Mad is the Heart

by Denise Robins

Genres: Romance

Synopsis

Heiresses twice over, Viola and her young sister traveled to exotic Khartoum to be with their guardian, the sophisticated rock-steady Lionel. But Viola's excitement was spoiled by her sister's obvious infatuation with Lionel -- and the presence of the out-going Ted, Viola's determined suitor. Violently objecting to a marriage between Viola and Ted, Lionel proposed himself -- and Viola, already deeply in love with him, happily accepted. But her chance for happiness was destroyed by the vengeful Ted --who knew of Lionel's financial affairs. Viola could never be sure if Lionel really loved her--or her money.

Release date: July 24, 2014

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 400

Sample

ON the day that Aunt Rachel died Viola was out with the Hunt. Whenever it was possible, Viola rode to hounds. She had been good on a horse—and with horses—since she was a child. Nobody who ever saw her mounted could doubt that. It amazed many who met her for the first time to find how strong and fearless she was; what strength there was in those slim hands and flexible wrists. She was not at all like her young sister, Giselle, who was not physically strong enough to take part in outdoor pursuits.

But Viola loved country life. Her face glowed, her lithe graceful body glowed; when she came into a room she brought with her that divine essence of golden youth—a readiness to meet and smile upon the world and everybody and everything in it. For Viola it was just good to be alive. So far, her own life had never been touched by the sharp dark fingers of grief or pain. She had been too young when her parents died to feel any deep sorrow. If she suffered at all it was sometimes for her adored sister, Giselle, who was five years younger—for Giselle had none of Viola’s joie de vivre. An early illness had left her with a slight weakness in her back. Even now at the age of fifteen she hated games and preferred books, or playing her favourite discs on her record-player. She had a genius for looking pathetic which deceived everybody. There were occasions when Viola doubted the reality of all Giselle’s aches or pains. Her tears were apt to dry very rapidly and her mood soon swung from sadness to laughter when she got her own way. They all spoiled her at home. Viola, Aunt Rachel and Millie, the old housekeeper who had been with Aunt Rachel for so long—and their circle of friends and acquaintances here in Longacre Wood in Sussex.

On this particular day in October—crisp, cold and sunny—it had been the usual thrill for Viola to feel the rippling muscles of her hunter, Firefly, beneath her as he took the hedges and fences. An equal thrill to hear the familiar baying of the hounds as they picked up the scent of the fox who had lead them a good chase all morning.

But Viola, for the first time that she could remember, had a queer presentiment that today was not going to end as well as it had begun. As she hacked along the country lanes on her way back to Longacre Farm, she tried to laugh at her secret fears. What could be wrong? When she had left home everything had been quite all right. Aunt Rachel had gone off as usual to inspect her chickens—three thousand of them in deep litter, a necessary business enterprise in which she had been quite successful. Dear kind Aunt Rachel—both the girls adored her. Her courage and strength had always been an example to Viola. At the age of fifty Mrs. Berand still worked as hard as any man. She ran the farm with the help only of one Polish refugee and a local boy.

A few hours ago Aunt Rachel had said goodbye to Viola, shouting out “Good hunting, darling,” in her breezy manner. Giselle caught her usual bus outside the gates to the day school which she attended in East Grinstead. (Of course they knew she ought to be at a bigger, better, boarding-school but she had made such a terrible scene when they had suggested sending her away, the idea had been dropped.) It was something that Giselle said just before she kissed her sister goodbye that started the niggling worry in the elder girl’s mind.

“It’s Friday, the thirteenth. I do wish you weren’t hunting, Viola.”

“Don’t be silly, darling,” Viola laughed back, “only ignorant people are superstitious.”

Giselle’s enormous violet-blue eyes had filled with the ready tears that could always melt Viola’s heart.

“Perhaps I’m just an ignoramus, then,” she had said sadly. “But I still wish you wouldn’t go.”

