The Light Heart (27 page)

“Oh, that,” said Phoebe ruefully. “What a long time ago it was.”

“Have you forgotten him?”

“No.”

“Aren’t you ever going to fall in love again?”

“I don’t know. I’ve tried. I’ve
liked
lots of people, but—not quite enough. I suppose I’m a fool not to marry one of them anyway and have some sort of life,” she finished with a doubtful glance at Rosalind, who had married someone she hardly liked at all, and it had turned out all right—hadn’t it?

But Rosalind made no answer to the opening she had left, and sat poking the ferrule of her parasol into the gravel at her feet.

“Did you know Oliver was at Aldershot now?” she asked at last.

“No. Does that mean he’s come back to England for keeps?”

“For quite a while, anyway, I should think. He’s got his family there, and Evelyn saw them in London not long ago. She said he looked awfully fit, and Maia was just the same.”

“And the child?” Phoebe asked.

“Like Maia, Evelyn said. Exactly. Isn’t it a pity? And my Victor is all from Conny’s side. I did want a girl, but I don’t suppose I shall have another, it was very bad last time. There’s something wrong with me, so I can’t do it properly. They seem to think it’s my fault, because I’m afraid. I don’t know how one can
help
being afraid, especially—” She broke off, and Phoebe sat beside her, silent and embarrassed, wishing she had sufficient knowledge and experience to follow Rosalind into these dark mysteries and offer consolation or comparisons. “I’d like to see Oliver again—you can’t be dismal long with him around,” Rosalind went on after a moment. “I used to be rather like Oliver once, wasn’t I?—back in my lighthearted days I mean.”

“My darling—aren’t you lighthearted any more?”

“Not always.” Rosalind shook her head, and her jaw was set. “I’m losing my grip, I think. Sometimes I get very sorry for myself, and that’s a mistake. In fact, it’s a crime. After all, I’m very well off here, compared to lots of people I know, and I have everything I could possibly want. Is Charles still at the War Office?”

“He was, the last I heard.” Phoebe’s eyes were compassionate.

“He must enjoy that. It would suit him. He’s like you, he never married, did he?”

“No.”

“Do you—think it is still because of me?”

“I do.”

“It must be wonderful—to care as much as that about anybody. I never have. I’ve always envied you the way you feel about Oliver, no matter how hard it’s been. If Charles loves me like that, I envy him too. I’ll never know what it means now—to be in love that way. Everybody has the right to it—once.”

“It’s not much fun,” Phoebe assured her wryly.

“No, perhaps not. But neither is it any fun to feel so empty—so
passed
by.
Why don’t you and Charles marry each other—then you’d both have something to go on with.”

“Well, for one thing, it might not appeal to Charles,” Phoebe tried to say lightly.

“I don’t see why not. He must be deadly lonely at the War Office,” Rosalind argued seriously. “And you must be lonely too sometimes, aren’t you?”

“Deadly.”

“Are you sure you won’t go on to England now that you’ve come as far as this?”

“Quite sure.”

“Imagine being free as air, the way you are, and choosing deliberately not to go to England,” Rosalind said with a sigh.

“Would you like so much to go?”

“I’d give my immortal soul to go.”

The words were low and not quite steady. The hands that held the ivory and gold handle of Rosalind’s parasol were not quite steady either. Phoebe laid her own quick warm fingers over Rosalind’s.

“Honey child—are you still so homesick?”

Under the broad, shady brim of her white hat Rosalind’s eyes filled up and spilled over, and the tears rolled down her cheeks unheeded and dripped on the fine lace of her bodice.

“I used to think I’d get over it,” she said slowly, with
difficulty
,
trying to control her breathing. “I used to think I’d outgrow it somehow. They told me when I had a baby everything would change and I’d forget I’d ever had any home but this one. I’ve had two babies—and each time I thought I was going to die—and each time when I
didn’t
die I thought maybe it was because I was meant to see England again—some day—not just Oliver or Mamma or Evelyn or Charles—not just the people I used to love and count on there when I was young—it’s the
place,
and the way it’s run, and the way it thinks, and the things it believes—I’d feel the same if there was nobody left in England who remembered me or cared what became of me. England is a state of mind, not just a country, and in Germany to be English is to be thought mad!”

