Choose the One You'll Marry (21 page)

“Yes, thank you, mother. I—think it’s going to be all
r
ight. I’ll—tell you all about it later.”

“Very well,” said Mrs. Tadcaster, and heroically controlled whatever curiosity she must have been feeling.

Not for many nights
had Ruth slept so happily and tranquilly. No anxious thoughts troubled the lovely moments before she fell asleep, and no feverish dreams disturbed her rest. In some inexplicable way she seemed to be suspended in a small, safe vacuum, away from all the dangers that had so recently threatened her happiness.

This was not a very logical feeling, of course, for the situation had not really changed, in essence, and presumably Charmian was just as inimical and dangerous as she had always been. But it was so wonderful not to have to be the one who made the decisions.

For good or ill, Aunt Henrietta had taken all that upon herself, with that final, delicious instruction that Ruth was simply to be “her natural, affectionate self toward Michael.”

Whether or not Michael would now wish her to take this attitude was another matter. He had been very angry indeed when he abruptly broke off that telephone call, Ruth knew. But she simply could not believe that he had been irretrievably offended.

All the same, when she woke up in the morning and all the events of the previous evening swept back upon her, she felt she could hardly wait to put her new attitude to the test.

Her hopes must have been clearly reflected in her face at breakfast, for Susannah gazed at her pensively over her porridge and said, “You look as though it’s your birthday or something.”

“My birthday?” Ruth, who felt she loved everyone at this moment, laughed. “Do you mean that I look a year older than yesterday?”

“Oh, no! But you keep on looking pleased and excited, as though something nice has happened, and as though you guess
some other nice things are on the way,” Susannah explained comprehensively.

This was so exactly how Ruth did feel that it was difficult not to laugh aloud and congratulate Susannah on her sisterly acumen. But knowing only too well how formidable her little sister’s curiosity could be when aroused,
Ruth contented herself with smiling vaguely and saying that no doubt the brightness of the day had made her spirits soar.

“It’s not all that bright,” remarked Susannah, who had an exact mind.

But Ruth refused to pursue that matter further, and presently departed for the Excelsior, with an air of eagerness and pleasure in marked contrast to the unenthusiastic resignation with which Susannah started for school.

So deliciously absorbed was Ruth in considering the possible circumstances of her next encounter with Michael that, once again, she had almost forgotten Angus’s existence. But she had not been in the reception office more than a quarter of an hour before he appeared at the counter with several minor queries for her to answer.

They were perfectly legitimate queries, but she had the faintly annoyed impression that they were little more than an excuse for him to detain her in conversation. There had been a time, of course, when nothing would have enchanted her more than to attend to Angus’s small problems for him. But time is a strange and ruthless instrument of change, and today it just seemed to her that Angus was taking up an inordinate amount of her morning.

The fact was that Michael might come down the stairs or emerge from the elevator at any moment now, and she wanted to be able to give him her full, smiling attention, so that he would know immediately how completely the unfortunate coolness between them had passed.

She had even, on the way to the hotel, worked out exactly how she would let him know that she had changed her arrangements for the coming evening and would now be available to go out with him. For, if she were really to follow out Aunt Henrietta’s advice, why not do the thing thoroughly?

But so long as Angus chose to prop his handsome length against the reception counter and engage her in conversation, it was going to be extraordinar
i
ly difficult to convey the changed situation to Michael with no more than a glance or a smile.

“You’re not really listening to me,” Angus told her reproachfully, at that moment.

“Oh, indeed I am!” Professional pride brought a slight flush to her cheeks at that, and she endeavored to fix her attention courteously on Angus and, at the same time, look past him, in order to see who else was in the hall—an extraordinarily difficult proceeding, as anyone who has tried to do this will know.

“Well, you seem a little absentminded.”

“It’s just that—I’m rather busy this morning, Angus.”

“Too busy to discuss the possibilities of another program?” he inquired, with the air of one who carelessly dangles a fly before a promising trout.

“Much too busy,” Ruth replied distractedly, for at this moment the elevator door had opened, and Michael stepped out into the hall.