She continued to look miserable and Viola tried to find out why the young girl thought Friday, the thirteenth, should be such an unlucky day. Giselle was forced to admit that she didn’t really know but, she said with dramatic fervour—last night she had dreamed that she saw everybody in the farmhouse wearing black. She never liked Viola to hunt, anyhow. She might be thrown. She might die. But Viola laughed and bent to kiss Giselle’s sad face and rode on her way. She certainly didn’t intend to give up hunting even to please her pampered sister.

But it struck her that she might be forced to give it up. She ought to take a job because things were not too good at the farm. Aunt Rachel was working too hard. It was time she pulled her weight. She had had two years doing little but help Aunt Rachel with the chickens for a couple of hours every day, and help Millie in the evenings, and she felt ashamed of herself for being so lazy.

It wasn’t that she was really lazy; Viola pondered over this question as she jogged home, her young body aching now for rest. Once more, Giselle was her main consideration. Taking a job meant going away from home. Giselle would loathe that. She wanted Viola always on the spot ready to amuse her, care for her, spoil her when Aunt Rachel was too busy.

Giselle had also complained about the visitor who was coming down this week-end, just before Viola rode off.

“I wish Ted wasn’t coming down.”

“Oh, darling, really!” Viola had protested rather crossly.

Sometimes Giselle was so selfish. She couldn’t bear Viola to make friends whom she didn’t like. And Viola knew perfectly well that Giselle was terrified her sister would suddenly get married, and leave home.

During the last year or two, quite a number of young men in the locality had wanted to take Viola out. Giselle hated them all. Most of all she hated Ted Selwin who was a lawyer—a partner in the firm of solicitors that had been employed by the Berand family ever since Viola could remember.

Ted was openly in love with Viola. He came down to stay at the farm whenever he was invited. ‘Good old Ted’, everybody called him. He was not a glamorous young man. He was big, and rather burly, and not at all like one’s conception of the smooth legal type. But he was the one frequent visitor to Longacre whom Viola really liked. There were times when she wondered whether she would not in time develop more than a platonic affection for him. He was the first man ever to make her feel that she was a woman. But until now Viola had refused to think seriously about love or marriage. Giselle—beautiful, exacting, petulant—always seemed to have first claim. Until Giselle was older Viola would never leave home.

The moment that Firefly clip-clopped through the gateway into Longacre Farm Viola knew that Giselle’s worst fears had been justified.

There were two cars outside the delightful stone built house. Dr. Berry’s red Triumph—only too often here on account of Giselle—and a little grey Mini-minor, equally familiar, for it belonged to the Vicar’s wife, Mary Sinclair, who was Aunt Rachel’s bosom friend.

Viola turned quite pale. She was thankful to see Zigmund, the Pole, and called to him, handed Firefly over to him and told him that she would join him in the stable later to rub the horse down. Then she ran into the house.

Giselle had seen her dismounting. She was there just inside the doorway. She looked scared to death. Her eyes were red-rimmed with weeping. Old Millie, also in tears, hovered in the background. Through the open sitting-room door, Viola could see the stocky figure of Mrs. Sinclair, talking to Dr. Berry. Now Giselle flung herself into her sister’s arms.

“Oh, Viola—Viola—I knew this was going to be a simply dreadful, dreadful day. Oh, I wish you’d never gone hunting.”

Viola clasped her close and tried in vain to calm her and extract further information but the young girl appeared to be too distraught and incoherent to give it. Finally it was Mrs. Sinclair who broke the appalling news to Viola.

Aunt Rachel was dead.

Wonderful, cheerful, splendid Aunt Rachel who had seemed in the very best of health and spirits when Viola had said goodbye to her this morning, lay dead upstairs, in her bedroom. They would never see her again as she used to be, not only their aunt but their best and dearest friend who had been father and mother both to them since they were little girls of eight and three. Even Viola, the elder, had only a dim memory of her parents. After the air crash in which the Berands were both lost returning from a trip to Hong Kong, the girls had lived with Aunt Rachel. She meant everything to them.

