by Jane Arbor
But even as she spoke Hester’s companion turned his head to reveal himself a stranger, not Basil, to Kate’s relief. Bridie’s face clouded and she agreed, “Yes, it’s Hester,” at the same moment as the other girl met their glance and raised a hand in languid greeting. Then the men claimed their attention; the meal was served and before they reached the dessert course Hester and her escort had left their table.
But not the hotel. When Rory’s party went to the ballroom they were one of the two or three couples dancing, and at the sight of the others Hester halted at once and brought her partner over. She made a perfunctory introduction of him as George Barton, forcing Kate to introduce Rory and Dennis, though the latter and Hester already knew each other by sight.
George Barton made one or two friendly remarks before excusing himself to speak to a friend who was in the bar, and Hester replied to Kate’s rather frigid question as to when she had returned from England. Affecting surprise that Kate knew she had been, she said:
“I came back a week ago, with Guy. While I was over there Basil and I saw quite a bit of each other, by the way. But he’s somewhere off the map now and we’ve lost touch—you know how it is,” she said, and then to Bridie,
“Dear, talking of Guy—you really must satisfy my curiosity as to what happened between you two. He isn’t telling, so you must. I mean, one day there you were, head over ears, phoning him and meeting him and holding his hand over espressos all over the city, and the next, the whole thing seems to have died on both of you! So how come, after the drive he made at you on sight and that rather blush-making crush you had on him?”
Bridie’s face drained of all colour. She threw one hunted look in Rory’s direction, then moistened her lips and said,
“You must know—what happened between Guy and me!”
Hester’s pale eyes widened innocently. “Hand on heart, I assure you I—” she began, then caught herself up. “You don’t mean, you poor child, that he left you flat on your face, just like that? Oh, now that was too bad of him—and you trusting him as you did! But you know, I did warn Kate that he was like that. He picks up new girls all the time and expects them to co-operate when he wants to drop them. And though of course it’s only the cradle-innocents who fall seriously for that fatal charm of his, he gets so bored when they make a nuisance of themselves that I’m afraid he’s crueller than he need be—”
She broke off as Bridie’s evening bag clattered to the floor and Rory stooped to retrieve it. Snatching it from him, Bridie fled, followed a moment later by Kate, though not before, from the corner of her eye, Kate saw Conor appear at Hester’s side, heard him ask formally, “Will you dance, Miss Davenport?” and knew that they had moved together down the room.
Bridie was in the empty cloakroom, seated at the dressing-table, her face hidden in her hands. Kate sat beside her on the stool, took her in her arms and tilted her chin.
“Bridie pet, it was just sheer, wanton malice—you mustn’t care so much!” she pleaded.
“Not care—with Rory there, hearing it all?” Bridie choked. “Didn’t you see the way he looked at me—as if he would never trust me again?”
Kate shook her head. “Nonsense. He was looking as bewildered as if a bomb had gone off at his feet—and why not? And do you know what you must do now? You’ve to come straight back and tell him the whole, the real truth about Guy.”
Bridie wrenched free, turned her head aside. “I can’t! I can’t! This afternoon, we agreed we’d fallen for each other at sight, and I—more or less—lied to him that there had ever been anyone else for me. Besides, you said—”
“I know. That you needn’t tell him about Guy. But now he has heard that twisted version, you owe it to him to tell him yours. If he’d never heard Guy mentioned, you needn’t have told him. But now you must.”
“Not—not about how I was going to run away to England to him?” begged Bridie. “Not that!”
Kate said firmly, “That too, dear, I’m afraid, if he wants to know how and why you finished with Guy. It wipes the whole slate clean, don’t you see?” She stood, then fetched her own wrap. “We’re going back together now, and I shall ask Dennis to take me for a stroll along the shore. And if you and Rory want to leave without us, do that. Dennis can get out his own car and drive me home before he rows back to the Island. So please come—won’t you?”
