Beggar’s Choice (13 page)

I remembered what Anna had told me, and I wondered if it was Giles Heron, and whether it was true that Isobel was going to marry him. I shouldn't believe anything just because Anna said it—she's always been one of our leading amateur liars.

After Heron—if it was Heron—came Miss Willy Tarrant, full of
joie de vivre
and talking all the time. She hasn't changed a bit. She was dressed in something that glittered and clanked like chain mail. Behind her came Bobby Markham. They went right up to the top of the room.

I felt Fay touch my arm. I think she'd been saying something that I hadn't heard.

“Car—wake up! You're pretty far gone if she sends you into a trance the moment she appears on the scene.”

I stared at her. She doesn't know anything about Isobel, so I didn't know what she was driving at. She looked as if she was angry too. I suppose she thought I was neglecting her.

“What are you talking about?” I said.

She primmed up her lips—I should like to tell her it's not at all becoming; it always makes me want to slap her—and then she tossed her head.

“Your Clarissa—the very new cousin that no one's ever heard of before—are you going to pretend you haven't seen her?”

I hadn't until that minute, but when Fay said “Clarissa” like that, I saw that Corinna Lee had joined Miss Willy's party. There was a thin elderly woman with her, whom I took to be Cousin Abby, and two men, one middle-aged and the other young. Corinna had come out of gray, and was as gay as a humming-bird. I wondered if Anna and my uncle were going to turn up next, and then I saw that the table was full. I turned back to Fay.

“Why do you call her Clarissa?” I said.

“Isn't it Clarissa?”

“No—Corinna—Corinna Lee.”

“What does it matter?”

The rest of dinner was rather a strain. Isobel had her back to me, but it was very difficult not to watch her. I didn't want Fay to notice that, but I'm afraid she did. I hoped she'd go on thinking I was looking at Corinna. I don't know what we talked about, but I must have kept my end up pretty well, because Fay seemed quite pleased.

XVI

After dinner we danced. The tables are all round the edge of the room, and there is an open space in the middle. The first time we passed Miss Willy's table they were talking, Miss Willy loud enough for two, and no one looked at us except Bobby Markham, and he looked and looked away like you do when you've seen some one you don't want to see. I went on doing the step Fay was teaching me, and wondering about Bobby. I wondered if he was my employer. It went a good deal against the grain to think he might be.

We went on dancing. Isobel never looked round. The man that I thought might be Giles Heron was on one side of her, and the elderly man who had come with Cousin Abby on the other. Heron was bending towards her and talking most of the time. He looked a good chap, solid and capable. About the third time we came round, Corinna saw me and waved her hand. She was between Bobby Markham and the young man she had come in with, a red-haired lad with a cheeky grin. They seemed to be getting on like a house on fire.

Just after we'd passed, the music stopped, and so did Fay. We were by Delphine's table. Fay turned round to speak to her, and the minute she saw that, Corinna jumped up and came across to me with her hand out.

“If this isn't just lovely!” she said; and then, “Are you going to dance with me?”

“You've got your party and I've got mine,” I said. I should have liked to dance with her very much.

“Come and join us,” said Corinna. She made a dart at Fay, who was just turning back. “It's Miss Everitt, isn't it? How do you do? I was just saying, won't you both come and join our party?”

I was hoping Fay wouldn't snub the child too hard, when, to my surprise, she said in a hesitating way,

“That's very kind of you.”

“It will be very kind of you,” said Corinna prettily. “It's my party, and I think Car knows Miss Tarrant and her niece—You do, Car, don't you?”

I said “Yes.” I wondered if Isobel knew that Corinna was bringing me into her party. I wondered if I ought to refuse.

“And the others are my cousin Abby Palliser, and Mr. Heron, and Mr. Markham, and Jim O'Hara—a sort of cousin of mine too—and Mr. John Brown, who is a friend of Poppa's.”

