The Light Heart (13 page)

“But how do you suppose Maia—” Phoebe paused helplessly.

“There are ways!” said Virginia. “Home at last! Not even for Rosalind will I go there again and be
ogled
by the objection able men you always find in that woman’s house!”

“Do you call Prince Conrad objectionable?”

“Perhaps not. Only dangerous. But he’s new there.”

“Dangerous how?”

Virginia gave her a wise, oblique, amused look.

“Hadn’t you noticed?”

“I didn’t notice anything, except that he can’t be bothered with me if Rosalind is in sight!”

“Lucky you!” said Virginia, and the carriage drew up before their door.

Closer association during the rehearsals for their cake walk cemented a real friendship between the two girls, who seemed to understand each other almost without words, and with few outward demonstrations of affection. The bond as it grew went very deep, but Phoebe was taken by surprise one
afternoon when, as they were walking back to Hill Street after fitting her costume at the dressmaker’s in Hanover Square, Rosalind said suddenly, almost bashfully, “You know, I’m going to hate it when you have to go back to America.”

“Are you going to miss me?” asked Phoebe, rather pleased.

“More than anybody I’ve ever known.”

“We have had fun together,” Phoebe agreed, much touched and a little at a loss.

“I don’t mean just the fun. I’ve got a feeling you and I could be friends—lifelong friends, I mean, even when we’re quite old—when we could look back on this summer from our
bath-chairs
in the park and think how gay it was—how
free
we seemed to be—and being old wouldn’t matter so much if you were there to remember things with.”

Phoebe put her hand through Rosalind’s elbow and they walked on together, in step, without saying anything more for a few minutes.

“Do you dread getting old?” Phoebe asked sympathetically at last.

“Not just that—everybody comes to it, and some people do it very nicely. But sometimes I do wonder where I’ll be. And just lately I’ve been wishing you could be there too, and not way off in Williamsburg, wherever that is!”

“It’s funny you should say this,” Phoebe said slowly. “Because just lately I’ve been sort of wishing I needn’t go back.”

“Not even to be married?” asked Rosalind, and glanced quickly at her, and away again.

“Sometimes that all seems rather—remote.”

“Don’t you love him? Or shouldn’t I ask?”

“Well—not as much as I thought I did, anyway. But that doesn’t let me off. I’m going on with it.”

“I was hoping Oliver wouldn’t let you,” Rosalind said gently, walking in step, with Phoebe’s hand in her elbow, and felt Phoebe’s fingers jerk against her arm.

“Oliver? What’s it got to do with him?” Phoebe gasped.

“I know I shouldn’t have mentioned it,” Rosalind began uncertainly, very grave for her. “You’ve kept it well hidden, both of you. But it makes my heart
ache,
Phoebe, you were made for each other!”

“I don’t—know what you mean, I—I—”

“Darling,
don’t
try to lie to me, I know I had no right to say a word, but if only you
could
marry Oliver and stay here in England, then I would have somebody to be old with, and in the meantime we’d all be so happy together!”

“But how did you—” Phoebe was appalled, and felt hot and cold by turns, as though she had somehow betrayed a secret that was only half hers. “Do you think anyone else has noticed anything?”

“No, of course not. Do you remember the night of
Winifred
’s party, when Clare told you Oliver shouldn’t dance so much because he was always in pain? I happened to be standing close by, though you didn’t notice, and I happened to see your face. And then when he came to claim his next dance, I
happened
to see his. And when you came back to supper from wherever you had been, I had a good look at both of you, and then I knew.”

“Well, good heavens, if it was as plain as that—”

“It wasn’t plain at all,” said Rosalind firmly. “I just
happened
to notice. And I know Oliver pretty well, don’t forget.”

“Rosalind, you aren’t—you couldn’t ever be in love with him yourself?”

“With Oliver?” Rosalind laughed the spontaneous,
fat-
sounding
chuckle which came so strangely from her delicate throat. “It wouldn’t be decent! He’s like my own brother! Can’t you save him from Maia? Has this Miles of yours got a lot of money or something?”

“None at all.”

“Oh. Then why do you have to marry him?” asked
Rosalind
, for whom life had always been kept so simple.

“I’ve promised.”

“You mean your people would make a fuss?”

“It isn’t my people,” Phoebe explained patiently. “It’s Miles. He counts on me. I couldn’t go back on him.”

“But if he hasn’t got any money you might not be able to come back to England every year!”

“Perhaps never. This trip was just a present from Aunt Eden.”

“Oh, but you’ve
got
to come back sometimes, I shall be wretched if you don’t!”

“We can write to each other. Always.”

“I shan’t be much good at that, I’m afraid,” said Rosalind, whose idea of correspondence was thank-you notes and bread-and-butter letters.

“You could tell me—the news,” said Phoebe, not quite steadily, and Rosalind glanced into her face again, and tight ened her elbow on Phoebe’s hand, pressing it against her side.

“Yes—I’ll try to do that,” she promised.

“And you’ll be getting married yourself, you know,” Phoebe reminded her, and Rosalind sighed.

“I suppose I shall, and what a bore
that’s
going to be!”

“If you don’t mind my asking—isn’t there anybody you love?” Phoebe ventured.

“If only there
was!”
cried Rosalind unexpectedly, and her animated little face was quite tense and distraught, so that Phoebe could hardly believe her eyes, for here it was again—things going on inside people you saw every day and you never guessed. “What’s the
matter
with me, Phoebe? Why can’t I
care
about somebody? Even if it broke my heart, I’d rather that than never know what it’s like at all!”

“You’ve got lots of time yet,” said Phoebe uneasily, not knowing how to meet this unforeseen side of the carefree, butterfly-minded Rosalind who had seemed never to give a thought to anything beyond her newest frock and the next dance.

“No, I haven’t,” said Rosalind flatly. “If I don’t marry this Season Mamma will wash her hands of me, she says so herself. It’s Evelyn’s turn, you see.”

“Maybe we’d better both just give up and be old maids together,” Phoebe suggested thoughtfully. “We could have a stuffy little house somewhere and keep cats, and get queerer and queerer.”

But Rosalind could not be won back to laughter so easily.

“They think Mamma is too particular about whom I marry,” she said, and her brows were knitted and her blue eyes were dark with unaccustomed apprehension. “But it’s my fault, really, that I’m so long about it. That is, I did refuse to marry Lord Meriton—over and over again I refused. Mamma was furious with me. But he was way past forty and
totally
bald and no taller than I am, and I should have had to just move in with his first wife’s belongings and live with them, and she’d hardly been dead a year, and the whole thing just gave me the
creepy-crawlies
, and not more than forty thousand a year went with it, and besides he was always patting my hand, and it
sounded
so silly! And then there was Sir Angus McBride’s son Willie, I baulked at him too, and Mamma simply took to her bed that time—but I’m
quite
sure he wasn’t altogether right in the head, and I should have been frightened to death to live in the same house with him. One time when he was waiting in the
drawing-room
I went in, thinking Mamma was already there, and she hadn’t gone down yet, and when he saw me he had some sort of fit—he grabbed my hands and began to kiss them, and then he grabbed
me
and tried to kiss my face—it was horrible, and I pushed him so hard he sat down plunk! on the sofa—luckily it was there behind him—and I ran out of the room and met Mamma on
the stairs and told her he wasn’t well and to get him out of the house quick—and she must have thought so too, because I’ve never seen Willie McBride since!”

“Maybe the poor boy was just awfully in love with you,” said Phoebe, bewildered by all these confidences, for now that Rosalind had begun to talk she seemed unable to stop, though they had reached Hill Street and would soon be at home.

“Oh, but it can’t be like that!” cried Rosalind. “I mean, I can’t imagine Oliver—Oh, please don’t mind my asking, will
you, but—what’s it like to love a man?” And as Phoebe
hesitated
, feeling inadequate and a little embarrassed, Rosalind hurried on. “I know it’s wrong of me to mention it, but Mamma won’t let me read novels, and I can’t get anything out of
her,
and I’m almost never alone with people like this, and you seem so
sure
of everything! Phoebe—you and Oliver had a
look
that night at the Hall—I made up my mind then that if ever I got a chance I would ask you, even if it made you angry, because somehow I’ve got to
know
—what had happened between you?”

And Phoebe said, confession drawn from her by the other’s compelling, unselfconscious need, in which there was no taint of curiosity, but only a terrified ignorance trying to right itself—“He kissed me—in the little belvedere down by the river. It was the champagne, I reckon—and a sort of good-bye. It won’t ever happen again.”

There was a silence. They had come to the foot of Virginia’s front steps, and Rosalind halted there and put the toe of her shoe on the edge of the bottom step and poked it with her parasol, looking down.

“Was that all?” she asked, very low, and Phoebe glanced at her in open astonishment.

“Of course it was all!” she said rather sharply, for in the first place she and Oliver had not been gone much over ten minutes, and what did Rosalind
mean,
what did she think—? Phoebe started up the steps.

“Please don’t be cross with me for asking,” said Rosalind, and her slim body drooped as she followed slowly up the steps, dragging her parasol like a tired child. “I don’t think you’ve any idea what it’s like to have to guess at everything, and wonder, and not
know
—”

Just then the door was opened to them by Virginia’s
powdered
footman, who said he was to tell them that tea had just gone in. That meant that Archie and Bracken were home, and everybody was in the drawing-room in a relaxed and talkative state of mind.

Within five minutes after she and Rosalind had joined them, Phoebe was almost willing to believe she had dreamed the conversation on the way home, for Rosalind was exactly as usual, cheeking Archie, laughing at Bracken’s jokes, and making a pig of herself over the coffee cream cakes.

T
HE
announcement of the King’s remarkable recovery, which would make it possible for his coronation to take place early in August after all, was made on the day of Virginia’s
entertainment
, and brightened everything up to a degree. Bracken decided to wait over in London till he got the story he had come for, and they all promised Phoebe that she would see the King after all, and Dinah said Thank goodness now everybody could stop having the jumps and settle down.

There was a dress rehearsal of the cakewalk in the
schoolroom
behind closed doors that morning, and considerable mystery had grown up over what they were going to wear, as nobody but Virginia and Eden and the two girls knew. Eden had not raised objections to Rosalind’s appearance in trousers, for she had seen Gwen’s performance in hers and considered them actually more modest than Phoebe’s short skirts.
Rosalind
’s mamma, who as a rule hardly let her out of sight away from home, was going through some sort of
crise
with her current admirer, and was trying a new hair tint which hadn’t come right, and was pleased that the dresses (
sic
)
were to come (at Virginia’s expense) from that new house in Hanover Square which was supposed to be terribly smart and dressed Lily Langtry and Margot Asquith. Consequently she had allowed her customary vigilance to lapse a little, in the
comforting
belief that Eden’s chaperonage would do, temporarily, as well as her own. Eden, of course, believed in allowing a responsible girl like Phoebe more discretion than Rosalind had ever been granted in her life, and while Phoebe never went out
in London alone, they did go together as far as Hanover Square unattended.

As a matter of fact, it was only Phoebe’s dress which was being made by
Lucile,
who had designed a gorgeous riot of cerise and yellow furbelows with a tremendous pink ostrich plume in the wide-brimmed hat. Rosalind’s outfit was being scrupulously tailored to her ridiculous measurements, and
consisted
of very narrow satin trousers striped in cerise and white, with a fawn-coloured poplin coat, a spotted Ascot tie, a white silk shirt, a brocade waistcoat, and an exaggerated pearl-grey topper, with patent leather boots and grey spats.

It made her look incredibly long and slender, and the make-up—dark
café-au-lait,
with a reddened mouth which only enlarged her own generous one without losing its shape—showed up her vivid blue eyes in a startling way. She never for one moment looked like anything but a girl wearing trousers—but she wore them irresistibly, without self-
consciousness
and without any noticeable modesty either.

Archie, who was by experience better able to see into Mrs. Norton-Leigh’s mind than either Eden or Virginia, awaited her reaction to the cakewalk with a kind of fearful joy. Archie anticipated that Mamma was going to get a real facer, and that Prince Conrad was likely to be less heard of in the future; which was all to the good any way you looked at it. The sort of ladies German Royal diplomats could consider seriously as future wives did not black up and wear trousers, even in the name of charity. The trouble, as Archie knew very well, was that the blighter was so filthy rich he could afford to marry a penniless girl if he wanted to—though not without considerable opposition in some German quarters. Archie surmised that opposition never bothered His Highness much. But he would never stomach the coon dance, that was one thing.