But Bridie still hung back. “She’ll still be there—yackety-yak!”
“Hester? No. As I came after you, Conor had appeared from somewhere and was asking her to dance. I saw them go off together.”
Bridie’s brows knitted. “Conor asked her? Are you sure? I mean, wouldn’t you think, after all that about Guy and me, that he wouldn’t have much use again for either of them?”
Privately Kate had thought and hoped so too. But aloud to Bridie she defended Conor, “I suppose, in the hotel business, you can’t afford to be reckless enough to make enemies, merely for the sake of your friends,” she said, not knowing then with what vigour and even relish Conor was doing just that at that very moment.
In Conor’s private sanctum, one of its windows sheer to the lake, the other with an outlook along the shore, Hester Davenport stood with her back to the closed door, her hand lightly spread upon its panels. “So, having asked me to dance with you and instead propelled me here as if I were a prisoner under escort, perhaps you’ll now tell me what you really want with me?” she challenged Conor, across the room from her, his arms folded, using the edge of his desk as his support.
“I will,” he agreed blandly. “That is, if you can’t guess or won’t try. Meanwhile, though it shouldn’t take long and this is no social occasion, I’m not grudging you a chair if you’d care to take one.”
Hester’s chin went up. She sneered, “Well, thanks for the cordial welcome, but I prefer to stand. And perhaps I will guess, at that. You’re telling me, in effect, that when you had that showdown in the city with Guy the other day, and warned him against showing himself here again, you meant that ban to include me—isn’t that it?”
“Exactly.”
“And you thought I should abide by it? That, just at your say-so, I shouldn’t come when, with whom, and as often as I choose?”
“I hoped you might take the hint—yes.”
“Really? But—though do correct me if I’m wrong—aren’t you running a hotel? What about your licence? Aren’t there laws about that?”
“There are indeed. But though the law on innkeeping enjoins me to provide shelter and victuals for man and beast, it still allows me to throw out undesirables at my discretion.”
Hester drew a long breath. “And you dare to class me as an ‘undesirable’?”
“Well now,”—Conor looked her up and down—“let’s say that, supposing you had the effrontery to show up again, I was prepared to give you the benefit of the doubt—until tonight.”
“Very big of you, I’m sure. And how do you suggest I’ve blotted my copybook tonight?”
Conor’s eyes went hard. “You should know,” he said. “By viciously molesting another guest of mine—a defenceless child nowhere near your weight in, to use a vulgarity—crust. For really, Miss Davenport, if only for your own good, you should consider the distance those shrill little head-notes of yours are apt to carry! After all, how could you know I should respect your feelings enough to pretend I wanted to dance with you, instead of showing you the door there and then?”
“I said no more than the silly infant and that—that gold-digging sister of hers deserved. What’s more, you wouldn’t have dared to ask me to leave in public, just on that evidence.”
“No? And you’re right there, surely. For I’m not asking you now either—I’m telling you.”
“Oh, you are? Well, in turn, let me tell you, my courteous Mr. Burke, that I’m not leaving this room and neither are you, without some extremely awkward explanations to your staff!” As she spoke Hester’s hand fumbled behind her and her wrist turned adroitly. Then she crossed to the window above
the lake; opened it and showed the key of the locked door to Conor before dropping it, plummet-wise, into the water below.
Then, studiedly jaunty, she went to perch on the other windowsill, her arms folded in deliberate mimicry of his own pose. “Well?” she taunted him.
He levered himself upright and went over to join her. “Well, well—read any good melodramas lately?” he mocked her. “Now what did you hope to gain by that bit of sleight-of-hand?”
Hester said coolly, “Just this. I’d remind you that I didn’t come alone, and when my escort finds I’ve gone missing, he’ll naturally want to find me. And when he does, don’t mistake me, I’m going to see he understands very well the implications of that locked door!”
“The implications being—?” Conor, equally urbane, invited.
“As if you couldn’t guess!”
