anything else." Sara answered her own question, and in the same
flatteringly simple terms as Toni. "This will make a, a great difference
for you, Beverley, won't it?" The older Wayne girls tended to call
Beverley by her Christian name, even though their mother remained on more
formal terms.

"Not in the essentials, " Beverley said
quietly "At least, I hope not."

"But Geoffrey's prospects, his whole position,
will be altered. Instead of being an impecunious artist
struggling along on his own, he'll be the accepted only son of a
wealthy father. You can't say that doesn't make a great difference in your
life."

"I said it wouldn't make a difference in the
essentials. Beverley smiled faintly. "I was never marrying Geoffrey for
his social or financial prospects."

"Well, no." Sara pushed back her hair
distractedly I realize that." She was silent for a moment, and at this
point Mrs. Wayne, who evidently found the conversation not specially
interesting, went away, leaving the two girls together.

Beverley proceeded to pack up the work she had allegedly
come to fetch.

"So Mother has told you my news?" Sara
stood watching her.

"Yes."

"What did you, think of it?"

"I don't quite know, Sara.
I'm sorry to hear of any
happy
engagement going wrong. And I think that in many ways you and Franklin Lowell
suited each other.

But as I don't know your reason for breaking the engagement,
I can't really venture an opinion."

"I never really, loved
him, you know."

"Are you sure of that?"

"Quite sure.",

There was a pause.
"Then I don't think there is anything else to
say, " Beverley told her at last. "For Franklin is much too worth-while
a person to be fobbed off with less than
the
best."

"That's how I feel, " said Sara, but
rather perfunctorily, Beverley thought. Indeed, she doubted if Franklin's claim
to consideration had found much place in Sara's reckoning.

"Your decision is quite final, I take
it?" Beverley, who had packed up her work by now and was ready to go, looked
across at the other girl levelly.

"Oh, yes! I'm absolutely determined about it.
More so than ever now."

"Why do you say
that?" asked Beverley sharply.
"Oh,
I, don't know. I just meant that I, I'd had time to think things over during
the day, to argue it out with the family."

"I see, " said Beverley. "I'm afraid
I must go now. I have to catch my bus." She knew quite well that she had
more than ample time to catch the next bus, but she felt suddenly that she
could not stand there talking any longer to Sara, or she would have to start
asking frantic, angry, impossible questions. Her self-control was wearing thin,
and it was time to go, before she said anything which might precipitate another
crisis.

Perhaps Sara vaguely felt this too. Or perhaps she genuinely
had forgotten about bus time. Anyway, she made no objection to Beverley's
departure.

On the way downstairs she met no one, and in the hall
there was only Toni, to bid her a friendly and slightly conspiratorial goodbye.
But as she hurried unnecessarily down the lane, Beverley met the third of the
Wayne sisters, slowly and aimlessly wandering up towards the house.

"Hello, " Madeleine greeted her
dejectedly, "have you been up to the house?"

"Yes." Beverley once more' went through
the explanation about calling in to fetch some work she wanted to finish.

"It probably won't be needed now, "
Madeleine told her. "Have you heard the news?"

"About your sister's engagement? Yes."

"Isn't it the absolute limit?" Madeleine
kicked a stone in a rather childish way. "What does she suppose is going
to happen to the rest of us now? So much depended on this marriage of hers."

"Perhaps, " Beverley could not help
saying, "she felt that, in her own marriage, her own interests came
first."

"Oh, yes, of course, in a way. But Franklin
was ideal! As a husband, as a brother-in-law and as an
addition to the family in every way. He was so generous,
and
easy-going. Who else do you suppose would have Offered to pay for me at the
Dramatic Academy, for one thing?"

"No one that I know of, " Beverley said
candidly.

"But I don't imagine that he will withdraw
that offer,
once it has been made."

"Don't you?" Madeleine stopped kicking
the stone and brightened up enormously at this suggestion. "I never
thought of that. I supposed that he'd be so mad with the lot of us that he'd
just wash his hands of us."

"But do you really think he is like
that?" Beverley said, surprised that anyone could know Franklin Lowell so
long and misread him so completely.

"I don't know, " Madeleine confessed.
"He's very proud, in his way, you know. And men do hate having
their pride stepped on."

"Yes, of course. But, when
you said he is generous, you were quite right. It's the outstanding thing about
him. And I don't mean only material
generosity. Lots
of people manage to be that,
and yet they are spiritually
mean."

"Well, perhaps you're right." Madeleine
considered that and became still more cheerful. "Oh, Beverley, if you see
him, will you sound him, for me? I can't very well go to him myself, at this
moment, whereas
you, "

"I don't see that I can either, " put in
Beverley hastily.
    
 
_

"Oh, not specifically for that reason, of
course. But
you're bound to see him m the
next few days. He calls
in to see your mother sometimes, doesn't
he?" And Madeleine looked at her curiously.

"Yes, sometimes. How did
you know?"

"He mentioned it himself once. He says she's a
wonderful woman."

"Well she is, rather." Beverley smiled
and flushed with pleasure. "What do you want me to say, if I do see
him?"

"Oh, I leave it to you. You're clever at these
things, I'm sure. Bring me into the conversation somehow, and say something
about my, my hopes and ambitions __" Madeleine bit her lip suddenly, perhaps
at the thought of how those hopes and ambitions were being
threatened. "Just find out for me, please, Beverley,
find out for me, what he is going to do about his offer to me, now that
I'm not going to be his sister-in-law."

"Well, I'll do my best, " Beverley
promised. "Though, mind, " she warned Madeleine, "I'm not
prepared to say anything which will sound as though I think his chief role is
that of general provider of good things."

"No, of course not, " Madeleine agreed.
"That would put him off more thoroughly than anything else, " she added,
a little naively.

Then she went on her way towards the house, obviously
in much better spirits, while Beverley continued in the direction of her bus stop.
As she reached this and stood there waiting, she could not help recalling the
first time she had waited there and how Franklin Lowell had come along to offer
her a lift. And, at that moment, almost as though her recollections forced
history to repeat itself, a long, hand some open car came spinning round the
corner braked to a sudden stop, and Franklin Lowell called out to her,

"Hello! The bus won't be along for another
twenty minutes. Jump in and I'll drive you home."

"Oh, thank you!" Beverley got into the
seat beside him. I was just thinking of you."

"How gratifying." He flashed her a quick
smile and then added, a trifle defiantly, she thought, "You've just come
from the Grange, I take it? and so you will have heard the news."

"Yes. I'm very sorry."

He shrugged and stared straight ahead, down the road
in front of him.