The Judgement Of Love Part 10

As she walked across the Salon to where at the end of it the servants had laid out a card-table and packs of cards, she knew that William's eyes were following her resentfully.

Sir Roderick, however, summed up the situation and engaged William in a conversation about horses.

Soon they were talking together by the fireside in a manner which precluded them, Astara knew, from hearing anything that she and Lionel said to each other.

She was not surprised when as they sat down at the table he shuffled the cards, then said: "Shall I tell your fortune?"

"Are you a soothsayer?"

"Only where you are concerned."

"Then I think perhaps my fate should be left a secret until I meet a Gypsy. I am sure there were plenty at the Horse Fair who would have been able to predict my future."

"I can do that," he answered.

Astara looked amused and he said: "You are standing at the cross-roads and you can go either right or left, but whichever way you turn it will be irrevocable and you will be unable to change your mind."

"Do you think I would wish to?"

"If you found you had made a mistake."

"I hope I shall not do that."

"It is very easy to do when someone is as lovely as you." He spoke seriously as if he was not paying her a compliment but was really warning her.

"I love you, Astara!" he went on. "You are well aware of that, but I know I have little chance of your accepting me as a husband."

"Why should you say that?"

"Because I have always come off second best and that, I suppose, is what I shall continue to do."

"Are you referring to William?"

"Who else? I know what he was saying to you when we came into the room just now."

"Was it so obvious?"

"It was to me, and he has done everything possible to put me out of the running."

"How could he do that?"

Lionel smiled.

"I am not a sneak, Astara, nor would I try to win you in an unfair manner. But I love you and I think you are the most beautiful person I have ever seen in my life!"

"Thank you," Astara said, "but I do not think that beauty is really a foundation on which one can build a marriage. There is so much more to it than that. "

Lionel thought for a moment, then he said: "I think you are inferring that one should have brains, but I am not a brainy chap like the other Worfields." He paused before he said: "To tell the truth, my father was so clever and always trying to push me into being the same, that I hated every-thing they tried to make me learn at Eton."

"I can understand that," Astara said. "My father always said the most fatal thing where children are concerned is to try to force one's own enthusiasms on them."

"Your father was an understanding man. I used to go through agonies every term when I went home for the holidays knowing there would be a row as soon as I arrived over my school report. "

"And the rows did not make you work any harder? "

"Of course not! It just made me dig my toes in and decide that knowledge - all knowledge was a bore!" Astara laughed.

"I can somehow see you defying your father and your teachers and putting a barrier between you and everything they wanted you to learn."

"You understand, " Lionel said. "I a.s.sure you I suffered a great deal because of the cleverness of the Worfield family. "

There was something boyish in the admission which made Astara say : "I am really sorry for you."

"You cannot think what it was like, " Lionel said, "having fast Uncle Roderick, then Uncle George held up to me as shining examples and, eventually of course, William. "

"Is William clever?" Astara enquired.

"He was always the top of the form in one way or another."

"What do you mean by that ?"

There was a little pause, then Lionel replied : "Forget what I said."

"If you ask me to," Astara agreed. "So William was top not only at games Uncle Roderick told me that but also scholastically."

"He always went home with a prize, " Lionel said, "but all I had to show of my progress were several extremely painful floggings !"

Astara laughed light-heartedly.

"Poor Lionel ! You really make me sorry for you. At the same time I am sure you have made up for it since you grew up.

"I love being in the Regiment, but that does not prevent my father from shaking his head and saying he had hoped to have a son who would shine as he did in the political world."

"It would be impossible to have two orators in the family! Astara laughed.

"That is what I have always thought myself," Lionel remarked, "and that brings us back to the beginning, Astara.."

He looked across the table at her as he said with all sincerity: "I cannot tell you in a lot of fancy words what I think about you. I can only say that I love you and it would be hie reaching Heaven to be married to you. But I have a feeling you are not going to open the gates."

"It is too soon for me to make up my mind," Astara said firmly, "about anything."

"And when you , do, it will undoubtedly he William," Lionel said with a sudden note of bitterness in his voice. "I do not need to look at the cards of your hand to foresee that."

"I was thinking when I looked at the picture over the mantelpiece, " Astara said, "that the three G.o.ddesses who appeared before Paris all attempted to influence his decision by offering him alluring promises."

Lionel looked towards the picture, but she could see it meant nothing to him.

"Athene," Astara went on, "promised Paris that he would always be victorious in battle. "

"Did she, by Jove?" Lionel exclaimed. "That would be worth having, and I suppose by battle she did not only mean a fight on a battlefield."

"I think she meant," Astara explained, "that in every-thing he struggled to achieve he would finally be victorious."

''It is a pity that the G.o.ddess what did you say her name was? is not here now. She might have cast a magic spell on me so that I could win you. "

"If you did I wonder if you would not find me somewhat of an enc.u.mbrance? " Astara suggested. "Soldiers are best when they are free."