“As if I couldn’t ... I lured you here; I locked the door; I held you against your will under my covetous duress. And what’s that going to do to my reputation and my hotel licence—eh?”
“What indeed? But that’s your headache, isn’t it?”
“And supposing your boy-friend doesn’t miss you for quite some time?”
“There’s always your staff. And you’re right about my voice; it’ll carry a long way if, presently, I decide to scream for help instead of waiting for George Barton.”
“Either way, you’re going to see that as many people as possible believe The Worst of my intentions towards you?”
“You’ll never,” Hester assured him, “be more sure of anything than you can be of that.”
“Ah well—‘the condemned man ate a hearty breakfast,’ ” quoted Conor. “What shall we talk about while you’re waiting to be rescued or until you judge it time to start screaming?”
Hester shrugged. “Anything. Nothing. Do we have to make conversation at all?”
“On just one point, we do,” said Conor. “A while back you called Kate Ruthven a gold-digger. Why?”
“If you don’t know, and you’re so good at eavesdropping, you should listen in to the gossip in your own bars!”
Conor shook his head. “No, I’d rather you told me. In fact, you’re going to tell me. What did you mean?”
“Only that La Ruthven evidently doesn’t believe in wasting much time. In London she cornered Basil Kent—the heir to Kent Holdings—and since he saw there was no future for him in that affair, she seems to have fastened on to your local island-hermit instead. What’s his name?—Regan. He’s rolling in a fabulous unearned income too, they say. And if you don’t believe it’s ‘on’—look for yourself, do.”
Upon which Hester’s forefinger crooked, then pointed through the window. Conor took the step nearer which enabled him to follow its direction, and side by side they looked out at the two figures halted on the lakeshore—Kate and Dennis, her arm held close and possessively beneath his, her face turned in profile to the watchers as he bent to kiss her lips lightly before they moved on.
It was the rising moon which had revealed them. It went behind a cloud, and Hester said,
“Well? Satisfied the lady knows what she’s about? Though why should you worry, one wonders? After all, even while she was still engaged to Basil Kent, you seem to have found her ... co-operative once—remember? I do, for I was there. So if you want to keep your hand in, why shouldn’t she be again with a lame fiancé who can’t always be around to see what’s going on?”
For answer Conor’s angry eyes stared her out of countenance until she dropped her own. He said thickly, “That’ll be all from you,” then crossed to his desk, slammed a drawer open and shut, went over to the door and used a key on it, then threw the door wide. “Now get out,” he ordered her.
Hester bridled on a last-ditch bravado. “Two keys all the time! Well, what d’you know? So—Rescue Operation null and void—hm?” she mocked.
“If you don’t go now, you’re going to need rescuing,” warned Conor. “I’ll give you a quarter of an hour to collect that frustrated knight-errant you have in tow. After that I’ll have a check on the car-park to make sure you’ve gone.”
She went. Conor watched her round the corner of the corridor, then returned to his room to fling the casements of both windows open, as if, by doing so, he hoped to rid the very atmosphere of her evil.
CHAPTER EIGHT
A fortnight later the north shore of the lake was already noisy with men and bulldozers at work on the clearance of the land for the laying of Conor’s golf-course.
By tacit consent Kate and Bridie made no reference to it in Professor Ruthven’s hearing, and with a watertight detachment which was peculiarly his own, he appeared to be oblivious that anything unusual was afoot on the land which marched with his. On his walks to the village he would skirt cordoned areas and yawning chasms without comment; he and the men gave each other a cordial time of the day when they met and Bridie was prepared to swear she once heard him exchange an absent, “God be with the work” with one of them.
Laughing over this, Kate said wryly, “I think Father believes that if he ignores a fact enough, it will stop being one in time.” To which Bridie’s crisp reply was, “If that golf-course isn’t a fact by the spring, you know who’s going to want to hear the reason why?—the whole Lake to a man, except Father!”