This sudden disaster was so unbelievable that it took Viola some time to credit what Mrs. Sinclair was telling her. Trembling and shaken, she listened. It was a coronary that had carried Aunt Rachel off. She had been found by Zigmund, lying up there outside one of the chicken houses. He and Millie had immediately sent for Dr. Berry, and phoned Mrs. Sinclair who hastened down to see what she could do.

Viola felt almost guilty that she should have been out enjoying that exhilarating Hunt when this terrible thing happened to poor darling Aunt Rachel.

But now Viola had little time for her personal grief. Giselle, as always, became the focus of attention. She was so hysterical that Dr. Berry had to give her a sedative. They got her to bed. Then Viola, with no time to weep, shouldered the burden. She changed from her riding kit into black slacks and a dark jersey and, once Dr. Berry left, sat discussing the immediate future with Mrs. Sinclair, who was a resourceful, sympathetic sort of woman. She would, she said, come down tonight to stay at the farm with the girls. It had already been arranged with the Vicar that the late Mrs. Berand should lie in the little village church which she had always attended and loved. The next thing was to get in touch with Aunt Rachel’s solicitors. That meant Ted, Viola thought, struggling to keep her mind clear in the thick mists of her personal sorrow.

Oh, darling Aunt Rachel, what are we going to do without you?

“I’ll phone Mr. Selwin at once,” she said.

“And what about your guardian?” asked Mrs. Sinclair.

‘Yes, what about their guardian?’ Viola thought. Lionel Donne—whom she and Giselle had nicknamed “The Lion” ever since they were children.

It revived her drooping spirits to remember that there was still dear wonderful Lion in the world. They were not quite alone.

“Mr. Donne is in Khartoum so your Aunt was telling me—we were only discussing him yesterday,” said Mrs. Sinclair, “hadn’t you better send him a cable?”

“Yes.”

“We can do it over the ’phone. I’ll help you draft it out, dear, but I think he ought to be told at once.”

And Mary Sinclair looked with pity at the beautiful girl, barely twenty-one, and thought too of the delicate difficult child now asleep upstairs. Mrs. Sinclair, herself, was badly hit by the loss of her dear friend, Rachel, but she could imagine what a mortal blow this must be to the two girls. Their aunt had been their lode-star for so long.

Mrs. Sinclair had no great affection for Giselle. She was, perhaps, the only one who ignored what she called Giselle’s ‘dramatics’ and suspected the real nature of the young girl. Giselle was selfish and sometimes even cruel, and she made the best, most egotistical use of her beauty.

Besides, in Mary Sinclair’s opinion, much of Giselle’s so-called delicacy was now a myth; only another weapon that the child used in order to get her own way. It was Viola whom Mrs. Sinclair loved best. Even dear Rachel used to give the major portion of her time and attention to the younger sister. But, in Mary’s opinion, Viola was the one who deserved it. She was not as strikingly beautiful as the violet-eyed Giselle with her long blonde hair. But she possessed an attractive radiance of healthy mind and body combined—strength as well as sweetness.

Giselle was capable of falsehood—Viola incapable of it, Mrs. Sinclair was sure.

Viola had the same fine bone structure as her sister but was a head taller. There were reddish lights in the brown hair which she kept short. One crisp wave always seemed to tumble forward on to her forehead. Her eyes were a warm hazel; her lips finely cut, less sensuous than Giselle’s. When she wore slacks and jerseys, as she did today, she looked almost like a handsome boy.

What would become of the sisters, Mrs. Sinclair wondered. They couldn’t stay on here alone. What would their guardian in the Sudan do for them?

Now Viola roused herself to help Mrs. Sinclair word the cable to Lionel. Her thoughts were all of him.

VIOLA and her sister had not seen their guardian for three years.

Viola had been seventeen—in her final year at school—and Giselle only twelve, when Lionel was last in England and he had spent a week with them on the farm.

