Then a man's voice said: "Good morning! Are you ready to come out and bathe ?"
I heard Simon gasp. The next instant he had re-started the car and we shot forward.
"But what does it mean ?" I cried.
"That was Neil!"
Simon nodded.
"Don't talk for a bit."
After a few minutes, he stopped the car and lit a cigarette.
"It's all right- don't look so agonized," he said.
"I feel now as if I'd always known it."
"But, Simon, they hate each other!"
"Looks like it, doesn't it ?" said Simon, grimly.
We drove on until we found a different road to go back by, to avoid
re-passing the inn.
Simon didn't talk much, but he did tell me that he had known Neil was attracted by Rose in the beginning.
"Then he decided she was affected and mercenary--at least, that's what he said. I kidded myself he was piqued because she preferred me--just as I kidded myself she really cared for me; that is, I did at first.
For weeks now, I've had my doubts, but I hoped things would come right after we were married. God knows I never had the remotest idea she was in love with Neil, or Neil with her. They might have told me honestly.
This isn't like Neil."
"I shouldn't have thought it was like Rose," I said miserably. We went home through the full brightness of the morning. All the villages were waking up and a great many cheerful dogs were barking in them. There
were still a few scarves of mist floating the water-meadows where we
had watched the veiled sunrise. As we drove past I remembered how I
had told myself I would make Simon happy. I didn't feel the same
person. For I now knew that I had been stuffing myself up with a silly fairy tale, that I could never mean to him what Rose had meant. I
think I knew it first as I watched his face while he listened to her
singing, and then more and more, as he talked about the whole wretched business- not angrily or bitterly, but quietly and without ever saying a word against Rose. But most of all I knew it because of a change in myself. Perhaps watching someone you love suffer can teach you even
more than suffering yourself can.
Long before we got back to the castle, with all my heart and for my own heart's ease as well as his, I would have given her back to him if I
could.
Now it's October.
I am up on the mound, close to the circle of stones. There are still
some bits of charred wood left from my Midsummer fire.
It is a wonderful afternoon, golden, windless--quite a bit chilly,
though, but I am wearing Aunt Millicent's little sealskin jacket, which is gloriously warm, and I have Father's old traveling rug to sit on. He now uses the big bearskin coat. One way or another all Aunt
Millicent's furs have at last fulfilled themselves.
Now the wheat fields are all string-colored stubble.
The only bright color I can see anywhere is the spindle-berry bush down in the lane. Over towards Four Stones, Mr. Stebbins and his horses
are ploughing. Soon we shall be surrounded by what Rose used to call a sea of mud.
I had a letter from her this morning.
She and Neil have driven across America and are now in the Californian desert, which sounds less and less like my idea of a desert; Rose says there are no camels and the ranch has three bathrooms. She is
perfectly happy--except about her trousseau which has turned into fairy gold. She only needs slacks and shorts now, she says, which it didn't happen to contain. But Neil is going to take her to stay in Beverly
Hills so that she can dance in her evening dresses.
I wish I didn't still feel so angry with her; it is wrong of me when I have officially forgiven her. And she and Neil didn't really run away without explaining to Simon. Neil wrote the explanation and left it
with Rose's note on the hall table, but it got under the letters that came by the afternoon post. Simon never thought of opening anything
else after reading Rose's message.
I only saw her alone once before she went to America. It was on the
awful day when we all went to the flat and everything was patched up.
First Mrs. Cotton had an interview with Rose and Neil to forgive them, and then Simon had an interview with each of them separately, to go on with the forgiving. Then Mrs. Cotton asked Father if he would like to see Rose alone and he said:
"Great God, no! I can't think why Simon endures all this horror." Mrs.
Cotton said:
"One must be civilized"--at which Father gave such an angry snort that Topaz grabbed his arm warningly.
After that we all had a hollow champagne lunch.
Stephen came, in a very well-cut suit, looking quite staggeringly
handsome. When Rose shook hands with him she said: "I'll thank you as long as I live."
I didn't know what she meant until I was alone with her afterwards,
helping her to pack. Then she told me that Stephen had gone to Neil's hotel and told him plainly that she wasn't in love with Simon.
I think Neil must have believed me when I wrote and told him she was; anyway, he had hardly let himself see her while she was in London. But after talking to Stephen, he went to the flat and asked her straight
out.
"And do you know what it was like?" she said.
"Can you remember me coming home after I had scarlet fever --how we hugged and hugged each other without saying a word his It was like that only a million times more so. I thought we never would stop holding on to each other.
I'd have married him if he hadn't had a penny--and I would weeks ago
if only he'd given me the chance. You see, I didn't know that he cared for me."
"But, Rose, how did Stephen know he did?" I asked.
"Well, he had a little clue that Neil was, well, interested in me," she said, then went off into one of her nicest giggles.
"Do you remember that night they mistook me for a bear, when I slapped Neil's face his After he carried me across the railway line to the
field behind the station, he set me down and said: "This is for
slapping me,"--and then he kissed me. And Stephen saw."
So that was what she had up her sleeve when we talked in bed that
night! I felt she was hiding something--and then I forgot all about
it.
I said: "But just because he saw Neil kiss you once" "It was more than once, it was quite a lot of times. And it was wonderful. But I
thought he needed punishing for the things you heard him say about me in the lane- and for daring to kiss me like that, even though I'd liked it.
Besides, he wasn't the rich one. Though--truly, Cassandra, I don't
believe I'd have let that stand in the way if he'd ever showed he
really cared for me. But he never did--he wasn't ever nice to me
again, always rude and horrid; because he thought I was chasing Simon-which I certainly was.
And when Simon kissed me, that was a bit wonderful, too-you can't
really judge by kisses- so I got mixed. But not for long."
Oh, so many things came back to me! I could see how she had tried to
work herself up into hating Neil-her dislike for him had always seemed exaggerated. I remembered how quick she had been to tell Simon to make him come to the flat that night I was there, how she had asked him to dance with her, how depressed she had seemed when they came back to the glittering corridor.
And, of course, so much of Neil's anger on the night of the engagement had been due to jealousy!
They had walked out of the flat that morning hoping to get married at once" You can do that in America, Neil says; but we soon found you can't here. So we went down to the inn to wait until we could. We
chose that place because Neil said the picnic was the last time he'd
seen me human. And of course, darling, it's really you I have to thank for everything, because I'm sure Stephen only went to Neil on your