The second collection of 3 great novels by Mary Burchell

by Burchell, Mary

  When the waiter had gone to execute their order, she looked up at him and smiled with such frank happiness that he slightly caught his breath. She heard him, and wondered a good deal at the reason for it.

  "Now," he said, leaning his arms on the table and smiling across at her, without a trace of coolness this time, "tell me what you're doing in London. I don't know anything about that yet, you know."

  "Don't know .... But you must know!" exclaimed Leoni. "I'm working in your office."

  There was no mistaking the astonishment on his face. Astonishment, incredulity—and then a sort of amused dismay that made Leoni's heart beat rather heavily with an answering dismay that had no amusement in it.

  "Working in my office are you? How damnably awkward,"he said with devastating frankness.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  For a moment Leoni really thought that her angry tears were not to be kept back even in the Grill Room at the Savoy. Then with an effort, she made anger conquer grief, and the rush of hot, indignant feeling brought unconsidered words to her lips.

  "What a horrid, mean and snobby thing to say!" she said to her astonished host. "Everyone told me you were a snob, and I—I always defended you. But I see now that they were right and I was silly to bother. I ... I wish I hadn't come out with you, and if it's going to be so damnably awkward for you, rilgonow."

  "Sit down," he said quietly, as she half rose to her feet. And then, as though there were one important thing he had drawn out of her hot and hurried speech, "Did you really bother to defend me, Leoni. Why?''

  She sat down again, a good deal shaken.

  "IVe told you—because I was silly," she retorted a little sulkily. "And now I'm sorry I did it."

  "No, please don't say you're sorry. Let me say instead that rm most awfully sorry to have made that ridiculous and tactless remark. But, believe me, it had nothing to do with snobbishness."

  But she wouldn't look at him—staring intently instead at the tablecloth on which she traced agitated little patterns with her finger.

  "Well, I think it's very snobbish to be embarrassed to find you're taking out your own shorthand-typist."

  "Darling child, I'm not in the least embarrassed," he assured her amusedly. "I don't care in the remotest degree about your position, m my office or anyone else's."

  "Then why make that beastly remark?"

  He made a little gesture of amused protest.

  "I don't know how discreet you are, but can't you see it's a little awkward to have someone in my own firm who knows so much about me?"

  There was no opportunity to answer this astonishing remark because the waiter arrived just then with the main course of their meal.

  Leoni watched him setting out the dishes, and tried all the time to decide what Lucas had meant by that statement. There was so very little, really, that she did know about him. Not one quarter of what she would have liked to know, come to that! Perhaps he imagined that because she knew the Vandeems she was also bound to know all his private affairs.

  She thought perhaps she ought to say something to reassure him on tnat point when tne waiter had gone.

  But when the waiter had gone, it was Lucas who did the reassuring. He put his hand on Leoni's as it lay on the table and said, with quite unusual gentleness, *'Will you please forgive me? I didn't mean to hurt or annoy you. I really meant this to be an evening of pleasure for you, and I seem to have made a very bad start."

  ''Oh, it's all right—really," Leoni assured him instantly, and turning her hand, she clasped his with rather naive sincerity. "I expect I was silly to—to mind."

  "No, you weren't," he told her. "And it's very salutary to be told the truth about oneself sometimes."

  "But this wasn't quite the truth, was it?" She smiled shyly at him, because the warm clasp of his long, strong fingers pleased and yet agitated her.

  "I don't know, Leoni." He laughed and released her hand. "If everyone told you I'm a snob, I begin to be afraid I must be one."

  " Oh—" she flushed.' * They were quite wrong, though.''

  "Oh, come!" he protested amusedly. "You aren't back on the defense line, are you?''

  She smiled at that, but she said quite firmly, "I don't think I'll let anyone call you a snob, all the same. '

  "I'm touched by your championship," he told her lightly. But somehow she felt the lightness was assumed, and that for some reason or other he was genuinely touched.

