But, without giving her a chance to reply, her aunt went on, ‘Have you made any arrangements about your trousseau?’
‘Well, yes. At least, a friend of Julian’s is going to help me choose it, as you are too-too busy.’
‘Really? What friend of Julian’s?’ Aunt Lydia seemed surprised.
‘Someone called Jennifer Langtoft. She’s the sister-’
‘Jennifer Langtoft!’ Her aunt made a significant little face. ‘And Julian suggested her?’
‘Yes.’
‘How exactly like a man. They really are the most blind and tactless creatures.’
‘Why? What is the matter with Jennifer Langtoft?’ Alison spoke a little apprehensively.
‘There’s nothing the matter with her, exactly,’ Aunt Lydia said. ‘Except that she’s always been extremely sweet on Julian herself. I believe Rosalie had quite a lot of trouble putting her in her place. I should have imagined that she would be the one to snap him up the moment he was free. However, of course, it’s a little late to say anything now.’
And with that she went back into her study and shut the door.
CHAPTER V
FOR a moment Alison stood staring after her aunt until the door closed. Then she turned away and slowly began to mount the stairs.
Was it just tactlessness or real malice that made Aunt Lydia say these things? she wondered.
There hadn’t been the smallest reason to make such a comment, quite apart from the fact that it was very unfair to the unknown Jennifer.
‘She just wanted to make me feel uneasy and miserable,’ Alison thought. And then: ‘Well, I won’t give her that satisfaction. It’s all too petty and absurd to worry any sane person.’
But of course, she couldn’t dismiss it entirely from her mind like that. Instead, she remembered the interest in Julian’s voice when he had said, ‘Oh, Jennifer is good-looking-very.’
‘And what about it?’ Alison asked herself fiercely. Hadn’t he also said that he had known her and her brother for years? And, in that case, if he had been going to fall for her, he would have done so long ago.
She tried not to listen to the little voice which said that there had always been Rosalie before to occupy his thoughts. Now there was no Rosalie-only the other half of ‘a business proposition’.
Alison sighed impatiently as she tossed down her hat on her bed. She had better go and find something to do if being unoccupied meant having these ridiculous fancies’
She went down again to her aunt’s study, and put her head in.
‘Can I do anything for you, Aunt Lydia?’
She managed to make that sound quite pleasant, although her feelings towards her aunt were not cordial.
‘Yes, Alison, you certainly can. I have been wondering how I was to get through all this.’ Aunt Lydia fingered a not very formidable pile of correspondence. ‘It’s most awkward having you so much occupied just now.’
Alison forbore to ask if she would have found it any less awkward at any other time.
‘I’ll do them for you, shall I?’ she offered.
‘I wish you would.’ Her aunt immediately gave up her thin pretence of examining them herself. Then, after a pause, she added, ‘I suppose I mustn’t expect much help from you, now that you don’t feel it necessary to study me any longer.’
‘How she does judge other people by herself,’ thought Alison. ‘No wonder Uncle Theodore despises her.’
But aloud she said, ‘I don’t imagine I shall be so busy as all that, Aunt Lydia. I’ll still do what I can to help you, of course.’
Her aunt appeared satisfied with that, although she didn’t seem to think that any thanks were called for.
Presently Alison looked up and said, ‘Do you think Audrey would like to be my bridesmaid?’
‘I suppose so.’ Her aunt sounded completely indifferent. ‘I don’t see that it matters much in any case. The whole thing is rather a farce, isn’t it?’
Alison bit her lip angrily.
‘You don’t expect me to agree with that, I suppose?’ she said curtly, without looking up.
‘Well, I don’t know what else one can think. Everyone knows that until eight o’clock yesterday evening Julian was infatuatedly in love with Rosalie. By nine he appears to have proposed to you-or you to him, I really can’t imagine which-and we’re all asked to regard the affair as perfectly normal.’
Alison was completely silent, her pen motionless in her hand. Put like that, in her aunt’s tone of slightly plaintive ridicule, the whole thing sounded absurd and hollow.
Was that how it was going to seem to Julian when he had had time to cool down and regard the whole situation calmly?
She stared unseeingly at the sheet of notepaper in front of her. And then, quite a long time afterwards, when it seemed that her aunt had nothing to add to her crushing analysis, Alison slowly went on writing. But she was not very sure what she was writing about.
It took more than an hour of patient work to finish all that Aunt Lydia wanted done, and then Alison went upstairs to her own room once more.
Sitting on the side of the bed, she tried to review the whole situation quite dispassionately.
In the first impulse of that crazy proposal they had both agreed that they had nothing to lose. She saw now that that was not strictly true. To refuse to take dangerous chances always meant that you retained a certain negative sense of safety and peace of mind.
The moment you embarked on anything like this fantastic arrangement you said good-bye to any security. Just now she was feeling like someone who had started to cross a raging torrent by means of a single-plank bridge. She had lost her nerve half-way, and now she didn’t know which was more impossible-to go forward or to go back.
Alison sighed and ruffled up her hair worriedly.
‘If only Aunt Lydia wouldn’t frighten me so much,’ she murmured.
That evening, she dressed with the greatest care, for she had an odd, proud little feeling that she must not let Julian down in front of his sophisticated friends. After all, it was the first time he was showing her off.
She put on the amber frock which had already seen her through such extraordinary adventures, and she brushed her hair until it looked like a gold silk cap.
Then she looked in the mirror, and saw that there was no need to put even the slightest touch of colour on her lips. They were soft and red and faintly damp like a child’s; and her eyes, wide and dark and velvety, were rather like a child’s too.
She was ready when Julian arrived, which seemed to amuse him a little.
‘You are a model of punctuality, Alison,’ he remarked. And she remembered that probably Rosalie considered it good policy to keep a man waiting indefinitely.
‘Well, I hate having to wait myself,’ Alison said candidly, ‘so I always take it that other people hate it too.’
‘A very proper and Victorian point of view,’ commented Julian, smiling, and he glanced at the amber dress as though he certainly had not seen it last night.
Alison’s small reserve of security deserted her.
‘Do you mean I look too Victorian in this?’ she asked nervously.
‘You look sweet,’ he told her carelessly. And, putting her evening coat round her, he took her out to the car.
To her surprise, there was a chauffeur to drive, that evening.
I didn’t know you had a chauffeur,’ she said involuntarily.
‘No? I have him mostly for long-distance driving. But sometimes in the evening, if I don’t want to be bothered with the car, he comes along. Why?’
‘Oh, nothing. I just wondered. Julian?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you very-I mean, do we have to keep up a good deal of social style when we-when we are married?’
He looked surprised.
‘I’m a pretty rich man, if that’s what you mean. I don’t know that I keep up very much style, as you call it, here. But of course out there there will be a big house to run, and a good many servants to look after, and a lot of entertaining to do. It’s just the natural thing there; part of the life, you know.’ And he smiled a little, as though the thought of it gave him pleasure.