She introduced us all and pressed coffee and chocolates on us, and I found myself sitting opposite Isobel, and presently dancing with her. It seemed quite natural, just as in a dream the strangest things seem natural. From the moment I had seen her I seemed to myself to have crossed the line between the everyday world and the secret place where one keeps one's dreams. I felt as if anything might happen—as if I could say anything to her just as one does in a dream. As a matter of fact, I don't think I spoke at all for some time.

Isobel talked about Corinna. She said she had made a complete conquest of Uncle John and was going down to stay at Linwood next week.

“She actually got him to say he would come to her party to-night. What do you think of that?”

“Is he coming? I don't want to meet him, Isobel.”

“I wish you could meet him. But he's not coming—Anna got Dr. Monk to forbid it. I believe it would have done him good; but she's anxious about him. She gave up coming herself, which was good of her. I think she's really devoted to him. Car,
don't
!”

I hadn't said anything. I didn't believe Anna was devoted to Uncle John, but I didn't say so.

Isobel went on looking at me reproachfully.

“Car—” she began.

“Don't waste time,” I said. “I don't want to talk about Anna and Uncle John, and I
won't
talk about Anna and Uncle John.”

The dimple at the corner of her mouth came out in just the old way.

“I don't really want to talk about them either—I want to talk about you.”

“I don't.”

“Well, what do you want to talk about?”

There was only one thing that I really wanted to talk about, and I knew I mustn't. I oughtn't to have asked her to dance. I ought to keep away from her.

She smiled her lovely smile and said,

“We'll talk about you to start with. What are you doing? Have you got a job?”

“Not properly—I'm on appro'.”

“Car—what do you mean?”

“I'm being tried out. At this very moment the secret eye of my employer is probably boring into my back. I don't know what I'm supposed to do, or when I'm to do it—I'm on appro'.”

“How desperately mysterious! Tell me all about it from beginning to end.”

“I can't my dear.” I oughtn't to call her that, but it slipped out.

She didn't say anything for about a minute. I saw her color rise, and I wondered if I had vexed her, but when she looked up her eyes were very kind. It would be easier if she weren't so heavenly kind to me.

“Car dear, you look better,” she said.

“I'm in the pink.”

We passed Corinna with Bobby Markham.

Corinna said, “Dance the next one with me,” and looked back smiling.

“That's a nice child,” said Isobel.

“Who—Bobby Markham? He's a bit fat for my taste.”

She laughed.

“Don't be silly!”

I was wondering again if the secret eye of my employer was in Bobby Markham's head. I did hope not.

“Where did you come across him?” I asked.

“He's Aunt Willy's latest—he practically lives with us. I think he's dined with us every night for a fortnight. He's been staying at the George.”

“Every night?” I said.

“Yes. Awful—isn't it?”

I began to sit up and take notice.

“He didn't dine with you on the sixteenth?”

“The sixteenth? Yes, he did.”

“Not Monday, the sixteenth?”

“Why? How mysterious!”

I was making a calculation. If Markham had spent the evening with the Tarrants, could he have been in the hut at Linwood Edge by eleven? I should think it would have been just about eleven when I got there. My watch went west long ago, but I'm pretty good at reckoning time, and it couldn't have been much more than eleven—perhaps it wasn't as much. I wondered when he had said good-night. I thought I would make sure.

“Did he just bolt his food and dash off?” I asked.

“No, of course he didn't. You don't get as fat as that on bolting. He stayed till eleven—he always does, and then he makes a joke about his beauty sleep, and Aunt Willy's beauty sleep. It's a frightfully complicated joke, and he finishes up by saying, ‘I don't need any. I'm so beautiful already, you see.' And then he presses our hands in a long, long, lingering clasp, and by that time it's nearly twenty past.”

I sat up a good bit more. This looked like an absolutely cast-iron alibi for Bobby—and if it wasn't Bobby I met in the hut, who was it?

“Isobel—are you sure?” I said.

“Quite.”

“Quite sure he was with you all the evening of the sixteenth—Monday the sixteenth?”

“Yes, I'm sure. Why, Car?”

