These Delights (20 page)

Her cheeks were pink.
“I’ve never heard you talk like this before,” she said, “and I know who I’ve got to thank for it, too. Well, Luke, I’m not going to end our engagement because you have suddenly taken leave of your senses, but I will say this. You blame me because I can’t share your fondness for your cousin Vicky, but it wasn’t till she came here making trouble that you began to get these strange ideas. I’m going to have something very unpleasant to say to Miss Victoria
Jordan
before she’s much older.”

He got to his feet and his voice was grave as he replied: “I shouldn’t do that, if I were you, Diana. I won’t have you upsetting Vicky. She’s young and impressionable and needs careful handling just now.”

Her angry flush heightened.

“
She
needs careful handling!” she exclaimed. “And what about me?”

“I lost the knack of handling you, long ago, Diana, if, indeed, I ever had it,” he said wearily. “I’m going now. Good-bye, and remember—I won’t have you upsetting Vicky.”

It was Hester who greeted Diana when she drove over to the farm the next day.

“I’m afraid you’ve missed Luke,” she said. “He’s gone into Tavistock and may be late.”

“I know,” said Diana calmly. “I’ve come to see Vicky, as it happens. Where is she?”

Luke had told his sister enough of yesterday’s conversation to put her on her guard.

“Lou’s practising, as you can hear, but Vicky and Pauline are out,” she said pleasantly. “I don’t know where they’ve gone.”

“In this rain? Well, I don’t suppose they’ll be long, it’s no day for country walks.
I’ll
wait if I may, Hester.”

Hester could scarcely refuse to invite her in.

“Very well,” she said. “There’s a fire in the living-room.”

Diana lit a cigarette and wandered round the room, mentally stripping it of its contents. Everything should go, she decided, except perhaps the old prints. They were charming and could
b
e moved into the study. She became aware of Hester fiddling with some papers on her desk.

“Don’t let me keep you, if you’ve things to do,” she said politely. “I shall hear the girls when they come in.”

“I
’
ve one or two things to finish here,” Hester said, sitting down at her desk and reaching for her glasses. “You don’t mind, do you?”

“Not at all,” Diana smiled. “Has Luke made you his watchdog?”

Hester looked over her spectacles.

“Watchdog? I don’t
think
I understand.”

“Oh, yes you do. You want to prevent me talking to Vicky, don’t you?”

“If,” said Hester carefully,
“
what you have to say is
unpleasant, then I think it would be very much better to postpone the conversation.”

“Why should what I have to say to Vicky be unpleasant?” asked Diana carelessly.

“I hope it isn’t,” said Hester, returning to her papers. “She was a little upset this morning by the latest news of her father and I think she is in a rather emotional frame of mind.”

Diana looked at Hester’s shoulders bowed over her desk, the untidy bun of hair, and the shapeless tweeds, and she was suddenly consumed with a sense of injustice. What right had Luke and Hester to band together against her in defence of this tiresome little nobody who, five months ago, had meant nothing to either of them?

“You can guess very well what I want to say to Vicky,” she said. “I don’t intend to have my engagement wrecked by a scheming little girl who imagines she’s in love with my
fianc
é
.”

Hester turned very slowly and took off her glasses. Her grey eyes regarded Diana with grave dignity, very reminiscent of Luke’s.

“Is that what you want to tell Vicky?” she asked.

“That and a few other things.”

“Then,” said Hester briskly, “I think it would be better if you left at once. The interview would only be painful for Vicky and most humiliating for you.”

Diana’s eyebrows rose.

“Humiliating for me?” she echoed. “Oughtn’t you to put it the other way round?”

“I don’t think so, but I do know you had better go.”

“Oh, no, Hester. I’m not going until I’ve said what I have to say—to Vicky. I suppose I can’t blame the child for having a crush for Luke, but I can try and make her see what harm she can do.”

“
I suppose it’s never occurred to you, Diana, that Luke’s own feelings might be involved in the matter?”

They stood facing one another in the quiet room. Outside, the rain still fell in a steady stream, and sent small drops down the wide chimney to fall, hissing, on the fire.

“Are you seriously trying to warn me that Luke may be falling in love with that child?” asked Diana incredulously.

Hester blinked.

