The girl in the blue dress (7 page)

"Yes. The best of the
light is fading. But I'm not putting more than a touch to this."

She had the odd impression
that he had not been doing anything to it at all until her knock sounded.

"What's the news?
Any answers from the advertisement yet?"

"Yes." She forced a
bright, pleased smile to her lips. "I had a very interesting reply this
morning, and went for an interview this afternoon. It's all arranged. If I give
satisfaction, I think I'll have a lot of nice
work, for two or three months to come."

"You don't say!" He smiled at her with
real interest. "All for one client?"

"Yes. At least, all for one family."

"Well, that's fine. Who are they?"

"The Waynes. Of Huntingford Grange."

She was aware that the hand which held his brush remained
suspended for a second. Then he said, "How odd! I know them quite well. I
painted a
portrait of the eldest girl early
this year. You must have seen it. Oh, no, it was just before you came
back
from London, I guess."

"Yes, it must have been." Her calmness
matched. his, she thought, and he could have no idea how dreadfully her heart
was sinking. "I heard about the portrait."

"From whom?" He gave her a quick glance, and
she saw that his attractive dark eyes, which she had always thought before were
so open and candid
were slightly narrowed."

"Oddly enough, from her fiancé, Franklin
Lowell. He gave me a lift back home in his car, and he mentioned your
work."

"Did he?" said Geoffrey flatly.

"Yes. And he told me that it was he who bought
that first picture of yours, Geoffrey. The portrait of me in the blue and white
frock."

"Yes. That's right." He sounded
depressingly with
out interest in that.

"You never told me."

"No? I don't know that there was any reason
why
I should. He was only a name. And not a
name that
I specially wanted to talk about."

"Why not? Don't you like him?"

"No, " said Geoffrey without elaboration.

She must have looked rather grave, possibly even a
little disapproving, for after a moment he said with a smile, "Why? Should
I?"

"N-no. There's no reason why you should, of course.
Except that he appreciates your work. And, I thought he was quite a nice fellow
myself."

The moment she had used the words she realized they
in no way described Franklin Lowell. He was not "quite" or
"rather" anything. There was nothing qualified or moderate about him.
She supposed one would always either like him very much or dislike him
intensely.

Geoffrey seemed disinclined to continue the subject
of Franklin Lowell, And after a short pause she said, "I met all three of
the Wayne girls. I thought them charming."

"Yes? Sara is the only one I know really
well."

He said that with amazing coolness. "Although
I have met all the family at various times."

"She's, lovely, isn't she?"

"Yes. She was fun to paint."

Perhaps if she had not had the key to the situation
Beverley might not have guessed, even then, that he was dissembling. But, knowing
what she did, she was
keenly aware that he was being too casual, too
objective about Sara Wayne. And suddenly it became unbearable
to her that Geoffrey and she should be telling each other less than the truth.
There had always been, or so she had supposed, the happiest, most open
relationship between them.

That there should now be reservations, even a degree
of deception, was so dreadful that she felt
the
tears come into her eyes, and she turned away
and pretended to be
examining some other picture on the other side of the studio.

She had no wish to prolong this scene. Indeed, she
almost had the impulse to rush from the place. And,
as soon as she had recovered herself sufficiently to trust her voice, she
said, "I mustn't 'stay, Geoffrey. I have to make quite an early start in
the morning. But I just wanted to come down and tell you my news."

"I'm glad you did." He did not try to
detain her, she noticed. "You should be quite happy working at the Grange.
And, " -he paused, and she thought the faintest note of bitterness crept
into his voice, "with a wedding in the offing, you'll have plenty of
work."
    

"That's what I thought, " Beverley said.
Then she bade him a hasty goodnight and fled.

All the way up the village street she had
difficulty in restraining her tears. But she resolutely kept a cheerful, normal
appearance. For there was no saying whom she might meet, or who might be gazing
abstractedly from their front windows, to see how the world was faring.

She got past with no need for more than a couple of
goodnights, called out to neighbours on the other side of the road, and by the
time she reached home she was in full control of herself once more.

During the rest of the evening she contrived to be her
usual good-humoured self to her mother and her aunt, and it surprised neither
of them that she chose to go to bed rather early.

"You want-to be nice and fresh for your first
day tomorrow, dear, " her mother said.

While Aunt Ellen remarked what a dreadful thing it
would be if she missed her bus and was late the very first morning.

Alone in her own room at last, Beverley faced the future,
in its new and disquieting terms. And, although the impulse to shed tears had
now passed, she felt dreadfully unhappy.

It was useless to tell her self that, in practical
fact, Sara Wayne was engaged to someone other than Geoffrey, indeed, to someone
who would not be at all the kind to have any nonsense from a vacillating fiancée.
The one inescapable conclusion which had come to her out of the muddled
impressions of the day was that she herself was no longer the girl in Geoffrey's
life.

The next morning, in spite of Aunt Ellen's anxious expectations
to the contrary, Beverley caught her bus in good time, and was walking up the
lane to Huntingford Grange, in the bright June sunshine, soon after half-past
nine.

It was impossible not to feel cheered and even
elated by the beauty of the morning. And, after being kindly received and
comfortably installed in her workroom, Beverley felt bound to admit to herself
that the world still had some bright spots in it. She even dared to hope that, in
some as yet unexplained way, every
thing
would somehow turn out as she wished it would.

