Away Went Love (14 page)

“Engaged!” For once Mrs. Tamberly’s languid well-controlled voice ran up to a gratifyingly high note of astonishment. “What are you talking about?”

“About Hope and Uncle Errol, I expect,” remarked Tony, coming in just then to rejoin his family, although at least half his attention was still on an extremely friendly field-mouse which he had brought in with him.

“Take that disgusting thing out of the room
at once,”
Mrs. Tamberly said, this time without raising her voice. “And what are the children talking about, Errol?”

Tony went reluctantly to release the mouse through the french windows, while Errol drew Hope’s arm through his and said coolly:

“I’m afraid we’re giving our family the news in a rather haphazard manner. But—yes, it’s quite true. Hope and I are going to be married.”

Suddenly remembering in quite astonishing detail the whole of her conversation with Mrs. Tamberly at lunch, Hope found herself blushing furiously.

“Dear me,” Mrs. Tamberly said slowly, “what an extraordinary thing.”

“Nonsense, Mother.” Errol sounded faintly irritated. “I find it nothing less than natural to fall in love with Hope, and—come to that what is there so strange in her agreeing to marry me?”

Mrs. Tamberly transferred her thoughtful gaze to Hope, and remarked without rancor:

“Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you, child. And, in your own words, I
hope
you’ll be happy.”

Those had not been Hope’s own words, of course, but they recalled the conversation at lunch even more sharply to her mind. She wanted very much to say something light and gay and self-possessed, but could think of nothing. It was Errol’s voice which broke the silence, and it held that edge of harshness which Hope had previously associated with scorn but which some new inner knowledge now told her was nervousness.

“Of what did you warn Hope?—Something in connection with me?”

“Nothing of consequence, darling,” Mrs. Tamberly assured him in a tone which dismissed him and all his affairs as trivial. “The child knows what I mean.”

The child knew so exactly what she meant that for a moment her own discomfort absorbed all her attention. Then she glanced at Errol, and suddenly personal embarrassment was too small a thing to worry about.

That he was angry she knew from the particular set of his mouth, but that too seemed unimportant. What arrested her attention and shocked her beyond belief was the expression of his eyes. Baffled and intensely wretched, they gave for one moment, Hope felt sure, an absolutely accurate reflection of his thoughts.

Without waiting to think about the advisability of her action, Hope eagerly caught him by the arm.

“It was nothing really, Errol. Your—your mother told me she didn’t think you’d ever marry anyone unless you were terribly in love with them. But then I—I don’t think I’d want anyone to marry me unless he
was
terribly in love with me. So it’s all right you see. It’s all right.”

She spoke with an urgency and an anxiety she could not have explained, and the face which she raised to him was bright with an artless eagerness which could as well have been Bridget’s.

For a moment he looked down at her without his expression altering. Then he slowly put his arms round her, and bending his head, very gently kissed her upturned face.

“Thank you, darling,” he said very quietly, and smiled at her.

It was such an entirely different kiss from the one he had given her earlier, such an entirely different scene from any she had ever imagined sharing with Errol, that for a moment Hope was more shaken than ever in her life before. The terrific strain of the last few days, the sudden relaxing of her tense resentment towards Errol, combined to crumple her self-control. And, with a sudden absurd and inexplicable desire to cry, Hope hid her face against him.

She heard him laugh, but with quite extraordinary tenderness, and his hand ruffled her hair with a sort of amused gentleness.

“All right,” he said, as though he knew all about her silly desire to cry. “There’s no need to be upset.”

“I’m not upset,” Hope explained in a muffled voice, while Mrs. Tamberly looked on with a certain amused, cynical surprise and remarked:

“Well, Errol, I somehow imagined you’d made quite a different sort of effect on the child. But it seems even the most experienced of us can be mistaken.”

“It seems so,” he agreed quite pleasantly.

And then tea was brought in, and Hope looked up with as cool an expression as she could manage, said something about taking her coat upstairs, and made her escape out of the room.

As she ran upstairs and into the charming bedroom which Mrs. Tamberly had said (with reservations) she was to consider her own, Hope confusedly cast her mind back over the scene which had just taken place.

‘How ridiculous of me to go all emotional like that!’ she muttered crossly to herself. ‘Clutching Errol and sniffing into his coat like—like Bridget. It’s too childish!’

But she knew that something quite irresistible had moved her to speak as she had—and then suddenly the scene had been too much for her, and her over-strained nerves had given way for a moment.

Silly, of course, but understandable.

The great thing was not to exaggerate the importance of the scene, but to behave now with practical good sense, and to present to Mrs. Tamberly’s shrewd and interested scrutiny a calm and well-bred composure which might—as in Mrs. Tamberly’s own case—cover anything and everything.

Without allowing herself to panic about it, Hope told herself that the situation in the next few weeks was going to be horribly difficult. There were her own feelings to be controlled and hidden. There were Errol’s feelings to be
—
to be—well, dealt with. There was the children’s peace of mind to be left as much undisturbed as possible. And there was Mrs. Tamberly to be reckoned with in a variety of ways.

As Hope washed her face and combed her hair, she decided that, at least, Mrs. Tamberly was not angry or disgusted over the match. Rather cynically amused would best describe her attitude. And Hope found herself hoping devoutly that she would not be subjected to amused but clever questioning, under the guise of friendly interest.

However, she need not have worried. By the time she came downstairs to tea, the subject of her marriage appeared to have been accepted into casual conversation as a topic of distinct but everyday interest.

