Lacklander looked at Rose over the basket he carried and said unsteadily: ‘Darling.’
‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘Honestly; don’t.’
‘No? Are you warning me off, Rose? Is it all a dead loss?’
She made a small ineloquent gesture, tried to speak and said nothing.
‘Well,’ Lacklander said, ‘I may as well tell you that I was going to ask if you’d marry me. I love you very dearly and I thought we seemed to sort of suit. Was I wrong about that?’
‘No,’ Rose said.
‘Well, I know I wasn’t. Obviously, we suit. So for pity’s sake what’s up? Don’t tell me you love me like a brother, because I can’t believe it.’
‘You needn’t try to.’
‘Well, then?’
‘I can’t think of getting engaged, much less married.’
‘Ah!’ Lacklander ejaculated. ‘Now we’re coming to it! This is going to be what I suspected. Oh, for God’s sake let me get rid of this bloody basket! Here. Come over to the bench. I’m not going till I’ve cleared this up.’
She followed him and they sat down together on a garden seat with the basket of roses at their feet. He took her by the wrist and stripped the heavy glove off her hand. ‘Now, tell me,’ he demanded. ‘Do you love me?’
‘You needn’t bellow it at me like that. Yes, I do.’
‘Rose, darling! I was so panicked you’d say you didn’t.’
‘Please listen, Mark. You’re not going to agree with a syllable of this, but please listen.’
‘All right. I know what it’s going to be but … all right.’
‘You can see what it’s like here. I mean the domestic set-up. You must have seen for yourself how much difference it makes to Daddy my being on tap.’
‘You are so funny when you use colloquialisms … a little girl shutting her eyes and firing off a popgun. All right; your father likes to have you about. So he well might and so he still would if we married. We’d probably live half our time at Nunspardon.’
‘It’s much more than that.’ Rose hesitated. She had drawn away from him and sat with her hands pressed together between her knees. She wore a long house-dress, her hair was drawn back into a knot at the base of her neck but a single fine strand had escaped and shone on her forehead. She used very little make-up and could afford this economy for she was a beautiful girl.
She said: ‘It’s simply that his second marriage hasn’t been a success. If I left him now he’d really and truly have nothing to live for. Really.’
‘Nonsense,’ Mark said uneasily.
‘He’s never been able to do without me. Even when I was little. Nanny and I and my governess all following the drum. So many countries and journeys. And then after the war when he was given all those special jobs: Vienna and Rome and Paris. I never went to school because he hated the idea of separation.’
‘All wrong, of course. Only half a life.’
‘No, no, no, that’s not true, honestly. It was a wonderfully rich life. I saw and heard and learnt all sorts of splendid things other girls miss.’
‘All the same …’
‘No, honestly, it was grand.’
‘You should have been allowed to get under your own steam.’
‘It wasn’t a case of being allowed. I was allowed almost anything I wanted. And when I did get under my own steam just see what happened! He was sent with that mission to Singapore and I stayed in Grenoble and took a course at the University. He was delayed and delayed … and I found out afterwards that he was wretchedly at a loose end. And then … it was while he was there … he met Kitty.’
Lacklander closed his well-kept doctor’s hand over the lower half of his face and behind it made an indeterminate sound.
‘Well,’ Rose said, ‘it turned out as badly as it possibly could, and it goes on getting worse, and if I’d been there I don’t think it would have happened.’
‘Why not? He’d have been just as likely to meet her. And even if he hadn’t, my heavenly and darling Rose, you cannot be allowed to think of yourself as a twister of the tail of fate.’
‘If I’d been there …’
‘Now look here!’ said Lacklander. ‘Look at it like this. If you removed yourself to Nunspardon as my wife, he and your stepmother might get together in a quick comeback.’
‘Oh, no,’ Rose said. ‘No, Mark. There’s not a chance of that.’
‘How do you know? Listen. We’re in love. I love you so desperately much it’s almost more than I can endure. I know I shall never meet anybody else who could make me so happy and, incredible though it may seem, I don’t believe you will either. I won’t be put off, Rose. You shall marry me and if your father’s life here is too unsatisfactory, well, we’ll find some way of improving it. Perhaps if they part company he could come to us.’
‘Never! Don’t you see? He couldn’t bear it. He’d feel sort of extraneous.’
‘I’m going to talk to him. I shall tell him I want to marry you.’
‘No, Mark, darling! No … please …’
His hand closed momentarily over hers. Then he was on his feet and had taken up the basket of roses. ‘Good evening, Mrs Cartarette,’ he said. ‘We’re robbing your garden for my grandmother. You’re very much ahead of us at Hammer with your roses.’
Kitty Cartarette had turned in by the green archway and was looking thoughtfully at them.
IV
The second Mrs Cartarette did not match her Edwardian name. She did not look like a Kitty. She was so fair that without her make-up she would have seemed bleached. Her figure was well-disciplined and her face had been skilfully drawn up into a beautifully cared-for mask. Her greatest asset was her acquired inscrutability. This, of itself, made a femme fatale of Kitty Cartarette. She had, as it were, been manipulated into a menace. She was dressed with some elaboration and, presumably because she was in the garden, she wore gloves.
‘How nice to see you, Mark,’ she said. ‘I thought I heard your voices. Is this a professional call?’
Mark said: ‘Partly so at least. I ran down with a message for Colonel Cartarette, and I had a look at your gardener’s small girl.’
‘How too kind,’ she said, glancing from Mark to her stepdaughter. She moved up to him and with her gloved hand took a dark rose from the basket and held it against her mouth.
‘What a smell!’ she said. ‘Almost improper, it’s