“If he is, Diana, it’s mostly your own doing,” she replied, and there was a sudden edge to her voice, which, for the first time, showed Diana her dislike. “Do you show him a quarter the warmth and affection Vicky does? Added to which, you’ve gone out of your way to be consistently unpleasant to the child—putting her in her place, no doubt you would call it. Men don’t like that sort of thing, you know.”

Diana’s lips were hard.

“My dear Hester,” she replied with a slight drawl, “you will forgive my asking,
B
ut what do you know of men?”

Hester’s own mouth tightened.

“A great deal more than you, apparently,” she said. “You’re a fool, Diana, and if you lose Luke, I for one won’t be sorry.”

“Thank you. You’ve never really liked me, have you, Hester?”

Hester reached for her glasses and put them on again with an
aimless
sort of gesture. She was unused to speaking her
mind
to quite such an extent, and felt a little shaken.

“No, I can’t say I have,” she replied more mildly. ‘You’re not our kind, and no one—even a spinster of over forty—likes to be tolerant
ly despised.”

The door opened suddenly
and Vicky ran into the
room.

“I saw your car, Diana,” she said. “What a pity Luke’s gone to Tavistock. But you will wait for him to come back, yes? Pauline and I can show you a nest of baby mice in the
barn
.”

“I think,” said Hester, “you had much better go up and tidy your room
.
Diana isn’t staying.”

“But I did it only an hour ago. Corky caught me,” she protested.

“I didn’t come to see Luke,” said Diana. “I came to see you, Vicky, but Hester doesn’t approve of the idea.”

Hester suddenly felt very tired. Perhaps she had been unwise to tackle Diana at all, and it was a little frightening what ugly things were emerging into the open. But perhaps, she thought helplessly, they were better in the open; there was too much which had been left unsaid for too long.

“Very well,” she said quietly. “If you should want me, Vicky, I’ll be in the study.” She closed the door behind her and left them alone.

“Is it,” asked Vicky with great courtesy, “that I have done something to offend you, Diana?”

“No, Vicky, I don’t think you have offended me,” she said coolly. “I just wanted to have a few plain words with you about your general behavior, and then we’ll all know where we stand.
”

Vicky blinked.

“It’s not for you to correct me, Diana,” she said gently. “That is Luke’s or Cousin Hester’s privilege.”

Diana felt her anger returning in spite of herself. “When neither of your cousins will drop you a hint, then it’s time someone else did,” she said crisply. “And since it’s largely about your attitude to Luke I want to speak, it’s hardly surprising, perhaps, that he’s said nothing to you himself.”

“My attitude to Luke?” repeated Vicky, looking perplexed. “But if I had done anything to annoy him, he would have told me, I do assure you.”

“Oh, don’t be so naive!” said Diana impatiently. “You may not mean to annoy him, but you must certainly embarrass
him
with your attentions.”

“Luke has told you that I embarrass him?”

“No.” Diana was too honest and too unsubtle to seize the convenient lie. “Luke is much too good-natured to give you away, but, my dear child, surely you must see for yourself that it can be very embarrassing for a man already engaged to be married to someone else to be pestered by a little girl he is just being kind to.”

Vicky was very still, and the bones of her face seemed suddenly to stand out under the skin.

“Are you trying to tell me that you think I’m in love with Luke?” she said slowly.

“Well, hardly that. I think you
think
you’re in love with
him,
and I suppose that’s quite natural really, at your age, but what I won’t have is mischief being made between Luke and myself on that account—understand?”

“No, I do not understand. I have made no mischief. I admire you very much, Diana.”

Diana lit a cigarette, turning her back for a moment “Flattery may work with Luke, my dear, but it won’t get you anywhere with me,” she said.

“I don’t flatter you,” said Vicky gravely. ‘You are very handsome and assured, and I can admire that, but you are cold and proper and do not understand Luke at all, and I do not admire that.”

Diana wheeled round.

“Well! Since you’ve started
the
plain speaking,
let me
tell you this,” she said. “To me you are just a
scheming
little chit trading on everyone’s good nature, and Luke’s in particular. I don’t like you, Vicky—I never have. You’re affected and insincere and a trouble-maker into the bargain. You may be able to pull the wool over a man’s eyes with your pretty little ways, but you don’t over mine, and I’m not going to have my future marriage messed up on your account, do you hear?”

Vicky had gone a little white.

