Endless Night (6 page)

“Well, Ellie?”

“Then supposing he came in after us, he slowly closed the doorway behind us and sacrificed us there on the threshold. Cut our throats or something.”

“You frighten me, Ellie. The things you think of!”

“The trouble with you and me, Mike, is that we don't live in the real world. We dream of fantastic things that may never happen.”

“Don't think of sacrifices in connection with Gipsy's Acre.”

“It's the name, I suppose, and the curse upon it.”

“There isn't any curse,” I shouted. “It's all nonsense. Forget it.”

That was in Greece.

I
t was, I think, the day after that. We were in Athens. Suddenly, on the steps of the Acropolis Ellie ran into people that she knew. They had come ashore from one of the Hellenic cruises. A woman of about thirty-five detached herself from the group and rushed along the steps to Ellie exclaiming:

“Why, I never did. It's really you, Ellie Guteman? Well, what are you doing here? I'd no
idea.
Are you on a cruise?”

“No,” said Ellie, “just staying here.”

“My, but it's lovely to see you. How's Cora, is she here?”

“No, Cora is at Salzburg I believe.”

“Well, well.” The woman was looking at me and Ellie said quietly, “Let me introduce—Mr. Rogers, Mrs. Bennington.”

“How d'you do. How long are you here for?”

“I'm leaving tomorrow,” said Ellie.

“Oh dear! My, I'll lose my party if I don't go, and I just don't want to miss a word of the lecture and the descriptions. They do hustle one a bit, you know. I'm just dead beat at the end of the day. Any chance of meeting you for a drink?”

“Not today,” said Ellie, “we're going on an excursion.”

Mrs. Bennington rushed off to rejoin her party. Ellie, who had been going with me up the steps of the Acropolis, turned round and moved down again.

“That rather settles things, doesn't it?” she said to me.

“What does it settle?”

Ellie did not answer for a minute or two and then she said with a sigh, “I must write tonight.”

“Write to whom?”

“Oh, to Cora, and to Uncle Frank, I suppose, and Uncle Andrew.”

“Who's Uncle Andrew? He's a new one.”

“Andrew Lippincott. Not really an uncle. He's my principal guardian or trustee or whatever you call it. He's a lawyer—a very well-known one.”

“What are you going to say?”

“I'm going to tell them I'm married. I couldn't say suddenly to Nora Bennington ‘Let me introduce my husband.' There would have been frightful shrieks and exclamations and ‘I never heard you were married. Tell me all about it, darling' etcetera, etcetera. It's only fair that my stepmother and Uncle Frank and Uncle Andrew should be the first to know.” She sighed. “Oh well, we've had a lovely time up to now.”

“What will they say or do?” I asked.

“Make a fuss, I expect,” said Ellie, in her placid way. “It doesn't matter if they do and they'll have sense enough to know that. We'll have to have a meeting, I expect. We could go to New York. Would you like that?” She looked at me inquiringly.

“No,” I said, “I shouldn't like it in the least.”

“Then they'll come to London probably, or some of them will. I don't know if you'd like that any better.”

“I shouldn't like any of it. I want to be with you and see our house going up brick by brick as soon as Santonix gets there.”

“So we can,” said Ellie. “After all, meetings with the family won't take long. Possibly just one big splendid row would do. Get it over in one. Either we fly over there or they fly over here.”

“I thought you said your stepmother was at Salzburg.”

“Oh, I just said that. It sounded odd to say I didn't know where she was. Yes,” said Ellie with a sigh, “we'll go home and meet them all. Mike, I hope you won't mind too much.”

“Mind what—your family?”

“Yes. You won't mind if they're nasty to you.”

“I suppose it's the price I have to pay for marrying you,” I said. “I'll bear it.”

“There's your mother,” said Ellie thoughtfully.

“For heaven's sake, Ellie, you're not going to try and arrange a meeting between your stepmother in her frills and her furbelows and my mother from her back street. What do you think they'd have to say to each other?”

“If Cora was my own mother they might have quite a lot to say to each other,” said Ellie. “I wish you wouldn't be so obsessed with class distinctions, Mike!”

“Me!” I said incredulously. “What's your American phrase—I come from the wrong side of the tracks, don't I?”