“Don’t be absurd!” Angus laughed incredulously. “It could be quite an important thing for you, Ruth. It might lead to a whole series—”

“I can’t discuss anything just now. Another time—” Ruth, hardly aware of what Angus had been saying, tried to catch Michael’s eye—and failed.

He walked straight past the reception desk and into the breakfast room, leaving behind him, so far as Ruth was concerned, an atmosphere of chill and despair.

“Why, what on earth is the matter?” Angus stared at her, and then glanced around over his shoulder. “Oh—I see.” He looked half sympathetic, half gratified. “Cut you dead, did he?”

“N-no. Of course not. It was just that he—he thought I was busy,” Ruth said quickly—but more as though she was trying to reassure herself than answer Angus’s question.

And then at last it seemed to dawn on Angus that he had chosen the wrong moment to discuss whatever plans he had.

“Well—” he smiled at her cheerfully “—don’t take it to heart. There are better fish in the sea, and so on. I won’t pester you now, darling. But sometime I want to talk to you seriously. About programs—and other things.”

Then he went away. Which perhaps was just as well, for so distracted was she that she had had it on the tip of her tongue to tell him that she never wanted to talk to him seriously again.

The morning dragged on, and presently Aunt Henrietta came down. She crossed to the desk to bid Ruth a smiling good morning, and Ruth did her best to respond with equal cheerfulness. But she evidently made a poor attempt, because Aunt Henrietta inquired immediately, “What’s the matter, child?”

“N-nothing.”

Aunt Henrietta did not even bother to answer this palpable bit of absurdity. She just went on standing there. And after a minute Ruth said, miserably and exactly, “Michael d-didn’t say good morning to me when he passed.”

It sounded absolutely idiotic, taken like that out of its context. But Aunt Henrietta seemed to understand immediately.

“Didn’t he?” she said kindly. “Well,
I
expect he hasn’t quite taken in the changed circumstances.”

Then she smiled and passed on into the coffee lounge, leaving Ruth slightly, though indefinably, cheered.

She had to attend to a piece of complicated bookkeeping after that, and was busily chasing a missing pound up and down long columns of figures when she suddenly became aware that Michael was standing at the other side of the counter.

“Oh—” She looked up, half startled, half enraptured.

“Can you leave that for half an hour?” he inquired, with singular disregard for the business of the hotel.

And so dazzled was Ruth by the suggestion that she, too, almost forgot the hotel’s interests to the extent of simply rising and leaving the office unattended. But at the last moment she did collect her thoughts sufficiently to look into the inner office and ask Margaret Robbins to take over the counter for her.

“I want you to come and have coffee with Aunt Henrietta and me,” he said, as he shepherded her into the lounge.

“Oh, but Mr. Naylor doesn’t much like—”

“Never mind about Mr. Naylor,” was the heretical reply that Michael made. And Ruth, feeling slightly lightheaded, decided not to mind about Mr. Naylor.

Aunt Henrietta was sitting at a secluded table in the corner of the lounge, and she smiled so brightly at Ruth’s approach that it seemed unlikely that she had had to do any explaining on her own account.

“Come and sit down, dear,” she said. “I’ve just been telling Michael that you were feeling badly about some fancied slight.”

“Oh—Aunt Henrietta—” Ruth went scarlet “—you shouldn’t have said anything like that!”

“Indeed I should.” Aunt Henrietta poured coffee and looked very much in command of the situation. “Misunderstandings are always best explained away frankly—and at
once. Michael seems to want a little explaining from you, too. He seems to think it was you who gave him what I understand is called ‘the brush-off’ last night.”

“Michael, I’m so sorry about that!” She turned to him eagerly. “It—it was all a mistake.”

“Was it?” There was a hint of indulgence in his smile, but only a hint. “It didn’t sound like a mistake at all. It sounded very final and cold.”

“Well, you see—” Ruth began.

“She thought you were in love with Charmian Deal,” put in Aunt Henrietta calmly.