“I knew you didn’t like me,” she said simply. “But I did not know you thought those—those
shoddy
things about me.”

Diana smiled.

“The truth is never pleasant is it? And what you’re trying to do is just that—shoddy.”

Vicky’s eyes began to look strained.

“But I’m not trying to do anything, Diana,” she said. “I wish you would believe me. If I’ve done anything to give you a wrong impression, then I am very sorry, for I would not hurt Luke for all the world.”

“Very well, then. Stop behaving as you do, or better still, go back to France where you belong, before you can do more damage.”

“But we cannot go back to France yet, Pauline and I. Our father is very ill.”

“Oh, more bids for pity! I’m sorry your father is ill, but I think you’ve outstayed your welcome as a guest long ago.”

“That,” said Vicky with dignity, “is a thing no one but you has made me feel.”

Diana threw her cigarette end into the fire.

“Yes,” she said. “It’s a pity that Luke is so easy-going, but don’t let that fool you, my dear. Any man can imagine he’s a little infatuated with a clever flatterer, but Luke will hardly take you seriously, you know.”

Vicky began to weep.

“Oh, stop, stop!
”
she cried. “How can you stand there and destroy everything lovely? You could never understand the small, sweet things that are between Luke and me, the natural, innocent things that have meant so much to me—and, I
think,
to him, too. You stand there and tear it all down, and leave me nothing
.”

Diana looked at her with distaste.

“Another of your extravagant outbursts, I take it,” she said. “Or am I to accept it as an admission?”

“I do not care about you, Diana,” sobbed Vicky. “I only want Luke to be happy, and you will never make him happy. You care only about material things and what you can do with his farm and his home that he doesn’t want changed. You a
r
e blind, blind, blind. You humiliate him with your money, and think it gives you the right to order his life. He is far, far too good for you.”

Lou’s arpeggios ceased, and there was silence. Diana looked at Vicky, and realized at last why she had always disliked her. Here was no child to dismiss with light contempt. Subconsciously she had feared that very lack of restraint which she had always criticized, had feared the warmth and perception of a nature so much opposed to her own. In
th
e parlor, Lou began to play
Clair de Lune,
and the last of Diana’s control slipped.

“You little bitch!” she said, and caught Vicky a stinging slap across the face with the flat of her hand.

Luke got back earlier than he had expected, but Diana had gone. The house was very quiet. Lou had stopped practising, and he and Pauline were playing some game in the parlor. Hester was standing at the living-room window looking out with tired eyes on the rain-soaked garden, and it was so unusual to find her idle at this hour that Luke said jokingly:

“Were you watching for your errant brother, Sister Anne?”

She turned and he saw the distress in her face.

“Nothing wrong, is there?” he asked quickly. “Where’s everybody?”

“Luke—” Hester crossed to the fire. “Diana’s been here.”

“Diana? But she knew I’d be in Tavis
t
ock most of the afternoon.”

“She came to see Vicky,” Hester said. “I—we—thi
n
gs were said between us. I don’t know if I made matters worse or not, but I couldn’t help myself. I said things which, perhaps, I had no right to say, except—except out of my fondness to you.
Then
Vicky came in.”

“Go on.”

“I don’t know what passed between them. Corky broke things up in the end, and arrived in time to hear Diana call the child an ugly name and slap her across the face before she walked out of the house, but I found Vicky in a state bordering on hysteria and I could do nothing with her.”

“Where is she now?”

“In the barn, I think. Luke, I wouldn’t have had this happen for the world, especially today when the news from France was upsetting—but what could I have done?”

Luke’s eyes were stern but gentle as he replied, “Nothing, Hester. Don’t distress yourself, my dear. I’ll go and find Vicky and get the story out of her.”

He found her in the barn, and she was unaware of
him
, so bitterly was she weeping, until he bent over her.

“Vicky ... Vicky ... my darling.”

She sprang up in the hay, and her eyes focused on him with difficulty.

“Oh, Luke, Luke...” she cried and flung herself, wildly sobbing, into his arms.

He held her for a long time, gently rocking her, soothing her with words she hardly heard, and knowing in those moments, that whatever was to come, she could never be wholly lost to him. Of Diana he would not think, or the cruelty stupidity breeds so thoughtlessly.

At last he laid her back against the hay, sheltering her in the crook of his arm.