She remained standing by one of the windows, but it was several minutes before Damerel came to her. The saloon seemed unfriendly, with no fire burning in the hearth, and the furniture primly arranged. They had never sat in it when Aubrey was at the Priory, but always in the library, and it still bore the appearance of a room that was never used. Venetia supposed that Imber must have led her to it either to emphasise his disapproval, or because Damerel had not yet finished his business with his agent. It was cheerless, and rather dark; but perhaps that was because heavy clouds were gathering in the sky, and it had started to mizzle.
She had begun to wonder whether she had missed Damerel, who might have set out for Undershaw by way of the road insteadof taking the shorter way across country, when the door opened, and he came in, demanding: ‘Now, what in thunder has your Empress been doing to drive you from home, Admir’d Venetia?’
He spoke lightly, yet with a hint of roughness in his voice, as though her visit was an unwelcome interruption. She turned, trying to read his face, and said, with a faint smile: ‘Were you busy? You don’t sound as though you were glad to see me!’
‘I’m not glad to see you,’ he replied. ‘You shouldn’t be here, you know.’
‘So Imber seemed to think – but I didn’t care for that.’ She came slowly into the middle of the room, and paused by the table that stood there, drawing off her gloves. ‘I thought it best to come to you, rather than to wait for you to come to me. It might not be easy for us to be private, and I must consult you. Something quite unlooked-for has happened, and I need your advice, my dear friend. My uncle has come.’
‘Your uncle?’ he repeated.
‘My Uncle Hendred – my uncle by marriage, I should say. Damerel, he wishes to take me to London, and at once!’
‘I see,’ he said, after a moment’s silence. ‘Well – thus ends a charming autumn idyll, eh?’
‘Do you think that that is what I came to say to you?’ she asked.
He glanced at her, his eyes a little narrowed. ‘Probably not. It is the truth, however. Unpleasant, I grant, but still the truth.’
She felt as though the blood in her veins was slowly turning to ice. He had turned abruptly away, and walked over to the window; her eyes followed him, but she did not speak. He said harshly: ‘Yes, it’s the end of an idyll. It has been a golden autumn, hasn’t it? In another week there won’t be a leaf left hanging to the trees, though. Your uncle timed his coming well. You don’t think so, do you, my dear? But you will think it, believe me.’
She still said nothing, because she could think of nothing itwas possible to say. She found it difficult even to take in the sense of what Damerel, incredibly, had said, or to disentangle the wisps of thought that jostled and contradicted each other in her brain. It was like a bad dream, in which people one knew quite well behaved fantastically, and one was powerless to escape from some dreadful doom. She lifted one hand to rub her eyes, as though she had really been dreaming. In a voice that seemed to her to belong to nightmare, because it was so quiet, and in nightmares when one tried to scream one was never able to speak above a whisper, she said: ‘Why shall I think it?’
He shrugged. ‘I could tell you, but not convince you. You’ll find out for yourself – when you’re less green, my dear, and know a little more of the world than what you have read.’
‘Will you think it?’ she asked. A faint flush rose to her whitened cheeks; she added humbly: ‘I shouldn’t ask you that, perhaps, but I wish to understand, and I suppose I’m too green – unless things are explained to me.’
‘I think it would have been better if we had never met,’ he replied sombrely.
‘For you, or for me?’
‘Oh, for both of us! The end of the idyll was implicit in the beginning: I at least knew that, though you might not. And also that the more enchanted the idyll the greater must be the pain of its ending. That won’t endure. Hearts don’t really break, you know. No, of course you don’t, but accept it as a truth, for Idoknow!’
‘They can be wounded,’ she said simply.
‘Many times – and be healed again, as I have proved!’
She knit her brows. ‘Why do you say that? It is as if you wished to hurt me, but that can’t be so. I don’tfeelthat it can be!’
‘No, I don’t wish to hurt you. I never wished to hurt you. The devil of it was, my dear delight, that you were too sweet,too adorable, and what should have been the lightest and gayest of flirtations turned to something more serious than I intended – or foresaw – or even desired! We allowed ourselves to be too much carried away, Venetia. Did you never feel you were living in a dream?’
‘Not then. Now I do.Thisdoesn’t seem real to me.’
‘You are too romantic! We have been dwelling in Arcadia, my green girl: the rest of the world is not so golden as this retired spot! Only in fantasy does every circumstance conspire to make it inevitable that two people should fall in love! We should hardly have been more isolated had we been cast on a desert island together. Nothing happened to disturb our idyll, no person intruded on us: for one magical month we forgot – orIforgot – every worldly consideration, even that there are other things in real life than being sunk in love!’
‘But it was real, for it happened, Damerel.’
‘Yes, it happened. Let us agree that it was a lovely interlude! It could never be more than that, you know: we must have come to earth – we might even have grown a little weary of each other. That’s why I say that your uncle’s arrival is well-timed;parting is such sweet sorrow– but to fall out of love – oh, no, what a drab and bitter ending that would be to our autumn idyll! We must be able to look back smilingly, my dear delight, not shuddering!’
‘Tell me one thing!’ she begged. ‘When you talk of worldly considerations are you thinking of your past life?’
‘Why, yes – but of other considerations too! I don’t think I should make a good husband, my dear, and nothing else is possible. To be frank with you, providence, in Aubrey’s shape, intervened yesterday just in time to save us both from disaster.’
She raised her eyes to his face. ‘You told me yesterday that you loved me –to the edge of madness, you said. Was that what you meant? that it was not real, and couldn’t endure?’
‘Yes, that’s what I meant,’ he said brusquely. He came backto her, and grasped her wrists. ‘I told you also that we would talk of it when we were cooler: well, my love, the night brings counsel! And the day has brought your uncle – and there let us leave it, and say nothing more thansince there’s no help, come let us kiss, and part!’
She lifted her face in mute invitation; he kissed her, swiftly and roughly, and almost flung her away. ‘There! Now go, before I take still worse advantage of your innocence!’ He strode over to the door, and wrenched it open, shouting to Imber to send a message to Nidd to bring Miss Lanyon’s mare up to the house. He turned, and she saw the ugly, mocking sneer on his face, and involuntarily looked away from him. He gave a jeering little laugh, and said: ‘Don’t look so tragic, my dear! I assure you it won’t be very long before you will be thanking God to be well out of the devil’s own scrape. You won’t fall into another, so don’t hate me: be grateful to me for opening your beautiful eyes a little! So very beautiful they are –and about the eyelids much sweetness! You’ll make a hit in London: the young eagles will say you aresomething like– a diamond of the first water – and so you are, my lovely one!’