“You—
what
!
”
Michael looked astounded and annoyed.

“I assured her you could never be as silly as that,” Aunt Henrietta went on complacently.

“Aunt Henrietta, you’re doing too much of the explaining,” Michael said, with a sort of good-humored impatience. “Let her speak for herself.”

“I was going to. In fact—now that your coffee is poured and the conversation well started—I’m sure you can manage better on your own,” Aunt Henrietta replied with a smile. “I think I’ll take—”

But even as she half rose to her feet, Charmian came into the lounge, and the odd way she stood and regarded the group in the corner seemed to impinge even on Michael’s consciousness.

As for Ruth—she felt suddenly and overwhelmingly panic-stricken. Aunt Henrietta took it better, but she did pale very slightly as Charmian came slowly across the lounge toward them.

“Hello,” she said, not addressing anyone individually. “What a—a charming family group.”

Michael got to his feet, though it was obvious that this interruption was the last thing he wanted at the moment.

“That’s exactly what we are, as a matter of fact,” he said pleasantly. But there was a slightly dangerous note in his voice, and Ruth found herself thinking, passingly, that he and Charmian could not have enjoyed themselves very much the previous evening.

“That’s what
you
think.” Charmian looked him full in the face and laughed shortly. “It’s a shame, really, to leave you in such a state of ignorance. I’ve a good mind to tell you just what—”

“No!” exclaimed Ruth violently. “Please think, Charmian, how you’re going to hate yourself afterward if you insist on making trouble now.”

“I never hate myself,” Charmian said coolly. “Only other people—if they stand in my way.”

“Will someone tell me what all this nonsense is about?” exclaimed Michael impatiently.

“Yes,” Charmian said deliberately. “I’ll tell you.”

“No.” It was Aunt Henrietta who spoke at last, and as she rose to her feet, Ruth thought again how incredibly dignified she could look in moments of crisis. “
I’ll
tell you, Michael. Perhaps I should have told you a long time ago, and then this unlikable young woman couldn’t have held her knowledge as a threat over Ruth.”

“Over—Ruth?” Michael looked even more bewildered.

“Yes. Ruth knows—and it seems Miss Deal knows, too. I’m not really the person I’ve been pretending to be all these months. I’m not your Aunt Henrietta at all. I knew her well. But she died, quite a long time ago, in Australia.” There was a moment of breathless, pregnant silence,
during which Ruth almost thought she could hear her heart beat. She could not look at Aunt Henrietta or Michael, and she did not want to look at Charmian. So she stared at the ground and wondered if it would be any help if she pretended to faint.

Then she heard Michael’s voice say quietly and very kindly, “But I know, my dear. I’ve known for many months now.”

“You—
you know
?”
gasped Ruth and Aunt Henrietta—and indeed, Charmian, too—in agitated chorus. And Aunt Henrietta added, in a thin, uncertain little voice, “But—how could you know?”

“I discovered, among my mother’s things, a packet of early letters from the real Henrietta. Not only was the writing too different to be explained away even by a lapse of years—the whole character of the writer was different from the woman I knew as Aunt Henrietta.”

“But—I don’t understand. Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you challenge me in some way?”

Aunt Henrietta stared at him with wide, half-frightened eyes, and he smiled back at her in a way that would have made Ruth love him, she thought, even if she had not loved him already. It was the smile of a completely generous, tolerant, understanding person.

“One doesn’t challenge the people one is fond of, my dear,” Michael said. “One waits until they offer an explanation of their own accord.”

“Oh—” For a moment she put her hands over her eyes. Then she dropped them to her sides again and said, “I didn’t do it of my own accord. I did it because that girl forced me into the open.”

“Well, then, even Charmian—” and he looked at her briefly, with a sort of terrifying geniality “—even Charmian has her uses.”

“Don’t you dare speak to me like that!” Charmian looked the picture of frustrated spite. “I won’t stay here to be so—so insulted.”