Her face was shining wet with tears now, but because the bench could be seen from the distant carriage where it waited in the road she kept her head up and dared not use her handkerchief. Phoebe glanced over her shoulder at the two patient figures in cocked hats and polished boots, and rose, pulling Rosalind up with her.

“Let’s go on round that bend,” she said. “Let’s go and sit on the grass and take our hats off and pick wildflowers and behave irresponsibly, as though this was Gloucestershire. Let’s pretend they’ll all be sitting round the fire at Farthingale when we go back to tea, the way it used to be—Bracken and Cousin Eden and Dinah—they all sent their love, by the way—Virginia, and Oliver, and Archie, let’s pretend them all—even Charles, if you like. Speaking of babies, Dinah has started one at last, and is very pleased, though they’re worried about her for some reason. It’s due in September, so she can’t come to England for the Coronation, and Bracken is going to just pop over for a couple of weeks in June. Of course Virginia is insufferable, she’s got three now, without batting an eye, apparently. Archie’s taking silk, did you know? That means they’re prospering financially, I suppose. Does it also mean he’ll be
Sir
Archie Campion, KC? Oh,
look
at the violets, I never saw anything like it, let’s just go and
roll
in them—!”

With her arm around Rosalind’s waist, they passed the bend in the path and the carriage was out of sight behind them. Phoebe whipped out her own handkerchief and offered it.

“C-can they see?” Rosalind quavered.

“No. They can’t see or hear. Blow.”

Rosalind mopped herself gratefully in silence, and Phoebe led her to a bank covered with moss and violets and they sat down. Phoebe took off her hat and threw it on the ground beside her, and after a minute Rosalind did the same.

“Conny hates me to cry,” she said shakily. “And he can always tell. It’s been months since I’ve given way like this—years, I think. Maybe it’s seeing you again—not that I’m not
glad
—”

“It does take one back, to be together again,” Phoebe agreed. She took a little gold powder-box out of her handbag and used the puff carefully on Rosalind’s face, which was trustfully upturned to her. “There we are, darling. Now how about a bit of my lipstick?”

“Well, just a touch. So long as Aunt Christa isn’t here. When we go to Paris Conny
likes
me to wear make-up.”

“And in spite of everything, you do get along pretty well with him, don’t you?”

Rosalind glanced at her oddly, around the mirror of the powder-box which she had taken into her own hand.

“I have to,” she said, and became absorbed in applying the lipstick.

“But I thought—”

“When I first came to Germany,” said Rosalind, and she was able now to speak unemotionally, as though they were
discussing
someone else, “I was a solid mass of rebellion. I hated everybody and everything. Conny’s father died and I couldn’t wear my pretty clothes, and I wasn’t even allowed to play the piano because the servants would think it wasn’t respectful. My lady-in-waiting then was a typical middle-aged
Hofdame
who reported everything I said or did straight back to Aunt Christa, who instantly tattled to Conny. But I’ve got Aunt
Christa to thank, all the same, for my life being possible at all today—and not quite the way you might think! It dawned on me very soon that Conny was all I had in the world, and that he was really in love with me and wanted me to be happy with him. And it was perfectly plain that Aunt Christa was doing everything she could to make him stop being in love with me and be sorry he had married me. Even in those days I was bright enough to see that if ever Conny stopped loving me I might just as well jump out of the nearest window. So I began to fight Aunt Christa for Conny, and that made it fun, and so far I’ve won!”

“You’ve kept him in love with you, anyone can see that!” said Phoebe.

“Well, I did have the advantage of Aunt Christa,” Rosalind remarked with her wide, disarming smile, a little more
knowing
now than it used to be. “I was his bride. When Aunt Christa had quite finished pointing out my shortcomings in the drawing-room after dinner, we went upstairs to bed—and then it was my turn.”

“To point out Aunt Christa’s shortcomings?”

“Nothing so easy as that,” said Rosalind sweetly. “I learned how to please him. And it had nothing to do with Aunt Christa!”

“I see,” said Phoebe. And belatedly she did.