  Then after that he asked her about her coming to the office, and she discovered that he had been abroad until that week, so that the very minor matter of her appointment had gone unnoticed by him.

  "And now you know, you—you don't really mind, do you?" she asked rather timidly.

  "No,** he said, again with that peculiar touch of gentleness, '' I don *t mind at all.''

  So Leoni settled down to enjoy her dinner, determinedly putting from her all the doubts and anxieties that had clouded the first half hour of their meeting.

  He talked to her kindly and amusingly after that, telling her a little of what he had done while he was abroad, and also giving her an interesting commentary on one or two well-known people who were m the room.

  Then he asked her about herself, and she told him of her first two days in the oflfice, and of the arrangement which had been made for her to live with matron *s sister and her family.

  "Oh, and that reminds me," she exclaimed anxiously. "Mrs. Dagram said I mustn*t stay out so late that you couldn *t take me right home. *'

  "But of course rll take you right home,** he told her amusedly. "What else did you think Td do?**

  "Well, I didn't know if you lived so far the other way that you wouldn't be able to get a bus or train back. **

  "I think we'll take my car," he said, smiling at her. "Then you won't have to worry about my spending the night coming back to town."

  "Do you live in town?" Leoni asked with interest.

  "I have an apartment off St. James's Street, though I usually spend the weekends in Surrey with my parents, he explainea.

  Then you live alone in your apartment?"

  "Certainly I live alone in my apartment," he agreed with a dryness that was lost on her.

  "Oh—I would think that's lonely. I think it's lovely being part of a big family.'*

  "Do you?*' He looked surprised. "I would have thought you would like solitude after community life."

  "Well, perhaps this is an especially nice family," Leoni conceded. And tnen she told him all about the Dagrams and

  how kind and amusing and understanding they were. Before she knew where she was, she was even teUmg him about the borrowed collar and coat, and how Trudie had transformed her hat for this great occasion.

  He listened with the greatest attention, as though it really mattered very much that she had been able to look as she wished. Then at the end of the recital, when she was beginning to wonder if she had let him in rather too much on the makeshifts that went to produce the finished picture, he said gravely, "Well, the result is lovely, Leoni.'*

  "Oh, do you really think so?*' She was delighted.

  *'I think," he said, "that you're the loveliest girl in the room."

  Leoni gasped and blushed slightly. She looked around once agam on the display of elegance and beauty around her. He could not have meant that quite literally, of course, but it was very, very pleasant to thmk that he could say it with such conviction.

  He laughed softly at her expression. That slight, indulgent, almost affectionate laugh, which did such odd things to Leoni's inexperienced but well-disciplined heart.

  "Are you enjoying yourself, Leoni?'

  "Oh, yes! Tremendously. I've never been out like this before, you know. And I've never been to a theater," she told him with a sudden rush of frankness.

  "Good lord! How wonderful," he exclaimed.

  "Yes. I 'm finding it simply wonderful.''

  "I'm glad. But I meant it was wonderful for me." And then, before she could ask about that, he added, "I think we had better go now.
We don't want to be late."

  Outside he handed her into his Daimler coup6, and said teasingly, but with real interest, "Do tell me—is it the first car ride, too?"

  "Oh, yes," Leoni assured him. "The orphanage bus is the nearest thing I 've known to a car before this."

  Something about the frankness of that must have prompted him to see that she had the best of everything that evening for, stopping the car before the)^ reached the theater, he went into a shop and returned with the biggest box of chocolates Leoni haa ever seen. He put it into her lap, without saying anything, but he was smiling.

  "Oh, you—you shouldn't spoil me like this," protested

  Leoni, who had been a good deal shocked by the number of notes she had seen change hands over the dinner bill, and now felt that this further extravagance bordered on the sinful.

  *'I think I should," he told her, smiling straight ahead of him, as though the driving of the car took all this attention. **After all, you've had to wait nine years for this outing, haven't you?"