Aunt Rachel used, perhaps, to be a tiny bit jealous about Lionel, but today when Viola considered the facts, she could see how wise her father had been to appoint a second guardian to his children before he took that last fatal trip to Hong Kong. Perhaps he had foreseen that his daughters might one day be left alone in the world and be in need of a man’s authoritative care.

Viola’s father had worked in the Foreign Office. He had been educated in his youth in France, as well as in England, and had a French god-mother—at one time the Comtesse de Chauvray. But by the time Mr. Berand came in contact with the family the Comtesse had already met and married Charles Donne, a distinguished soldier, during the first world war. Their son, Lionel, after leaving Oxford entered the diplomatic service, under Mr. Berand’s surveillance.

Once she was widowed, the Comtesse continued to live in her childhood’s home—Château Lamarche—on the outskirts of Fontainebleau. But Lionel was educated at Eton—like his father.

He was more English than French both in character and appearance. Viola was only a little girl when she first met him and it was not until she was sixteen that she had been struck by his beautiful manners, the slight gallant bow he had made when he was first introduced.

She had also noticed a certain haughtiness in his bearing. When she got to know him better she had nicknamed him

“The Lion” and thought it very suitable. He had such strength, grace and nobility. One couldn’t imagine anyone or anything defeating Lionel. He was also exceedingly intelligent. It was this perhaps that had finally persuaded Viola’s father to appoint the young man as second guardian to his children. Lionel had only just come of age at the time—but Viola could see that her father had been wise. Now that they had lost Aunt Rachel, how desperately they needed Lionel’s guidance.

Lionel was now thirty-three—and still a bachelor. To Giselle, he was quite elderly—even a father-figure—but to Viola his image was different. He had become her hero—to be worshipped in secret—his photograph stood beside her bed; his letters tied in a bundle were treasured and read again and again. He came home at regular intervals from his diplomatic jobs abroad to see Giselle and Viola. His visits were always thrilling. He could tell them so much about their father and the old days in the Château, when Lionel was a boy. He could weave wonderful stories, steeped in the lore of French and English history. And he was handsome enough to be any schoolgirl’s “crush”. Viola’s friends used to tease her about her “Lion” and crowd round to see his latest snapshot, or hear extracts from his letters which she read to them. He wrote always with fire and imagination. The letters all ended with the same words

“Ever affectionately yours,

‘The Lion’.”

Well, thought Viola, upon The Lion now must rest the sole responsibility that Aunt Rachel had for so long taken upon her shoulders.

Mrs. Sinclair did not want to depress Viola but she thought privately, that it was a bit “odd” that so young a man should be in control of the future of two girls; the older one still a minor and the other barely sixteen. But of course poor Rachel had said that Mr. Donne was a reliable person. They would have to wait and see.

The cable to Khartoum was sent. The rest of that day was a nightmare for Viola. She seemed to spend it between weeping bitterly when she was alone and trying to be steady and calm when she was with her young sister. Giselle was making the most of her own grief. When she came out of her drugged sleep later that night, she sat up in bed looking pale and pinched, her huge eyes begging for sympathy. Aunt Rachel’s death had really frightened her, of that Viola was sure. Viola sat on the side of the bed clasping the thin childish figure in her arms, smoothing back the long fair hair, assuring Giselle that everything would be all right.

“We’re all alone in the world now. What shall we do?” moaned the young girl.

“Not quite alone, darling. We have The Lion.”

“He’s always away. Oh, Viola, you won’t leave me, will you?”

“Of course not.”

But Giselle burst into fresh sobs.

“You will, you will. That horrible Ted is in love with you. He’ll make you marry him.”

Viola sighed. She was very tired and very unhappy. She, too, wanted to be comforted.

“Darling, I have no intention of marrying Ted. I’ve told you that a hundred times.”

It was later before Giselle agreed to drink the hot milk brought by the faithful Millie, and then Viola thankfully retired to the peace of her own bedroom.