The twins were reassuringly matter of fact about it, and, not unnaturally, considered it from a strictly personal point of view. To their way of thinking, Mrs. Tamberly, in getting married, was doing a peculiar, if very desirable thing. But Hope was doing what elder sisters might well be expected to do sooner or later, and was most considerately consolidating their own position by her thoughtful choice.

“It’s going to be terribly nice with you here all the time,” Bridget told her hospitably. “You won’t go to the Laboratory any more when you’re married, will you?”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Hope began quickly. But Mrs. Tamberly stared at her in astonishment.

“Darling child, you won’t want a
job
when you’re married to Errol.”

“But—” Hope saw a new and terrifying life engulfing her and everything familiar to her.

“You can do exactly as you like,” Errol said calmly, helping himself to thin bread and butter with great deliberation.

“But, Errol, that’s ridiculous,” protested Mrs. Tamberly, with much more energy than she usually displayed. “No man in your position would expect his wife to work for her living.”

“I don’t expect Hope to do that.” Errol smiled. “I think I can make shift to keep her. But if her work at the Laboratory interests her so much that she doesn’t want to give it up immediately, then she is quite at liberty to follow her own inclinations, so far as I am concerned.”

Mrs. Tamberly looked quite vexed at what she considered a ridiculous point of view. But Hope said, “Thank you, Errol,” in a voice that shook slightly, and her quick glance at him said a great deal more.

“Anyway, she wouldn’t be giving it up immediately,” Bridget pointed out. “I suppose you’ll be engaged for a bit, won’t you? People usually are. When are you going to be married?”

“Quite soon,” Errol said, in exactly the same quiet, noncommittal tone he had used for saying that Hope might do exactly as she wished about keeping on her job at the Laboratory.

In this at least, Hope realized with a slight start, the choice was not being left to her. Errol meant their marriage to be arranged and settled before there was any chance of a retreat. As clearly as if he had said it, she realized that
he was
willing to make the marriage as easy for her as possible
—
but go through with it she should.

“We hadn’t really got as far as discussing wh-when we’d get married, had we?” Hope said carefully.

“No. But”—he turned to her with a smile which surprised her by its brilliance—“you agree to a short engagement, don’t you?”

With the feeling that, although the situation was entirely in his hands, she must make some show of having a say in the matter, she asked:

“What do you call a short engagement?”

“A month?—six weeks?”

“Errol! The child won’t even have time to get a decent trousseau together,” exclaimed his mother.

A month! thought Hope. Six weeks. And then:

“She can buy the rest of her trousseau afterwards,” Errol said calmly.

“I think a month or six weeks is a good idea,” Bridget declared. “That’ll take us nicely into next term and then Tony and I can come home specially for the wedding.”

“Oh, have we got to go to it?” Tony asked without enthusiasm.

“Of course! I shall be a bridesmaid,” Bridget told him. “And you can be a page, I expect.”

“I will
not
.”
Tony was quite emphatic about that.

Hope laughed—a little nervously, only everyone took it for excitement—and said Tony would not be expected to be anything so embarrassing, but she hoped he would come to the wedding.

“Oh, all right,” Tony said grudgingly. “But get it over early in the term, will you? My week-ends get awfully booked up after Whitsun.”

“It seems that everyone is in favor of an early date,” remarked Mrs. Tamberly. “And I must say I feel it’s sensible. Then you won’t have to struggle with a housekeeper, after all, Errol. For Hope will be coming here almost as soon as I leave.”

“But if I keep on my job?” began Hope.

“Well, then, it will still be
your
business to struggle with the housekeeper,” Mrs. Tamberly pointed out, not without malice.

And Hope tried to imagine herself coping with a housekeeper, the house—and Errol.

The point was not pressed any further. Hope thought that Errol, having established the idea of an early marriage, was perfectly willing to leave such a detail as the date to her.

She hardly knew whether she was soothed or agitated by everyone’s cool acceptance of the idea of her marrying him. Until today it had seemed to her such an utterly fantastic notion that its sheer strangeness was almost frightening. No one else seemed to see it that way, however, and inevitably Hope was influenced by the general feeling.

She gradually found herself taking part quite easily in the ordinary routine discussions and arrangements of the household and—most extraordinary of all—when she finally went to bed, she fell almost immediately into a dreamless and refreshing sleep, regardless of the fact that she now had full opportunity to fret and worry in miserable solitude to her heart’s content.

The next day was beautifully fine and sunny. Hope woke to a feeling of vague depression, which was immediately succeeded by a sharp realization of all that had happened yesterday, and then by the pleasant consciousness that it was a fine day and that she was ready for her breakfast.

She felt faintly ashamed that such mundane and normal matters could displace the feeling of near-tragedy which had assailed her. Then she decided that the most sensible thing was to go down and enjoy her breakfast. Which she did.

After breakfast, she and the twins had just begun to discuss plans for the day, when Errol, who had gone to answer the telephone, came back into the room to say:

“It’s for you, Hope. A call from London.”

“From London!” Immediately her thoughts flew to Richard, and some of the color left her cheeks.

She hoped Errol had not noticed, but she thought from the glance he gave her as she went out of the room that he had not only noticed her loss of color but drawn the right conclusion with regard to her thoughts.

It was not, however, Richard’s voice which answered her nervous “Hello.” It was Enid’s voice, rendered slightly squeaky by distance and excitement.

“Darling Hope! I just had to ring up to congratulate you!”

“Congratulate me?” For a moment Hope wondered if Enid were gifted with clairvoyant powers. “But how on earth did you know?”

“Why, darling, it’s in the papers. At least, in all the gossipy kind of Sunday papers that go in for that sort of thing.”