  Then he parked the car, and they walked the last few yards to the theater, Leoni pressed a little against his arm because of the crowds thronging into the building.

  The Coronet was the most modern theater in London at that time, and Veronica the play that was drawing the smartest audiences.

  As Miss Coran had so tellingly put it, "The boy friend had *run to' orchestra seats," and Leoni could hardly have made her first visit to the theater under happier circumstances. Before the curtain went up she sat looking around her with an expression of smiling enjoyment, which was not unnoticed by one or two other people besides her companion.

  But once the curtain went up Leoni forgot all about her surroundings. She even forgot Lucas Morrion for part of the time. She had no standards of comparison by which to judge either the play or the acting, of course, but at least the play was one that gripped the mterest by sheer force of events.

  It might, however, have been a much feebler play and still have commanded intense interest with Sophie Rayter in the cast. Though Leoni was unaware of the fact, Sophie Rayter was a virtuoso performer—one of those rare creatures who can carry a whole performance upon her shoulders. All Leoni knew was that auntie had been a hundred times right in saying that she was a great actress and a great personality.

  In the first interval she came rather slowly back to earth, and to the realization that Lucas was watching her with rather dry amusement.

  "Isn't she—simply—marvellous?" said Leoni slowly.

  "She certainly knows how to put her stuff over," was the rather cynical retort.

  "Oh, but-don't you think she's good?"

  "As aa actress?"

  "Why, yes, of course as an actress," Leoni said, wondering in what other sense the question could be taken.

  Well, Leoni, she's one of the half-dozen stage people who can fill a theater on their name alone. One can't quarrel with that, I suppose. She's a good actress—perhaps a great actress."

  "I think she must be an absolutely thrilling person,"] sighed Leoni, in the throes of her first experience of being stagestruck.

  There was an odd little silence. Then he said with faintly grim amusement, "Would you like to go backstage afterwards and meet her?"

  Leoni actually paled and then flushed with excitement.

  "Go backstage? And meet her! Do you mean you could actually arrange that?''

  "Oh, certainly." He laughed at her expression.

  "I never heard of anything so wonderful," murmured Leoni. "This evening's like bemg in a dreani."'

  "Then it's agreed that we go, eh?"

  "Oh, please!*' Then, as the lights began to go down again, she whispered, "Do you know everyone interesting in London?"

  "No, no, not everyone," he assured her gravely. "But enough to give you an interesting evening whenever you want to make use of me as a taking-out-to-tea uncle."

  Leoni glanced at him in the half light, and though he was not looking at her, she saw that he was smiling. There was still something grim about the set of his jaw and the hard line of his rather thin cheek, but the smile was kindly, Leoni felt sure. And because there was no other way of conveying her gratitude at the moment, as the play had started again, she slipped her hand into his arm for a moment and gave it a grateful little squeeze.

  His expression didn't alter, nor did he look at her, but he lightly patted her hand before leaving her free to draw it away again.

  Tne rest of the play was as absorbing to Leoni as the beginning had been, but now at the back of her mind was the delicious consciousness of further pleasures to come. Not only the almost unbelievable prospect of going behind the scenes afterward and meeting this amazing stage per-

  'sonality as a real person—though that was exciting and thrilling enough in itself—but also the vista of possibilities that had been opened by Lucas*s remark about "whenever you want to make useof me.**

  There could be only one meaning to that. This entrancing evening was not the first and last. There were to be others. He wanted to see her again. He didn 't mind about her being in the office, "damnably awkward" though it might be, for some reason still unexplained. He didn't find her gauche and silly. He was enjoying this evening too, and he intended to repeat the experience.

  Leoni was slightly amused at his air of being so many, many years older than she. After all, thirty was not such an advanced age, even for someone as experienced as he. But perhaps he found it rather piquant to follow out something like the role she had tried to thrust on him years ago.

  Anyway, whatever the reason and whatever the circumstances, this friendship with Lucas Morrion promised all that Leoni could wish, and more.