She picked up Lionel’s photograph and looked at the attractive rather aesthetic face of the young diplomat. It showed the slimness of his figure but the wide shoulders and firm lips suggested power. He was her beau ideal, so clever—so vital, and he would take care of her and of Giselle. She knew it. Tomorrow no doubt an answer to her cable would come from Khartoum. They would know what he wanted them to do.

As for marrying Edward Selwin—good old Ted—what a pity Giselle disliked him. He offered a definite anchor—a solid basis for marriage; he was a solicitor in the family firm; a devoted friend; someone she was much more used to—and at home with—than Lionel.

She had spoken to Ted over the ’phone. He was shocked by her news and said that he would come down to see them all first thing in the morning. He would take care of things.

“And you know I’ll take special care of you if you’ll let me, darling. You know how much I love you.”

Yes—she knew that. She wished she could love him in the same way. Perhaps one day it would happen. It would be so nice—so easy to be able to stop worrying—and slide quietly into marriage with Ted. He offered security and devotion. True, he didn’t get on with Giselle but that was only because the child was jealous. She’d get over it. If Ted let her live with them and if he behaved as a devoted brother-in-law …

But now her thoughts drifted away from Ted. The Lion’s photograph was in her hand and it was the thought of Lionel that filled her final waking thoughts. When she had waved goodbye to Aunt Rachel this morning everything had seemed normal—and peaceful. She hadn’t been thinking about Lionel; after all he wasn’t expected back home from his job in the Sudan for another six months. Now she wondered if he would decide to fly over to see his two wards. There crept into her reflections a tinge of feminine excitement, wondering what he would think of her personally, now that she had grown up. When he had last seen her she had been a seventeen-year-old schoolgirl. More at home in jodhpurs and sweater, riding Firefly, than wearing feminine frills and being sedate or sophisticated. Unlike most of her school friends she had never really had much interest in make-up or boy-friends. But now she was twenty and a woman. Things were different. Already someone—Ted—wanted to marry her. She had begun to look upon love and life from a more adult angle.

Wouldn’t Lionel see a big difference in her? Would her own changed feelings make her feel shy with him—and because of that shyness would their future association be rather embarrassing? She didn’t know. She was really too exhausted to wonder for long, and at last she slept.

It was in the early morning (Giselle was not yet awake) that the telephone bell suddenly rang. Viola, in her dressing gown, red-brown hair unbrushed, rough like a boy’s, eyes heavy and sad, went down to answer the call. She took it for granted that this would be Ted again. But her pulses jerked with astonishment and pleasure when she heard a voice say:

“Can Miss Viola Berand take a call from Khartoum?”

“Yes—yes, I can. I’m here,” she answered breathlessly.

“We’ll come through again,” said the operator. “Please stand by.”

Then a second call—and now—miraculously—Lionel’s voice, strange yet familiar, making her heart pound with excitement. It was a very special voice, she always thought—clear, authoritative and charming. He was full of sympathy.

“You poor darling! And poor little Giselle, too. What a hideous blow for you both.”

“Oh, Lion—is it really you? You sound so near—just as though you were in this room.”

“These lines are always marvellous. I can hear you very plainly too.”

“Oh, Lion—isn’t it all terrible?”

“How did it happen?”

“Just a coronary—just that—so dreadfully sudden.”

“Bad for you, but a good way for her to go.”

“I know——”

The tears were pouring down Viola’s cheeks again. She clung to the receiver as though to a lifebelt.

“Oh, it’s heaven to hear you. Tell us what to do,” she begged with childish emotion

“You’ve instructed the lawyers, of course.”

“Yes, Mr. Selwin—Ted—is coming down today.”

“Do I know him?”

“No, I don’t think so. He only came into the firm about three years ago, when his father retired, but he deals with Aunt Rachel’s affairs as well as ours.”

“You don’t know your financial position yet, I suppose?”

“Only what Aunt Rachel once told me—that Giselle and I would inherit all that she had to leave. Of course it won’t be much—we’ll have to sell the farm. I believe it’s worth about £30,000, but there’s a heavy mortgage on it, and Aunt Rachel’s private income was small, so I don’t think. . .