They sat and stared at him, a tear just trickling down Miss Cara’s cheek, Miss Olivia with a hard blank look. For once it was the elder sister who spoke first.
‘Oh, my dear boy!’
Olivia Benevent just went on looking at him. The silence had grown heavy before she said,
‘Indeed?’ Just the one word. And then, after a glacial pause, ‘Who is she?’
He was burning his boats, but he didn’t care. It was going to be worth everything to be able to say Jenny’s name out loud and have done with all the secrecy. You slip into it, and before you know where you are it is sliming you all over.
He said, ‘Jenny Rainsford,’ and Miss Olivia came back at him like the crack of a whip.
‘A young woman in a second-rate garage!’
‘You don’t know anything about her.’
‘I know what Louisa Arnold told me.’
‘No one could have told you anything that wasn’t good about Jenny – there isn’t anything else to tell! Her father died, and she worked for her sisters. If Miss Arnold told you anything, she told you that.’
‘She mentioned it. I am afraid it didn’t interest me. A girl who is left penniless would naturally have to work. I see nothing remarkable about that. And I am afraid that I do not admire her choice of what she would no doubt call a job. Louisa mentioned that her father was a gentleman. I should think he would have been a good deal distressed at his daughter’s deliberate descent into quite another class.’
Derek bit his lip. There was no sense in having a quarrel about it. It wouldn’t help Jenny, and they had been very good to him. He took a step towards the door, and all at once Olivia Benevent blazed.
‘Is this your gratitude? Is this the return you make for all we have done for you? Don’t you realise what you are throwing away? Do you think we shall still take an interest in you when you have gone down into the gutter? Do you imagine for one moment – ’
Her voice had risen to a scream, but he heard Miss Cara’s piteous ‘No, no!’ She put a hand on the arm of her chair and tried to rise, but before she had steadied herself to take even one step she gave a gasp and fell forward. If Derek had not been moving already he would not have been in time to catch her, but as it was, he did just manage to break her fall. It all went faster than it can be told. Derek exclaimed, Miss Olivia cried out sharply, and the door was opened. It disclosed Joseph standing just beyond the threshold. As he was afterwards to testify, what he saw was Miss Cara lying on the floor with Derek Burdon standing over her, and what he heard was Miss Olivia saying on a note of mounting hysteria,
‘You’ve killed her – you’ve killed her – you’ve killed her!’
Chapter Twenty-one
It having been ascertained that Miss Cara was not dead but merely in a swoon, she was lifted and laid on a massive Victorian couch. Miss Olivia went down on her knees beside her, and Joseph went for Anna. Presently, when she had recovered consciousness, Derek carried her up to her room. As far as Olivia was concerned he might not have been there at all. She had words for Anna and for Joseph, but not for him. Her glance passed over him as if he were not there.
Since Candida was having the last of her driving lessons, he had a good excuse for getting out of the way for some hours. He told her about the scene.
‘Darling, it was completely shattering. I’ve seen her a bit on the high horse before now, but nothing like this, I give you my word. I can’t imagine what has happened to her.’
‘She doesn’t like being crossed,’ said Candida. ‘Aunt Cara doesn’t do it ever, and you haven’t much. And then I come here, and she doesn’t like me a lot anyhow, so when I start crossing her it gets her back up.’
‘Why did you start crossing her?’
‘I couldn’t help it – not if I didn’t want to be a trodden slave! She started on about Stephen being an architect and so I couldn’t have lunch with him or anything like that, and I couldn’t let her get away with that sort of thing – now could I?’
‘Well-’
‘I wasn’t going to anyhow! That is the way poor little Aunt Cara has been ground down until she hasn’t got a will of her own or enough courage for anything except to say yes when Aunt Olivia says yes, and no when Aunt Olivia says no.’
Derek looked at her, half laughing, half serious.
‘If Stephen is the bone of contention, you paraded it a bit last night, didn’t you?’
She coloured brightly.
‘I suppose I did.’
‘Anything in it?’
‘Oh, Derek, yes!’
‘Have you fixed it up?’
She nodded.
‘Last night.’
He took his left hand off the wheel and patted her shoulder.
‘He’s a good chap. Jenny and I are fixing things up too.’
He told her about Jenny and the garage, slowing the car down and even stopping on the grass verge before they came to the straggle of bungalows outside the town. At the end he said,
‘I don’t know what’s going to happen now. She may shoot me out straight away, or she may have a stab at rescuing me. I didn’t get as far as telling her that Jenny and I are going to take over the garage, so she doesn’t know the worst.’
‘But you’ll have to tell her now.’
‘I don’t want to upset Aunt Cara.’
Candida reflected that this was Jenny’s business. She could have said plenty of things herself, but she had enough on her hands without Derek’s affairs. She said,
‘I’ll be late for my lesson!’
He put out his hand to the switch and drew it back again.
‘I’m not the only one who has put a foot wrong, am I?’ he said with a hint of malice.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, you’ve got rather a lot of make-up on this morning, haven’t you, darling?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Well, I do. And it doesn’t quite prevent me from seeing that you’ve got a bruise on your cheek and a scratch on your chin. Being the soul of tact, you will notice that I haven’t asked, “How come?” ’
She flushed to the roots of her hair, but she did not speak.
His eyebrows rose.
‘She hit you? I could have told you that girlish confidences would be out of place.’
‘There weren’t any – you needn’t be horrid about it. And it wasn’t about Stephen at all. It was because I said I thought Aunt Cara was ill. And she is. I had to help her upstairs last night.’
He whistled softly.
‘Darling, I could have told you that too – it’s quite fatal. I did it once when I first came, and had my nose more or less bitten to the bone. I suppose it was one of those heavy bracelets that scratched your chin. They are practically fetters, but she always wears them when she wants to be grand. Well, we had better be going. Are you seeing Stephen?’
‘I’m lunching with him.’
He laughed.
‘I’m having a heart to heart with Mr. Adamson at the garage. Burning the boats, you know. He’s in a hurry to get everything fixed up. He wants to hand over the house and a lot of the business and take a bit of an easy.’
It was odd to meet Stephen with everything changed between them. He brought a picnic lunch, and they drove out to the place where they had quarrelled and ate it there. It was one of those early days of spring when the sun shines sweetly for perhaps half an hour, and then without a warning the sky clouds up and the rain comes plumping down.
They sat in the car and talked. It was past hoping for that at such close quarters Stephen would not see what Derek had seen – the slight change in the contour of the cheek, the faint dulling of the skin, and the line where the bracelet had scratched her chin. At a little distance and to the casual eye there was not much to be seen, but where there was no distance at all and the eye was that of a lover, concealment could hardly be hoped for. Stephen exclaimed, questioned, cross-examined – and went up in smoke.