“You don't want to write it on a placard and put it on yourself.”

“I don't know the right clothes to wear,” I said bitterly. “I don't
know the right way to talk about things and I don't know anything really about pictures or art or music. I'm only just learning who to tip and how much to give.”

“Don't you think, Mike, that that makes it all much more exciting for you? I think so.”

“Anyway,” I said, “you're not to drag my mother into your family party.”

“I wasn't proposing to drag anyone into anything, but I think, Mike,
I
ought to go and see your mother when we go back to England.”

“No,” I said explosively.

She looked at me rather startled.

“Why not, Mike, though? I mean, apart from anything else, I mean it's just very rude not to. Have you told her you're married?”

“Not yet.”

“Why not?”

I didn't answer.

“Wouldn't the simplest way be to tell her you're married and take me to see her when we get back to England?”

“No,” I said again. It was not so explosive this time but it was still fairly well underlined.

“You don't want me to meet her,” said Ellie, slowly.

I didn't of course. I suppose it was obvious enough but the last thing I could do was to explain. I didn't see how I could explain.

“It wouldn't be the right thing to do,” I said slowly. “You must see that. I'm sure it would lead to trouble.”

“You think she wouldn't like me?”

“Nobody could help liking you, but it wouldn't be—oh I don't know how to put it. But she might be upset and confused. After
all, well, I mean I've married out of my station. That's the old-fashioned term. She wouldn't like
that.
”

Ellie shook her head slowly.

“Does anybody really think like that nowadays?”

“Of course they do. They do in your country too.”

“Yes,” she said, “in a way that's true but—if anyone makes good there—”

“You mean if a man makes a lot of money.”

“Well, not only money.”

“Yes,” I said, “it's money. If a man makes a lot of money he's admired and looked up to and it doesn't matter where he was born.”

“Well, that's the same everywhere,” said Ellie.

“Please, Ellie,” I said. “Please don't go and see my mother.”

“I still think it's unkind.”

“No it isn't. Can't you let me know what's best for my own mother? She'd be upset. I tell you she would.”

“But you must tell her you've got married.”

“All right,” I said. “I'll do that.”

It occurred to me it would be easier to write to my mother from abroad. That evening when Ellie was writing to Uncle Andrew and Uncle Frank and her stepmother Cora van Stuyvesant, I, too, was writing my own letter. It was quite short.

“Dear Mum,” I wrote. “I ought to have told you before but I felt a bit awkward. I got married three weeks ago. It was all rather sudden. She's a very pretty girl and very sweet. She's got a lot of money which makes things a bit awkward sometimes. We're going to build ourselves a house somewhere in the country. Just at present we're travelling around Europe. All the best, Yours, Mike.”

The results of our evening's correspondence were somewhat
varied. My mother let a week elapse before she sent a letter remarkably typical of her.

As Ellie had prophesied, there was far more fuss on her side. We'd stirred up a regular hornet's nest of trouble. We were beset by reporters who wanted news of our romantic marriage, there were articles in the papers about the Guteman heiress and her romantic elopement, there were letters from bankers and lawyers. And finally official meetings were arranged. We met Santonix on the site of Gipsy's Acre and we looked at the plans there and discussed things, and then having seen things under way we came to London, took a suite at Claridge's and prepared, as they say in old world books, to receive cavalry.

The first to arrive was Mr. Andrew P. Lippincott. He was an elderly man, dry and precise in appearance. He was long and lean with suave and courteous manners. He was a Bostonian and from his voice I wouldn't have known he was an American. By arrangement through the telephone he called upon us in our suite at 12 o'clock. Ellie was nervous, I could tell, although she concealed it very well.

Mr. Lippincott kissed Ellie and extended a hand and a pleasant smile to me.

“Well, Ellie my dear, you are looking very well. Blooming, I might say.”

“How are you, Uncle Andrew? How did you come? Did you fly?”

“No, I had a very pleasant trip across on the
Queen Mary.
And this is your husband?”

“This is Mike, yes.”

I played up, or thought I did. “How are you, sir?” I said. Then I asked him if he'd have a drink, which he refused pleasantly. He sat down in an upright chair with gilt arms to it and looked, still smiling, from Ellie to me.