"What makes you think that?"

"Well, supposing you were sent with your Regiment to some outlandish place? A wife and family would be restricting if nothing else."

"What you are saying is that I should have to make up my mind whether to leave you behind or subject you to the discomforts that most soldiers' wives have to endure."

Before Astara could reply he went on: "One lucky thing is that it is extremely unlikely that the Life Guards would ever be sent to India or anywhere like that. I often have the feeling that we are more decorative than anything else."

"Your Regiment did very well at Waterloo, and it was there, I understand, that you were decorated."

"It was very exciting!" Lionel said and his eyes lit up. "I do not think I have ever been so thrilled by anything."

He saw that Astara was listening and after a moment he went on.

"Afterwards everyone talked about the slaughter, the horror, the men who died, and of course the Charge of the Scots Greys, but I like to remember the exhilaration I felt!"

There was a note of it in his voice and as Astara smiled he said: "Perhaps because I was so young it never for a moment crossed my mind that we would not be victorious, but then who could fail not to believe in Wellington? "

The way he spoke, with a kind of hero-worship in his words and on his face, told Astara that that was really where his love lay with his Regiment, the men he commanded and the General who commanded him.

She had the feeling, although she would not have said it aloud, that Lionel's wife would always take second place in his life and that he was really dedicated not to love but to war.

William put a stop to their conversation by deliberately rising from the fireplace and walking to the table.

"You do not seem to have got very far with your lesson, " he said in a disagreeable tone.

"We were talking," Lionel replied defiantly.

"So I noticed," William said. "If it is a matter of conversation, then I should like to join in."

He pulled up a chair to seat himself at the table, but Astara rose.

"I am sure you are all tired after attending the Horse Fair," she said, "so I shall-say good-night to you both and to Uncle Roderick and retire to bed. "

"No, do not leave us!" William said sharply, and she felt it was more of a command than a request.

She did not answer him but moved to Sir Roderick's side. He looked up at her before he rose to his feet and she thought there was a question in his eyes.

She knew that with his sharp intelligence and perception where she was concerned, he would be aware that this evening she had received two proposals of marriage.

"Good-night, dear Uncle Roderick."

"Good-night, my dearest," he answered. "Sleep well and pleasant dreams."

"If I dream," Astara answered, "I hope it will be of the things which you and I have still to do together. You know that many of our plans are still incomplete."

For a moment there was a rueful expression on his face and she knew he was aware that she had refused, or at least had not accepted both of his nephews.

Then as he kissed her cheek he quoted softly: "Uncertain, coy, and hard to please!"

"That," Astara said firmly, "is one of the great advantages of being a woman."

She saw the twinkle come back into his eyes, then curtseyed gracefully to William and Lionel and left them alone in the Salon.

She found it impossible, however, to go to sleep at once.

Instead she lay thinking over the strange events of the day and her visit to Vulcan Worfield. The persistent question in her mind was how she could see him again.

She wanted to do so, there was no doubt about that. She found him intriguing and quite different from anything she had expected.

Who could have guessed for one moment that, while his relatives disparaged him for wandering aimlessly over the world, he was writing a book and painting pictures that she felt in their originality would arouse an almost violent controversy?

Because of her father she had a great respect for the a.s.sociation for Promoting the Discovery of the Interior Parts of Africa.

Her father had spoken of it enthusiastically and she knew that it was a deliberate attempt to make the remote parts of the world more familiar to those who might never be able to travel except in their minds.

It was something her mother had said when she had begged her father to write down his experiences so that other people could enjoy them.

"Perhaps Astara will do that when she is older," he had replied.

"Why not?" her mother said. "At the same time I feel that the type of intellectual who will listen to you would never listen to a woman. "

Now Vulcan was doing what her father had failed to do, and Astara knew that she would never rest until she had read his book and seen the rest of his pictures.

She was still undecided the following day as to how she could escape to Little Milden.

They all rode in the morning, then there was a luncheon party for the neighbours who had discovered that Sir Roderick was in residence. They had hurriedly called to inundate both him and Astara with invitations.

Sir Roderick however had avoided their hospitality by offering his own, and when they sat down twenty to luncheon Astara could see with amus.e.m.e.nt the expression of awe on the faces of the guests when they looked at him.

She had said to him once in Paris: "You have an aura of gold about your head and to most people it is a sacred emblem."

He had laughed, but she knew he accepted that his wealth won for him a respect and almost a reverence wherever he might be.

After luncheon the guests wished to see the house and when at last they departed reluctantly the afternoon had almost gone.

"Let us go into the garden," William suggested to Astara.

She shook her head and when Sir Roderick joined them she said: "You will think it tiresome of me, but I have a slight headache. I would like, if you do not need me to do anything for you, to lie down until dinner-time."

"Of course, my dear, Sir Roderick agreed.