“Besides—I suddenly stopped being afraid of him, and after that I was all right. I knew where I was. So you might say I’ve made a career of pleasing Conny, and I’ve got quite good at it. Because if you’ve got to live with a man as his wife, it is certainly much easier, to say nothing of gayer, to live with a pleased man than with a disgruntled one. The only trouble is that sometimes it’s difficult to predict Conny, because he’s only half German, and therefore not simple. The last time I cried, I remember now, was when Evelyn and Mamma went away after their last visit here, and we drove them to Breslau to put them on the train. Coming back with Conny in the motor, I got to thinking of what Evelyn was going home to—and by
comparison my life here at Heidersdorf suddenly became
unbearable
and I began to snivel. Conny was marvellous that day, and let me cry all the way home without getting the least bit angry.”

“Very kind of him!”

“Well, it was, really, because he hates to see me with pink eyes, and he says it’s not very flattering to him that I can still be homesick. He can be very forbearing. And then the next thing you know he comes down on you like a ton of bricks for something much less, like playing the piano when Aunt Christa wants to talk. And that reminds me, I must get it moved into the library before she comes back, there will be less fuss that way. Do you think when we stand up we’ll be all green where we’ve sat down?”

“Do we care?” asked Phoebe negligently, and stretched herself full length on the moss, reaching for the largest and fattest violet in sight.

“Well, we wouldn’t have cared once, would we?” said Rosalind, throwing herself down flat too. “Isn’t this wonderful, we always used to sit on the grass down by the tennis courts at the Hall, didn’t we, and thought nothing of it. Do you know, I haven’t had a tennis racquet in my hand since before Victor was born? I couldn’t hit a ball now to save my life.”

“I never could,” said Phoebe, who was not a sportswoman. “But it was pleasant to sit and watch other people trying so hard. I wonder if Charles still plays polo.”

“Of course he does, or he wouldn’t be Charles.”

The next half hour passed in aimless, comfortable chatter while they picked violets, bent over double till their hair-pins began to slide out. Then Rosalind remembered that it was just a little further along that the lilies-of-the-valley began, so they walked on and added lilies to their bouquets, which by now had begun to wilt in the stifling, unseasonable heat.

When they came back to where their hats lay on the mossy bank, their hair had come so loose they couldn’t get them on properly again, and strolled along to the carriage carrying
them in their hands, and were driven home that way. They arrived just at tea time, rather hot and tousled, but happy in a relaxed, schoolgirl way that neither of them had known in a long time.

Instead of turning into her own bedroom, Phoebe went on down the corridor to Rosalind’s to get a book they were discussing. There they found Prince Conrad, who as their absence lengthened had begun to get a bit anxious. Phoebe was aware of Rosalind’s English maid, Gibson, retreating
discreetly
through a further door as His Highness stood staring at them in genuine surprise and concern.

“Have you had an accident?” he demanded then, his eyes going from their uncovered hair to their flushed, shiny faces which needed powder, and their grass-stained, crumpled white dresses.

“No—just a childish afternoon picking flowers in the woods. Look!” Rosalind held out to him the bunch of drooping blossoms, but he took no notice of them.

“And you drove back like this in an open carriage?” he exclaimed, and his raking glance missed no detail of their general dishevelment. “You have had the effontery to return to my house looking like
gipsies,
for anyone to see?”

“But no one did see,” Rosalind assured him lightly, casting down her hat on the sofa. “Except the coachman and the groom and a couple of footmen and the man at the door, and you know as well as I do they’re all made of wood! Anyway, we’ve had a perfectly delightful afternoon being young again, and it’s done me a world of good, and you like me to be happy, don’t you? Smell!” And she raised the fragrant bunch of violets and lilies to his face with a smile of what seemed to Phoebe like calculated impudence.

But it worked. He caught her wrist in his big hand. His eyes were bright and searching on her face, and he seemed about to burst into forgiving laughter.

“Nine years married,” he said softly, and his
r
’s had got very German. “And still you can make my heart beat! It is
bewitchment.” His other arm clipped her round the waist, snatching her to him. “Am I master here—or slave? Answer me that!”

“How can you ask, when you know you’d have my head chopped off tomorrow if I annoyed you?” But she was smiling confidently, she was willing and pliant in his hold.

“You have annoyed me now,” said Prince Conrad. “But whatever it is you have been up to, it is very becoming—”