“Because I thought I saw him somewhere else on Monday night,” I said.

We went round the room in silence. Bobby Markham had broken into our dream, but it began to flow back upon me. I didn't want to talk; I just wanted to go deeper and deeper into the dream with Isobel and never come back any more. She gives me a kind of quiet, happy feeling which I have never had with any one else. Every now and then something like a knife jabs into me, and I know that I oughtn't to be there, and that it can't go on, and that she ought to marry somebody else. That hurts like hell. And then all of a sudden it stops hurting, and I only feel that I'm with her and that nothing else matters. She makes all the beautiful things in the world seem natural.

After a bit we passed Giles Heron, and I had another look at him. He was standing by himself, looking on. I thought again that he looked a first-class sort of chap. I said so to Isobel, and she said,

“Yes—he is.”

All at once it was quite easy to ask her what I wanted to know, and I said,

“Are you going to marry him, Isobel?”

She said, “Who told you that, Car?”

I thought I'd braced myself, but when she said that, it caught me like a knife jabbing into an old wound.

I said, “Is it true?” and for an empty, endless minute she didn't say anything at all. We were dancing all the time.

Then she looked up at me right into my eyes, and she said,

“Would you mind if it were true?”

I hadn't had any hope for years, but somehow that hurt unbelievably. But I managed not to look away, and I managed to say,

“I want you to be happy.”

There was a sort of shining look in her eyes and a bright rosy color in her cheeks. She looked like she used to look before everything went wrong. I thought it was for Heron, and I didn't know how to bear it. Then she said,

“I couldn't be happy if you were sad. Don't you know that yet, Car?”

I don't think I said anything. I tried to say her name, but I don't think I got it out.

She said, “When you're happy, I'm happy, and when you're sad, I'm sad.”

And there, just there, the music stopped, and the dream broke.

XVII

I danced with Corinna next. Fay seemed to be off my hands all right. She had clicked with the Irish cousin.

Corinna was most awfully pleased with England, and her English relations, and Linwood, and Uncle John. She said he was a perfect lamb; and I thought he must have changed an awful lot, or else Corinna had really made a complete conquest. She raved about every one and everything except Anna. I noticed she didn't say much about Anna; she just slid away from her. I brought her back firmly.

“What about Anna?” I said. “Is she a perfect lamb too?”

Corinna gazed at me earnestly.

“I don't think you've got at all the right idea about your Uncle John.”

“Don't you?”

“No, I do not.”

“But we weren't talking about my Uncle John—we were talking about his wife's niece, Anna Lang, and I was asking you whether she was a perfect lamb.”

She made a wicked face.

“She's very handsome.”

“Handsome is as handsome does.”

All at once she looked very serious.

“What does she do, Cousin Car?”

“I don't know,” I said.

She looked across at Isobel, who was dancing with Heron.

“I love Isobel. Don't you?”

I believe I blushed.

Corinna laughed.

“I think your Isobel's perfectly sweet.” She cocked her chin at me impudently, waited a minute, and said, “Why don't you say, ‘She's not my Isobel'? You don't know your part a bit. That was your cue, and you didn't take it.”

I laughed a little too.

“I'm not on in this play, really.”

“Isobel thinks you are,” she said.

I changed the subject.

“We're not going to talk about Isobel—we're going to talk about Bobby Markham.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to. Where did you meet him?”

“Cousin John had the Tarrants to lunch, and they brought him with them, so I said would they all come to my party to-night, and they said they would—only Anna wouldn't let Cousin John come after all. Don't you think it was real mean of her? But if she's a
great
friend of yours, perhaps I oughtn't to say that. Is she a great friend of yours?”

“No, she isn't.”

“She said you were a great friend of hers.”

“I'm not.”

“I thought a gentleman never contradicted what a lady said.”

“Then I'm not a gentleman. I don't like lies and I always contradict them.”

“Aren't you
fierce
!” said Corinna. “What shall I say to Peter when I write to him?”