Betty Neels - Tabitha in Moonlight

The dinner party broke up shortly afterwards and everyone went to the drawing room to await the arrival of the other guests, who presently came in a never-ending stream, laughing and talking and handing a radiant Lilith her presents, and when the small band struck up, taking to the floor in the pleasantly full room. Tabitha danced in turn with the doctor, the vicar and several friends of her parents and once or twice with young men who were Lilith’s friends and strangers to the village. Their conversation was limited to asking her who she was and then expressing surprise at her answer. They danced badly, something which she did very well, so that when she saw a young man in a plum-coloured velvet suit and a pink frilled shirt making his way towards her she slipped away using the bulky frames of the doctor and his wife as a shield, and went outside on the balcony. It was a glorious night, with the last brightness of the sun still lingering over the distant headlands of Torbay. She wandered away from the drawing room, so that the music and noise was dimmed a little and leaned over the balustrade to sniff at the roses below. It was then that she became aware of Lilith’s voice, very gay and excited. She must have left the drawing room too, although she would of course have a partner. Tabitha straightened up; if she walked on quickly, Lilith wouldn’t see her. But it was too late, for several paces away, Lilith cried:

‘Tabitha? All alone? Have you run out of partners already?’ She gave a tinkle of laughter. ‘We should have got some older men for you.’

Tabitha turned round. She began quietly: ‘That would have been a good…’ Her voice faltered into silence, for the man with Lilith was Mr van Beek.

Her first reaction was one of deep regret that she wasn’t wearing the new dress, the second that his elegance, in contrast to his appearance when they had first met, was striking. She thanked heaven silently for the kindly moonlight and said in a voice from which she had carefully sponged all surprise: ‘Good evening, Mr van Beek.’

Lilith looked surprised, frowned and then said incredulously: ‘You know each other?’

Mr van Beek smiled charmingly at her. ‘Indeed we do.’ He turned the same smile on Tabitha, who didn’t smile back.

‘How very delightful to meet you here, Miss Crawley, and how providential, for one or two matters of importance have cropped up—perhaps if Lilith would forgive me, we might settle them now.’

‘Settle what?’ Lilith wanted to know.

‘Oh, some very dull matters concerning patients,’ he answered easily. ‘Nothing you would want to bother your pretty head about. Go back and dance with as many of your young men as you can in ten minutes, then you will have all the more time for me.’

Lilith smiled, looking up at him through her long curling lashes.

‘All right, Marius, you shall have your ten minutes, though it all sounds very dull.’ She didn’t bother to look at Tabitha but danced off, the picture of prettiness, to disappear into the drawing room.

Tabitha had stood quietly while they had been talking, and now that Lilith had gone she still made no move. It was Mr van Beek who spoke first. He said, to astonish her: ‘Tabitha in moonlight—how charming you look.’

‘There’s no need,’ began Tabitha firmly, ‘to flatter me just because you’ve discovered that I’m Lilith’s stepsister.’

His brows lifted. ‘That seems a most peculiar reason for flattery, which, by the way, isn’t flattery. I did know that you were stepsisters. You do look charming—you’ve done your hair differently too.’

He smiled at her so kindly that she burst out: ‘Moonlight’s kind. Wait until you see me indoors, I’m as plain as ever I was.’

He came and leant on the balustrade beside her. ‘I’m sure your mother and father never told you that you were plain.’

‘Of course they didn’t.’

‘Then why do you think you are?’

She looked at him in astonishment. ‘I grew up knowing it,’ she frowned. ‘At least, I guessed I would be.’ She fumbled for words. ‘I—I knew, that is, before I was told.’

‘And who told you?’

Tabitha had a sudden vivid memory of standing before the mirror in the hall, doing something to her hair. It had been soon after her father had brought his second wife home, and already Tabitha had become aware that she wasn’t liked. Her stepmother had stopped and looked at her reflection over her shoulder and said, gently mocking: ‘Why do you fuss so, Tabitha, surely you know by now that there is nothing much you can do to improve matters? You’re a plain girl, my dear.’ Tabitha could still hear that light mocking voice.

‘Well, go on,’ prompted Mr van Beek gently, but she shook her head and then changed her mind to say uncertainly: ‘Well, she only told me something I guessed was true, only I didn’t want to admit it…!’

‘You should never guess,’ he stated firmly. ‘Now you’ve got an idée fixe about it, haven’t you? All you need is treatment.’

She eyed him suspiciously. ‘Treatment? What sort of treatment?’

‘At some convenient time I will answer that, Tabitha. Now shall we go indoors and finish this dance?’

Tabitha agreed, thinking that he was getting bored. The conversation had hardly been a sparkling one, and that had been her fault. The music had started some time earlier; he would only have to partner her once or twice round the drawing room. She was right, or almost so, for they had circled the floor exactly one and a half times when the band stopped playing and she muttered some excuse about speaking to an old friend, and went to sit by old Lady Tripp, who was indeed an old friend of her mother’s when she had been alive. Tabitha plunged into an awkward conversation; her companion was deaf and everything had to be said at least twice, so that the thread was quickly lost.

In a minute or two she looked cautiously round the room and saw Mr van Beek dancing with Lilith. Even from the other end of the room, she could see that Lilith was sparkling, her lovely face alight with pleasure, which apparently Mr van Beek shared, for he was smiling down at her, and whatever it was he was saying made her laugh happily. Tabitha smiled herself, albeit with difficulty, while she listened with sympathy to Lady Tripp’s detailed description of her arthritis, at the same time wondering how and where Lilith had met Mr van Beek. Her stepmother had said that Lilith had met someone at the Johnsons’, and as far as she could see, he was the someone—and just the sort of man Lilith would marry. He was a good deal too old for her, of course, but did that really matter if he had a good position and money to give her all the luxuries she demanded of life? Lilith was undoubtedly the sort of girl a man would want for a wife, especially an older, successful man, and presumably Mr van Beek was successful. She wasn’t sure, but it seemed unlikely that he could afford to run a Bentley like his unless he had a very good practice or money of his own—Mr Raynard had said that he was at the height of his career. She was roused sharply from her thoughts by Lady Tripp, who wanted to know, in the kindest possible way, if she had a young man yet. She was attempting to answer this question when she was asked to dance, and although it was one of the very young men trailing attendance on Lilith, Tabitha welcomed him with rather more enthusiasm than she felt and followed him on to the dance floor to twist and whirl and weave with a gracefulness which Mr van Beek, who was talking to the vicar, watched with a lazy enjoyment which sadly enough she failed to observe.

Despite the lateness of the hour when she had gone to bed, Tabitha was up early the next morning. She would go back to St Martin’s after tea—before, if she could manage to get away, but now the sun was shining and a walk would be delightful before breakfast. She dressed and went down to the kitchen and made herself some tea and stood drinking it at the open kitchen door, thinking about the dance. It had been, according to her stepmother, a great success, even the fact that Tabitha had already met Mr van Beek hadn’t spoiled Lilith’s triumph, for she had been extravagant in her praise of him and full of plans in which he largely figured.