She had been ready to start immediately on a couple
of informal day dresses for Sara. But it appeared that the morning's post had
brought an invitation which called for some rearrangement of work.

"Old Lady Welman is organizing a charity dance
for All Saints Hospital, " Mrs. Wayne explained. "I think, myself, that
she has left herself much too little time, " she added, consulting the
letter in her hand, "but that's up to her. It is on the last day of the month,
and she wants both the older girls to go, of

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interpreted her impressions of Sara and Geoffrey
the previous evening?

She could not entirely reassure herself upon this latter
point. But she did feel considerably less depressed on the general subject of
Geoffrey and her connection with him.

From time to time, one or other of the Waynes would
come in, either to see how she was getting on or, Beverley was rather touched
to realize, merely to see that she was not lonely.

"I suppose you really like your work very much,
" Madeleine said to her. "You wouldn't have chosen
to do anything so individual otherwise."
 

"I love it, "
Beverley replied frankly. "I wouldn't do anything else for the
world."

"No?" Madeleine laughed, a half-amused, half-discontented
laugh. "It must be fun to have a job, and be independent of
everyone."

"Well, yes." Beverley was astonished at
what seemed to her a singularly naive and early-Victorian remark. For surely
anyone who wanted to have a job could do so nowadays. And, after a moment, she added
diffidently, "Do you mean that you would like to do the same?'''

"Not dressmaking. I wouldn't be any good at
that."

"No, I didn't mean dressmaking particularly. I
meant, anything. Whatever you feel you have a talent for."

"I have only one talent, " Madeleine
said. "I'd like to go on the stage."

"Oh, " Beverley looked doubtful. She
thought this too a naive remark, because usually one passed through the phase
of being stage-struck at a much earlier age. "It's a pretty hard life, even
if you are talented, you know, " she said diplomatically at last.

"Yes, of course. But I don't think a hard life
matters if you're doing the one thing you want, do you?"

"In general, no, " Beverley admitted.
"But, if you feel so strongly about it, why don't you get your parents to
let you have an experimental year at a drama school? That at least would show
if you had enough talent to go on, or if you must resign yourself to being no
more than a clever amateur."

Madeleine looked at her and laughed with real amusement.
"It sounds so simple, put that way, " she said, quite good-humouredly,
but this time she sounded as though she thought Beverley naive. "My father
simply wouldn't hear of it."

By now, Beverley was finding the Waynes so much like
people in a book that she would not have been surprised to hear that Mr. Wayne
considered the theatre a sink of iniquity and that any daughter of his who Went
on the stage would be told not to darken his doorstep again. However, the truth
turned out to be a little less dramatic than that.

"I-suppose if we lived in London there
wouldn't have been any marked opposition to our following out
any experiment of the sort, " Madeleine said.
"But,
as it is, if any of us left home, we should have to be maintained
rather expensively wherever we chose to study. And, frankly, " she
shrugged and laughed, "this isn't a family with very much money."

"I, see." Beverley felt faintly
embarrassed, and hoped she had not sounded as though she were inviting
confidences about the family's situation.

However, Madeleine went on, quite candidly. "In
addition. Father is the kind to think that pretty girls, in fact, any sort of
girls, should want nothing more than to marry what he would regard as the right
sort of man."

"It's quite an agreeable
fate, " Beverley said soberly.

"Oh, yes, I daresay." Again Madeleine
shrugged. "But, there are so many other things in the world, aren't
there?" And she stretched her arms above her head, as though she were
literally reaching for some delectable fate just out of her range.

"I don't know. Yes, of course, I suppose there
are, " Beverley agreed. "It's
difficult to discuss things
from two such different points of view. I
belong to people who always had to accept the fact that everyone started to
earn a living as soon as it was practically possible."

"My dear, " Madeleine laughed again with
the utmost good-humour, "I come from people who ought to have realized
that fact. You haven't met my father yet, have you?"

Beverley said she had not.

"He's a darling, of course, " Madeleine
said unexpectedly, "but the most unpractical creature on God's earth. You
mustn't think I'm criticizing him. Only there are 'certain disadvantages to
having a charming parent who belongs, in all essentials, to a past age"

Beverley said tactfully that she supposed there must
be.

"Still, " Madeleine was essentially
cheerful and hopeful evidently, "things have a way of working out all
right in the end, haven't they? Once Sara is married to Franklin, and Andrew
has found himself a niche in my uncle's firm, I daresay the parents will feel a
bit more relaxed about Toni and me. I'm not saying much until my time comes. I
don't know
really, " she added with
some surprise, "why I've said
so much to you."

"Probably because I am outside the family
circle, " Beverley told her, "and look reasonably discreet."

"Are you discreet?" enquired Madeleine
curiously.

"As the grave, " said Beverley solemnly.
"Though you were not to know that." And both girls laughed and
exchanged a glance of instinctive and mutual liking.

In the ensuing week, Beverley
found that this first
day at
Huntingford Grange was a fairly good sample of those which were to follow. Mrs.
Wayne was courteous and considerate, without being intimate. But the three
girls, particularly Madeleine and Toni, were inclined to regard her very much
as one of themselves, and to consider her an acquisition to the household.