“I wouldn’t, if I were you,” Michael told her easily. “When you first came up, you described us as a charming family group. You were right, as I told you, and almost
anyone else would be an intruder at this moment. If you feel you would be happier somewhere else, none of us will try to detain you.”

Even Charmian could not ignore the casual brutality of that. She gave a baffled glance around upon the three people she had hoped to appall, and obviously took in the unpalatable fact that the tables had been turned upon her.

“
Very well.” She tossed her head angrily.
“
I’m going, and I hope I never have to have anything to do with any of you again.”

No one countered this hope. They watched her make a pretty good exit, all things considered, and then Michael said, “Let’s sit down again and have our coffee while it’s still drinkable.”

“Oh, Michael—I can’t just sit and drink coffee! I don’t know whether to cry or hug you—or what,” Aunt Henrietta exclaimed, obviously hovering between laughter and tears.

“Tell me your real story instead,” he suggested, with a smile. And as though to let her know that she also had her part in this scene, he put out his hand and, taking Ruth’s, held it warmly and firmly in his.

It was, Ruth thought, the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to her. Just to sit there, with her hand in Michael’s, while Aunt Henrietta told him the whole truth at last.

He kept his attention on the older woman. He hardly even glanced at Ruth. But she knew quite well, by that strange, delicious electric current that sometimes flows between people in complete harmony, that the occasional tightening of his fingers meant,
I love you, darling, and I’m aware of you every blessed second of this wonderful time. But I owe it to her to let her feel that she’s telling her story to a completely sympathetic audience.

At the end of the recital, he just said, “I wish you’d told me before. It would have saved a lot of heartache and anxiety. But I’m glad to know now, though it doesn’t make a bit of difference to my real feeling. For me you’ll always be Aunt Henrietta.”

“For me, too!” cried Ruth eagerly. And then he did turn his head and smile full at her.

“And where did you come into all this, my well
-
informed and managing little love?” he inquired tenderly.

“Oh—well
...
”
Ruth hesitated, wondering, out of the
depths of her present happiness, how to draw a decent veil over Charmian’s least creditable efforts.

Aunt Henrietta, however, had no such scruples. All she wanted to do was to show how generous and self
-
sacrificing her beloved Ruth had been. And once more she told the story well.

Michael, naturally, saw it from a somewhat different angle. And although he leaned over and lightly touched Ruth’s cheek with his lips, he also said admonishingly, “So you were prepared to sacrifice me, too, you hardhearted little wretch?”

“Oh, Michael—not really.” Her fingers tightened on his again. “I didn’t see it quite in those terms. Things are never quite black and white in one’s-mind. I—I just felt
I
couldn’t abandon Aunt Henrietta to Charmian’s spite.”

“I see. But why didn’t you
tell
me, you goose?” He looked as though he very much wanted to kiss her again, but as though he had also suddenly remembered that he was in one of the public lounges of the Excelsior Hotel. “It would all have been so much simpler.”

“That was my fault,” Aunt Henrietta reminded him. “I’d impressed on her that I didn’t want you told—in any circumstances.”

He shook his head at Aunt Henrietta then, but he said good-humoredly, “Well, you’ve atoned very handsomely now. I never thought to hear so much about the two people I loved best—in a matter of half an hour.”

“Half an hour!” The phrase seemed to strike a chord in Ruth’s memory. “Goodness—I ought to be back in the office. I said I’d only—”

“No, you ought not.” Michael drew her firmly down again, just as she attempted to rise to her feet. “I have a lot more to say to you before you go back to the office.”

“But I can’t be off duty so long. There are rules of work, even if—”

“I’m supposed to be reorganizing this hotel,” Michael reminded her pleasantly. “And the first item of reorganization is that you’re off duty whenever I want to talk to you.”

“Oh, Michael! You can’t do a thing like that! It’s completely unorthodox and—and unprincipled.”

“Almost everything about this business is unorthodox,” he replied, unmoved. “It’s quite unorthodox to propose to a girl in front of a third person, but that’s what I’m going to do.”

“I’ll go, if you like,” Aunt Henrietta offered, with a laugh.