  The play ended on a note of high tragedy, and Leoni was deeply moved and impressed. For a moment or two she could not even join in the applause, but sat there very still, with her hands clasped in her lap.

  "What is it, Leoni?" He bent over her. "Does the sad ending spoil your evening?"

  "Oh, no. it was an absolutely right ending. But it ... it*s frightfully moving, isn't it?"

  "I suppose it is," he agreed, but she had the impression that he was entirely unmoved.

  The actors were before the curtain now, bowing to the applause, and Leoni noticed with sympathy and approval that the famous Sophie Rayter herself only summoned the faintest smile in reply to her reception.

  "I think she feels it very much herself, don't you?" Leoni said in an impressed undertone to her companion.

  "No," he replied cynically. "I should think it's highly improbable that she does.''

  "Oh, but she hardly smiled at all. She looks as though it wouldn 't take very much to make her cry.''

  "A useful expression, Leoni, highly suited to the occasion," Lucas assured her with a dry smile. "Coming?"

  He put the little fur jacket around her and, feeling slightl}/ indignant at his last comment, Leoni came.

  When they reached the semicircular passage outside the auditorium, he turned away from the general direction ol the crowd, and conducted Leoni through a door near the side of the stage.

  As he held open a door, leading from the stage itself into a bare passage beyond, she said, **Do you have a business interest in the theater? Back plays and that sort of thing?"

  "Good God, no!'* he assured her. "There are more entertaining ways of losing one's money. The theater isn't my natural milieu, if that's what you mean."

  That was not, of course, quite what Leoni had meant, but there was no time to say so because, having led her along the corridor, he now knocked on a door, from behind which there came the sound of much talking and laughter.

  To Leoni's extreme horror and surprise, it was auntie who opened the door in answer to the knock.

  "Good evening, auntie," Lucas said quite imperturbably. "May I come in and bring a friend with me?"

  If auntie's astonishment was equal to Leoni's—and it probably was—at least she concealed it more successfully. After one short gasp and a comprehensive glance of disapproval, wh
ich included them both and should have been sufficient to blast an oak, she stood aside so that they could enter the room, which already seemed to Leoni to contain all the people it could possibly hold.

  Still greatly shaken by her encounter at the door, Leoni yet had enough comprehension left to notice how the people in the room immediately made way for Lucas—and, incidentally, herself. They accomplished the seemingly impossible, parting and leaving a narrow lane by which Lucas and his somewhat overwhelmed companion could approach the dressing table at which Sophie Rayter was sitting.

  She was turned around in her chair, away from the mirror, with one well-shaped arm along the back of her chair. Almost casually flung around her was a beautiful stiff brocaded wrap, and although her stage makeup had been removed, her hair—which was a rich and extravagant gold-was piled carelessly on her head in a way that showed off its

  luxuriance better than any formal hairdressing could have done.

  It was an evening of surprises for, instead of this magnificent and famous creature greeting Lucas as one of a hundred acquaintances, she said, "Oh, hello, Lucas. How nice of you to come around," as though nothing could be more natural than that he should appear in her dressing room.

  "I've brought an admirer to meet you, Sophie,'* he said. "This is Leoni Frendall. She's a school friend of my young cousin, Julia."

  Immediately the full force of Sophie's famous smile was turned on Leoni, and her strong warm fingers clasped the hand that Leoni rather timidly extended to her.

  "Why, how sweet of you to come around," she exclaimed, as though it really mattered whether or not Leoni came to see her. "Are you having your school holidays?"

  "Oh, no. I—I've left school," Leoni explained, feeling very much a schoolgirl still, however, before this dazzling personality. "I'm working in London now. This—this is the first time I've ever been to the theater."

  Sophie laughed—incredulously but with a sort of amused pleasure.

  "No! !s that possible? And how did you like it?"

  "I think you were absolutely wonderful," Leoni said with great simplicity. "I can't believe you aren't utterly wretched every evening in that last act."