“Well,” he said, “you young people have been giving us shocks. All very romantic, eh?”

“I'm sorry,” said Ellie, “I really am sorry.”

“Are you?” said Mr. Lippincott, rather dryly.

“I thought it was the best way,” said Ellie.

“I am not altogether of your opinion there, my dear.”

“Uncle Andrew,” Ellie said, “you know perfectly well that if I'd done it any other way there would have been the most frightful fuss.”

“Why should there have been such a frightful fuss?”

“You know what they'd have been like,” said Ellie. “You too,” she added accusingly. She added, “I've had two letters from Cora. One yesterday and one this morning.”

“You must discount a certain amount of agitation, my dear. It's only natural under the circumstances, don't you think?”

“It's my business who I get married to and how and where.”

“You may think so, but you will find that the women of any family would rarely agree as to that.”

“Really, I've saved everyone a lot of trouble.”

“You may put it that way.”

“But it's true, isn't it?”

“But you practised, did you not, a good deal of deception,
helped by someone who should have known better than to do what she did.”

Ellie flushed.

“You mean Greta? She only did what I asked her to. Are they all very upset with her?”

“Naturally. Neither she nor you could expect anything else, could you? She was, remember, in a position of trust.”

“I'm of age. I can do what I like.”

“I am speaking of the period of time before you were of age. The deceptions began then, did they not?”

“You mustn't blame Ellie, sir,” I said. “To begin with I didn't know what was going on and since all her relations are in another country it wasn't easy for me to get in touch with them.”

“I quite realize,” said Mr. Lippincott, “that Greta posted certain letters and gave certain information to Mrs. van Stuyvesant and to myself as she was requested to do by Ellie here, and made, if I may say so, a very competent job of it. You have met Greta Andersen, Michael? I may call you Michael, since you are Ellie's husband?”

“Of course,” I said, “call me Mike. No, I haven't met Miss Andersen—”

“Indeed? That seems to me surprising.” He looked at me with a long thoughtful gaze. “I should have thought that she would have been present at your marriage.”

“No, Greta wasn't there,” said Ellie. She threw me a look of reproach and I shifted uncomfortably.

Mr. Lippincott's eyes were still resting on me thoughtfully. He made me uncomfortable. He seemed about to say something more then changed his mind.

“I'm afraid,” he said after a moment or two, “that you two, Michael and Ellie, will have to put up with a certain amount of reproaches and criticism from Ellie's family.”

“I suppose they are going to descend on me in a bunch,” said Ellie.

“Very probably,” said Mr. Lippincott. “I've tried to pave the way,” he added.

“You're on our side, Uncle Andrew?” said Ellie, smiling at him.

“You must hardly ask a prudent lawyer to go as far as that. I have learnt that in life it is wise to accept what is a
fait accompli.
You two have fallen in love with each other and have got married and have, I understood you to say, Ellie, bought a piece of property in the South of England and have already started building a house on it. You propose, therefore, to live in this country?”

“We want to make our home here, yes. Do you object to our doing that?” I said with a touch of anger in my voice. “Ellie's married to me and she's a British subject now. So why shouldn't she live in England?”

“No reason at all. In fact, there is no reason why Fenella should not live in any country she chooses, or indeed have property in more than one country. The house in Nassau belongs to you, remember, Ellie.”

“I always thought it was Cora's. She always has behaved as though it was.”

“But the actual property rights are vested in you. You also have the house in Long Island whenever you care to visit it. You are the owner of a great deal of oil-bearing property in the West.” His voice was amiable, pleasant, but I had the feeling that the words were directed at me in some curious way. Was it his idea of trying to insin
uate a wedge between me and Ellie? I was not sure. It didn't seem very sensible, rubbing it in to a man that his wife owned property all over the world and was fabulously rich. If anything I should have thought that he would have played down Ellie's property rights and her money and all the rest of it. If I was a fortune hunter as he obviously thought, that would be all the more grist to my mill. But I did realize that Mr. Lippincott was a subtle man. It would be hard at any time to know what he was driving at; what he had in his mind behind his even and pleasant manner. Was he trying in a way of his own to make me feel uncomfortable, to make me feel that I was going to be branded almost publicly as a fortune hunter? He said to Ellie: