The Young Nightingales (14 page)

“Nothing serious?”

“How could I have become serious about a—man—in such a short space of time?”

But even as she put the question to him the blood was pounding through her veins and her pulses were leaping. She was recalling Jules Delacroix’s last words to her before he left her that afternoon:
“
We have to be absolutely sure! ... I, for one, can’t afford to make a mistake!”
Well, she was sure. She was so sure that she couldn’t be any more sure
!
She had seen Roger again and was marvelling that she had ever even contemplated marrying him when all she had ever felt for him was a kind of lukewarm affection, and now, all at once, she could thank Miranda for opening her eyes. And she even felt grateful to Roger for being captivated by Miranda.

She spoke to him breathlessly:

“Roger, it’s very nice to see you again, and I agree we’ve always been excellent friends. But to marry someone you have to be in love with them, and I’m not in love with you! I
think
you’re very fond of me, but you’re not really in love with me, either
!”

“Rubbish, you foolish child, I’ve always loved you devotedly.”

“But it’s not the sort of love that leads to marriage ... or
should
lead to marriage.” She felt so worldly wise all at once that she astonished herself as much as him. She felt as if a pair of outsize scales had been removed from her eyes, and she was seeing clearly for the first time in her life. She looked up at him as if it was important to him as well as to her that he should be convinced. “Roger, we might as well
face it ...
We were never intended to marry.”

His square chin set mutinously.

“Because you say a thing like that it doesn’t mean that I’m going to accept it. On the contrary
...”
he drew a deep, determined breath, “I shall stay here until you come to your senses, and then I’ll take you back to England and we’ll be married immediately. No fuss ... I couldn’t stand a fussy wedding. And then as I have to visit America fairly soon we’ll make that a honeymoon trip.”

“You’ll have to wait a very long time, Roger,” she told him gently, “before you take me with you to America.”

“I intend to take you with me.” She had never realised before that he had such an arrogant, rather mulishly obstinate jawline. And his mouth was obstinate, too. “I need a wife, and I need you
...
and I’m going to make you Mrs. Roger Bowman before the end of the summer.”

“No, Roger.” She shook her head at him again. “You might as well believe me when I repeat that I mean it.”

“And you might as well believe me when I repeat that I mean it! I’ve booked a room at the Continental for the next fortnight, and if necessary I shall book it for another fortnight and another fortnight after that, until you say ‘Yes’.”

She felt suddenly aghast.

“You can’t afford to be away from London for as long as that,” she observed doubtfully.

“Oh, but I can!”

Toby joined them in the middle of the lawn after making a careful inspection of the punt and the canoe, and he appeared to be of the opinion that they were both seaworthy. The next day, when he was wearing more suitable clothes,
he intended to put them both to the test if Mrs. Bowman had no objections to raise.

His sister spoke to him hurriedly.

“I’m sure she won’t, Toby,” she said. “And you know you’re invited to lunch tomorrow ... you and,” she glanced up cautiously at her very determined suitor, “Roger. We shall expect you both at one o’clock, although we don’t actually have lunch until half-past one.”

Roger looked down at her grimly and masterfully.

“
You’ll see me very soon after breakfast,” he said.

Toby grinned at her.

“And me,” he told her. “I’ll probably have to put a patch on that canoe, but there are some materials in the boat-house I can use. As a matter of fact, there’s quite a lot of useful junk in that boat-house, and I shall enjoy sorting it out.”

Jane smiled at him with a tinge of uncertainty.

“Oh, well..
”
. she said. “If that’s your idea of enjoyment.” And then she glanced upwards again and met Roger’s coolly determined eyes. “But you do realise I have my duties,” she said. “I shan’t be free to see either of you before lunch time.”

Roger smiled with a hint of triumph. She knew he had no doubts at all about his capacity to get her to change her mind.
After all, he had known her for a very long time.

CHAPTER TWELVE

FORTUNATELY they took their departure very soon after that, and Jane sought out Mrs. Bowman where she was changing for dinner in her bedroom and asked her if she would mind very much if she went out again for an hour.

Mrs. Bowman looked at her a little curiously, and then said very gently that of course she did not mind.

“But you must be very tired after your long day,” she remarked. “Don’t exert yourself too much, will you?”

“I won’t be exerting myself,” Jane promised
.

Mrs. Bowman nodded at her.

“All right, my dear, I don’t want to pry into your affairs. But don’t do anything foolish.”

Jane gave her her word that she wouldn’t.

Mrs. Bowman observed even more gently:

“I do realise, having seen you both together, that you and my nephew just aren’t suited to one another
!”

Jane thought this over as she made her way out into the road and
m
anaged to stop a taxi. She knew that what she was about to do was not merely unorthodox, but likely to result in a rebuff that would take her a very long time to get over. In fact, she doubted whether she would get over it very easily
...
and if not she would have the knowledge of her own stupidity to live with for the rest of her life.

But she had to do it because a situation had developed that made it absolutely necessary. She was not afraid of Roger’s threats to pester her day after day until she capitulated and fell into his arms. She was not afraid of the pressure which might be brought to bear on her by his aunt, if she decided to switch once more to his side and support his cause
...
although at the moment she had reason to believe that Mrs. Bowman was not supporting Roger’s cause, or, at any rate, not nearly so actively. But she was afraid of the finalising effect on his attitude towards her of the man with whom she had spent the better part of that day.

It needed so little to convince him that at the moment she was experiencing something in the nature of a temporary rebellion because Roger had temporarily failed her. She was trying to force herself into love on the rebound. But
this
was so completely untrue that the very thought of Roger dug in at the Continental, where Jules probably made a habit of dining often with his friends, and was bound to run into him fairly frequently, made her feel temporarily quite distracted. She knew Roger
...
Roger, with
his
suavity, could convince anyone in time, and that was what he would set out to do, particularly when he made the discovery that it was Dr. Delacroix who had supplanted him as the one and only man in Jane’s life.

The one person who no longer troubled her as she travelled in her taxi to that corner of St. Vaizey where the lime trees grew thickest, and a certain brass plate adorned a certain white wall, was Mademoiselle d’Evremonde.

She
believed
Jules when he said he had no intention of marrying. Without any amplification or any further explanation she believed him. And that, when she thought about it afterwards, was rather curious, for she certainly needed some explanation.

She could hardly wait to pay off her taxi when she arrived at her destination, and because she hadn’t the patience to collect her change he was grossly overpaid. Only when she pressed the bell of the doctor’s house, and could hear it shrilling softly on the other side of the neat front door, did she feel slightly appalled because of what she was doing.

The consulting-room windows were blank, and it was too late in the day for Jules’ secretary to be busying herself behind the impeccable net curtaining. Apart from the bell the house seemed very silent, and she had the alarming thought that the doctor might be out, or that he was entertaining visitors somewhere in the rear of the house.

She was fighting the urge to turn and dash back down the steps when the door was opened to her by Pierre, the manservant who had served her with her coffee in the morning. He had discarded his white coat and was in sober black, and looked as if he might be about to serve dinner.

Jane’s voice failed her for a second, and then she asked for the doctor. She asked if she could see him.

The manservant looked as if he was not quite sure how he ought to reply.

“Is it a professional visit, miss?” he asked, recollecting that he had seen her during the morning.

“No.”

“Then I’m afraid the doctor’s changing. He’s going out to dinner.”

“But I must see him.”

A rakish cream-coloured car drew in at the kerb, and Mademoiselle Chantal leapt out of it. She ran lightly up the steps behind Jane.

“Oh, good evening, Pierre,” she greeted him.

“Good evening,
mademoiselle
.”

“I want to see the doctor. Tell him I’m here, will you?”

She barely glanced at Jane, and she certainly did not acknowledge her. With a smile for the manservant she walked past the other girl and was about to let herself into the room on the right of the hall, which Jane had seen for the
first time that morning, as if it was beyond the bounds of possibility that the doctor would refuse to see her, when the manservant plainly summoned up all the shreds of his courage and checked her.

“The doctor
is
going out,
mademoiselle
, and he issued instructions that he would see no one unless it was urgent.”

Chantal looked completely incredulous.

“But that’s nonsense,” she said. “It’s important that I see him. Please let him know that I’m here.”

She opened the door of the room on the right, and was about to disappear into its dim coolness when the doctor himself came running lightly down the stairs, wearing immaculate white tie and tails, and paused at the sight of his two female visitors.

Chantal did not hesitate. She moved to greet him with a burst of eager French, but Jane started to back slowly down the steps to the drive, and she was about to turn on her heel and run
...
run away, anywhere, so long as it was far removed from the elegantly tu
rn
ed-out Chantal and the man who had undoubtedly given her the right to use his home with such freedom
...
when the doctor’s fingers fastened themselves about her wrist, and he swung her round to face him.

“Jane! What are you doing here?” he asked.

“I—” She couldn’t think why she was there.

All at once the enormity of what she had done by arriving at his house at this hour rushed over her, and quite literally deprived her of speech. She gazed at him with an expression of so much horror on her face that his fingers bit deeper into her wrist, and he demanded sharply to know whether anything was wrong.

“Jane! You look upset—”

Chantal’s voice spoke sweetly behind them. “Jules, I haven’t much time, and I must have a word with you. Do you think you could ask Miss Nightingale to come back another time—at a slightly more reasonable hour if she wishes to consult you professionally!—and spare me just a few minutes where we won’t be quite so public. I know you’ve got an important dinner on tonight, and I promise I won’t keep
you...”

“Another time, Chantal.” He sounded so impatient that her eyes opened wide. “Come and see me tomorrow, or the day after—”

Jane strove to wrench away her wrist, but he refused to let it go.

“I’m the one who can come and see you again,” she said. “It really isn’t important—”

“Isn’t it?” He looked at her grimly and hung on to her. “Well, I shall be better able to give you my opinion on that when I’ve found out what you’ve come about. Pierre,” nodding crisply to his servant, “see Mademoiselle d
’
Evremonde to her car, and then make it absolutely clear to anyone else who calls—unless it’s a matter of life or death!—that I’m not
available.”

“
Oui, monsieur
,”
And an intrigued Pierre saw an indignant Chantal to the gleaming white roadster that stood outside in the road.

Jules half led, half dragged Jane back into the hall. Then, instead of opening the door on the right, he escorted her to his library. It was a very quiet room, and very pleasant, and she
sank
down in a state of palsied fright into the chair he placed for her.

“Why have you come?”

She lifted hopeless eyes to him.

“It doesn’t matter now,” she said huskily. “I was silly to come.”

Abruptly he changed his tactics. He went to her and bent over her, and his fingers touched her hair.

“All the same, I want to know what you’re doing here, Jane,” he said, very softly. “I must know
!”

She gathered her courage together shred by shred, and she told him.

“After I left you this afternoon I found that Roger had arrived. He insists on marrying me.
He says he won’t go away until I’ve agreed to marry him! He’s staying at the Continental.”

“Well?
”

She looked up at him in amazement.

“Nothing
—nothing
would induce me to marry him, but he’ll try and wear down my resistance, and he’ll appeal to his aunt
...
I’ll have them both lined up against me! And worse than that, he
’ll
find out about you, and he’ll do everything he can to make you believe I’m going to marry him, and you’ll believe him, and—and—”

“I shall not believe him unless you tell me yourself that you’re going to marry him.”

“Oh, but I
couldn’t ...
I won’t
!”

“Then what is there to worry about?”

She looked at him with agonised eyes. He didn’t understand ... he couldn’t understand, because he didn’t feel as she did. He was making that abundan
tl
y plain. She felt a trifle sick.

“Wait here while I get you something to drink,” he said. “I think you need it.”

When he returned he was bearing in his hand a small glass of what looked like neat spirit, but he explained that it was diluted.

“Just sip it,” he said. “I think you’ve had rather a trying afternoon one way and another.” She found that her teeth chattered against the glass, and her hands trembled so much it was difficult to hold it. She gulped:

“You’ll think I’m a permanent hysteric! This is the second time I’ve made an idiot of myself with you.” Then she corrected herself miserably. “No, the third
!”

“No, my darling, you’ve never made an idiot of yourself. Never with me
!”
He sat down on the arm of her chair, and after carefully removing her glass and setting it on a table he drew her head into the hollow of his shoulder and pressed and held it there.
“
This afternoon we kissed one another, and after that there shouldn’t have been any doubts for either of us. But I was afraid. You’ve led a rather sheltered life, and Roger Bowman was the man you once planned to marry. The members of your family expected you to marry him, and he could have become a kind of habit.”

“No, no.” She mouthed the words fiercely against his white shirt front. “I woke up in time, and now I’m so ashamed of myself for wanting so little. So pitifully little!
...
Oh, Jules,” clutching at him, “this is the most abandoned thing I’ve ever done, but I had to come to you. It was so important
...
like standing on the wrong side of the garden gate, and seeing all the wonders of the garden and knowing they might be out of bounds to you for ever. I didn’t simply panic ... I went a little mad
!”

“My darling,” he said again, very, very tenderly. His fingers stroked her hair. “If you went a little mad it’s a highly infectious form of madness
...
I’m mad, too
!”

He smoothed her hot hair back from her brow, and looked down at her. She had never realised he could look so grave and intent before. Almost dedicated, but it was not dedication to a cause.

“Before I say what I have to say to you, kiss
me. Kiss me as you kissed me this afternoon!” he commanded.

In a kind of dazed wonder she obeyed him. It was an experience that shook her even more than it had shaken her that afternoon, and it quite plainly shook him, too. He was quite white when they separated.