The Light Heart (20 page)

It had a dreadful finality, Phoebe thought, like a burial service—with or without love, war or no war, for better, for worse—happy like Dinah, resigned like Clare to a good
bargain
, confident and content like Virginia, in desperate courage like Rosalind—half-hearted and resolutely gay as she herself would be for Miles when the time came—there was no turning back when you had got as far as the altar. And Oliver? World without end for Oliver and Maia too….

At the reception in Edward and Winifred’s house in St. James’s Square, Rosalind stood in the receiving line with her chin well up, no whiter in the face than was suitable for a bride, and smiled docile indulgence as each new guest addressed her twitteringly as Your Highness. Prince Conrad towered beside her in his black Hussar’s uniform with the silver braiding and the slung pelisse, reminding everybody of Rupert of Hentzau, and laughing good-naturedly more than once when someone said so. His manner towards his bride in
the presence of her friends was exactly the right mixture of conquest and devotion to make chills go up and down the spines of the more impressionable ladies, who were inclined to assure one another in asides that Rosalind was really a very lucky girl, but God help her if she tried to cross him.

In her becoming bridesmaid’s gown Phoebe drank champagne with Oliver and Charles and observed their masculine aplomb with envy and respect as the reception guests swirled round her. Men knew how to hide their feelings behind trivialities, knew how to swallow the lump in their throats and keep the tears from welling up into their eyes. She wondered how they did it. Charles, she was sure, was on
the rack. And Oliver’s thoughts during the ceremony must have been much the same as hers—the single long look he gave her now as he raised his glass told her that. But neither of them betrayed himself in any way. Both were armoured in immaculate and smiling composure, while she felt miserably tearful and ready to weep if anyone said Boo. It was too late now for Rosalind and Charles. But for herself and Oliver …

She set down the champagne hastily, convinced that it was giving her ideas. The time had come to help the bride into her travelling dress.

Mamma was in Rosalind’s room, of course, and the
bridesmaids
milled about in chattering confusion, admiring themselves in all the mirrors. They unhooked the diamond and silver encrusted wedding-dress and dropped it around Rosalind’s feet, and it was Mamma’s hand which steadied her as she stepped out of the shining circle—its weight attested the magnificence of the gown, and the diamonds were real. Then for a moment Rosalind stood alone, straight and slim in her sheer lacy petticoats, waiting for the other dress to be put over her head. Her eyes met Phoebe’s sympathetic gaze, and she tried to smile.

“You
will
write to me?” she entreated. “You
promise
to write to me every single month?”

“As long as we live,” Phoebe promised solemnly, and they reached for each other’s hands. Rosalind’s were icy. The white travelling dress came down between them, and their fingers parted reluctantly.

Rosalind stood like a doll while the dress was fastened. Someone said, “Oh, heavens, her shoes and stockings!”—they
made her sit down—the maid Gibson, who was to go with her to Buckinghamshire and eventually to Germany, knelt at her feet—Gibson’s hands were steady and unhurried—Gibson’s face, bent gravely over the bride’s shoelaces, was calm and kind—Phoebe waited till Rosalind stood up again, and then caught Gibson’s arm.

“Look after her, won’t you!” she said urgently. “Don’t leave her—no matter what happens, don’t ever leave her!”

Gibson’s plain face softened in an understanding smile.

“That’s not likely, miss,” she said quietly.

“And if anything
should
happen—be sure to let me know, whatever and whenever it may be. All the address you need is Williamsburg, Virginia, U.S.A. You can remember that, can’t you?”

“Yes, miss, I’ll remember.”

“And, Gibson—always make sure my letters get to her.” The woman’s eyes, half surprised, half comprehending, rested on Phoebe’s earnest face. “I shall always write once a month, or send a message,” Phoebe said. “If ever she doesn’t get them there’s something wrong—something on your end of the post. And you must find a way to let me know.”

“I’ll try, miss. But you don’t think they’d ever—”

“She’s Royalty now,” said Phoebe with that uneasy, recurrent sense of theatre which Rosalind’s affairs produced in her. “She’ll be among strangers, except for you. Enemies, maybe. You must watch over her.”

“I will, miss.”

Gibson turned away competently, unalarmed and self-possessed, to pick up Rosalind’s hat, and Phoebe stood struggling with her own emotion, dreading to make things worse by breaking down at the last minute. Rosalind’s face in the mirror as she adjusted the hat was set and expressionless, with an odd glitter in the eyes. The throb of the pulse in her throat was plain to see just below the jawbone. The net frills at the front of her dress were visibly jarred by the beating of her heart. Her fingers shook and fumbled at the hat-pins.

Then they kissed her all round, being careful of her hat, and her lips were cold on Phoebe’s cheek. There was a knock at the door and word was passed that His Highness was waiting.

Phoebe saw him put his hand possessively through Rosalind’s arm as she joined him, and found Virginia standing beside her. Together they watched Rosalind go, and then turned to each other, feeling old and sad and very fortunate themselves to be left behind. “Thank God for Gibson,” said Virginia simply. “I want to see Archie. I just want to
look
at him.”

Archie was not far away, but Phoebe’s unspoken desire to look at Oliver was cut off in its prime by his departure on foot with Charles, who everybody would have agreed ought not to be left to himself that evening. Oliver preserved a comradely silence as they strode northward from the square into Duke Street where Charles’s chambers were, and as they came opposite the door Charles said in his unemphatic way, “Like a drink?”

Oliver expressed a pious hope that a stiff whisky and soda might mitigate the barbarous introduction of champagne into his system at that time of day, and as they mounted the single flight of carpeted stairs to Charles’s rooms they were apparently absorbed in a discussion of why champagne was so agreeable at lunch, or even at eleven, so helpful at dinner, so essential at supper, and so utterly loathsome in the middle of the afternoon.

The unembarrassed silence fell between them again as Charles set out a decanter and siphon. Oliver sat with one knee over the arm of a big chair, watching his host and debating with himself. At last he said, “Charles, old boy, I’m afraid I’m going to confide in you.”

“
Must
you?” said Charles amiably, and approached him with an amber-filled glass in either hand.

“I know it’s rotten, but I can’t come at the answer any other way. I think first of all, I’d like to ask you a rather personal question, if you don’t mind.”

“Oh, very well, fire away,” said Charles, and their glasses
saluted each other briefly. “Cheers,” said Charles, and they tested the strong drinks and approved.

“Just tell me this,” Oliver said then with some diffidence. “How on earth do you do it?”

“Do what, old boy?”

“Watch the woman you love marry another man,” said Oliver brutally, and took a long thirsty swallow.

There was an endless pause while Charles, moving with his cavalryman’s effortless ease, shifted a chair to suit him and lowered himself into it, facing his friend. When he spoke it was in the same even tones he would have used about the polo score or the weather.

“Well, for one thing,” he said, “at first you’re fool enough to hope that you can bear it. You’re quite wrong, of course, because you never can. Bear it, I mean.”

“So what happens?” Oliver asked, his eyes on the glass he tilted against the light.

“Oh, nothing much,” said Charles with the ghost of a sigh. “You seem to hunt a bit, and fish a bit, and drink a bit—and you bore every woman you’re put next to at dinner, no matter how hard she tries, because your heart’s not in it.”

“What else?” said Oliver, when he stopped.

“Then, of course, there are the nights,” said Charles academically. “Sometimes they’re not much fun either.”

“What do you do about that, as a rule?”

“A Turkish bath helps. A bottle doesn’t. I’ve tried both.”

Oliver rose, glass in hand, and prowled restlessly about the room until he stood at the window with his back to Charles.

“You’re a better man than I am,” he said simply. “But I’m lucky, I shan’t have to stand there and see her swear her life away, out of my keeping.”

“At least
I
don’t have to go and do likewise,” said Charles, and Oliver glanced at him quickly, and away. “I can be alone in my misery, and I confess I’m rather looking forward to that.”

“I don’t mind telling you this whole business today has got
me thoroughly rattled,” Oliver confessed. “The things you have to swear to! Even at best it’s enough to make you think twice!”

“It’s the little American, isn’t it,” Charles suggested gently. “I know, I know, we don’t mention names and all that rot. But you began this, old boy, and I should just like to say before you regret it to the extent of dotting me one, if I were you I’d bust everything wide open and have her at any price.” He buried his face in his glass.

“Jilt Maia
now
?” said Oliver in quiet horror. “I’d as lief cheat at cards!”

“Doesn’t it occur to you that you’ll be cheating them both if you go on as you are? Besides, I thought your C.O. was dead against your marrying Maia.”

“He was, rather. But I talked him round.”

“Outwitted yourself, eh?” Charles grinned sympathetically. “That can be very humiliatin’.”

“I do feel the most awful ruffian, you know,” Oliver said with contrition.

“Oh, you are that,” Charles agreed readily. “But little Miss Sprague can’t see it, bless her.”

“I say,” said Oliver. “How did you guess? Who it was, I mean.”

Charles pondered the lowering tide in his glass.

“I think you ignore one another too thoroughly,” he decided. “It’s a bit overdone, old boy.”

“Lord, do you think anyone else has noticed?”

“Doubt it. People are damned unobservin’. The decanter’s nearer you than me. Help yourself.”

“Thanks. How would it do to get absolutely blazing tight for once?” Soda fizzed briefly into Oliver’s glass.

“Can if you like,” said Charles. “I always have the most damnable head the next day, though, and if I remember, so do you.”

“Oh, awful. I suppose because we’re ruddy amateurs. Chaps who make a business of drinking seem to get along all right,”
said Oliver enviously. “Look here, am I being a nuisance, or hadn’t you any plans for this evening?”

“I have one ticket to the Alhambra,” said Charles. “We could turn it in and get two together if you’ll join me. I’m not damn-all keen on my own company, if you must know.”

“Good. Nor am I. Let’s hang together on it, shall we? Have a whopping great dinner somewhere, eat like pigs, drink like fish, and sleep through the show! I’m only killing time till tomorrow afternoon, anyway, when I am permitted to take Phoebe shopping for presents for the family in Williamsburg, and then to Guntcr’s for tea. It’s got to be all very cheerful, and it’s got to last us a long time. They sail at the end of the week.”

The choice of a suitable place to dine involved considerable discussion, which Charles entered into with apparent zest, and all the while he was thinking what a lucky dog Oliver was, with a whole afternoon ahead of him in which to be cheerful, and Charles could not but compare that to the wretched ten minutes he had had with Rosalind in the fitting-room at
Lucile’s.
After dreading through many sleepless hours the moment when he would have to say a final Good-bye to her with all the world looking on, he was spared that last ordeal, for she had been swept past him on Prince Conrad’s arm on her way to the motor, and there was just that second when her eyes, searching among the faces grouped round the door, had found him. And that was to be his memory—her white face, with its set, gallant smile, and her eyes, unnaturally wide and dark, meeting his as she passed beyond his reach.

Each time it came he flinched and stirred and frowned like a man in pain, and knew that there was no relief but what time could bring, and that grudging and small. Gradually this first sharp agony of loss would fade, he supposed, into a drag endurance, just as for Rosalind some kind of familiar routine would bring a form of reassurance and confidence. People got used to things, he had heard, even amputations. People could get used to almost anything. Meanwhile Oliver was suffering too, and taking it well, and they could always hang together.

L
IKE
Oliver, Phoebe had been killing time till the promised shopping tour. But the American mail arrived that morning, and in it was a letter from Miles, who had got the job in Louisville, telling all about the house he had found there for them to live in, and how his mother had sent his Mammy’s youngest daughter (who was named October because she was the eighth child, though her birthday was in June) and October’s son (who was called Septimus because he was born in September) up from Charlottesville to look after him and to be her household staff when she came to Louisville after the wedding. Reminded thus of the perennial family joke of the darkies’ names, so familiar as to require no comment from Miles, Phoebe felt homesickness wash through her in a warm, unexpected wave. She had been going over her shopping list, to make sure that after today nobody would be forgotten, and counting up what remained of the extravagant cheque Bracken had given her to buy presents with. Today was just to finish off the odds and ends. They would have to go back to the artificial jewellery place in Oxford Street to get some kind of gaudy brooch for October and one of the horse-shoe scarf-pins for Septimus. Oliver would think that was fun. And dozens of embroidered handkerchiefs from Peter Robinson’s for everybody—he could help choose them. And another silk scarf from Liberty, and then to Hamley’s for toys for Belle’s and Marietta’s children. By that time they would want tea!