Which was indeed true. The Professor was alone in his disapproval. Everyone else saw Conor’s latest venture in terms of trade, employment or prestige for the district, the only noticeable embitterment arising when the Post Office laid in a stock of wheeled golf-club carriers and was accused by the parent O’Sheas of trying to snatch the bread of caddyhood from the mouths of the three of their eight children, who were due to leave school at Christmas.
August became September, alternately halcyon and blustering; Dennis was working towards the deadline of tie closing date for the design contest and Kate, recalling her bargain with Bridie, was wondering when the girl would expect to be set free of hex promise to stay at home until the summer was over.
After his few days in Morah Beg, Rory Tierney had returned to Castlebar and thence had gone on an all-male sailing holiday. But in October he would be back in Dublin for the college autumn term, and if Dublin still beckoned Bridie, ought she still to be denied it?
As matters proved, Kate need not have worried. When the subject was broached Bridie said placidly that there was “time enough” for her to train at a floral school or with a Dublin florists. She was happy where she was, working for Conor, and Rory, bless him, not only understood but had laid down the law that while the Professor still wanted her at home, she ought to stay.
Amused, though relieved, Kate asked, “Isn’t it early days for Rory to be giving you orders?”
But Bridie only said blissfully, “When he’s feeling masterful I let him think he has only to tell me to go jump in the lake and I’ll do it. Which is quite fair, in exchange for his letting me rule him sometimes.”
“Ruling him on what?”
“Well, like putting on his cardigan after exercise and not keeping his mother waiting up for him—she’s a widow, you know. Yes, Rory and I understand each other very well,” added Bridie, forgetting how recently, though without cause, she had feared his misunderstanding.
On another occasion she worried aloud, “Kate, has it occurred to you at all that Father doesn’t seem quite so well lately? For instance, when he didn’t know I was watching him the other day, I saw him stop several minutes, trying to get his breath, and when I took him his milk this morning he was just sitting at his desk with his head in his hands, as if even writing was too much for him. Could his heart be worse, do you think?”
Privately Kate had had the same thought and had been counting the days until the Professor’s next medical check-up. Now she suggested, “We could ask Dr. Kilian to bring it forward a bit, for Father is so vague about dates that he’ll never know it isn’t due.”
The small deception worked, and Professor Ruthven accepted without question that three months and a bit had m
ysteriously become four. But to the girls’ relief, Dr. Kilian’s report was guardedly reassuring.
“Clinically speaking, his condition hasn’t deteriorated much,” the doctor told Kate. “So if he seems to you to be slowing up, he’s may be heeding my warnings at last. Anyway, he understands very well that I can’t give him a new heart or even patch up the one he has. The most we can hope for it is that it will keep ticking over gently and, with the help of the little I can do for him, it should be at it for a good time yet.”
“Ought I to make him rest more or persuade him to stop working or lecturing altogether?” asked Kate.
Dr. Kilian grinned. “You could try—though you’d be better saving your breath to cool your stirabout! No, just let him go on as usual, for that private world of his is his best armour against the kind of upset that would harm him. For the rest, keep him well fed and dryshod and warm, and you’ll be doing the best any of us can for him.”
So the Professor went his dedicated, absent-minded way through the autumn days; while the trees round the lake turned colour and made ready for winter he planned a new set of translations from the Gaelic and discussed with Kate his ideas for a Gaelic play of his own.
Since she had been at home, besides her own work for her firm, she had made time to correct and type his manuscripts and lecture-notes for him. Usually she joined him in his study after supper and worked on them. But on a day which later she was to remember all her life, she found herself with time to spare in the morning and decided to put in an hour’s typing then.
The day itself was one of tearing wind and squally rain—the kind that beat the trees horizontal and chopped the surface of the lake into grey-capped angry troughs. Bridie had had no choice but to set out to Cork, and though Kate had done her best to dissuade him, the Professor had insisted on taking his daily walk. So she had fortified him with a bowl of soup, wrapped him up and let him go, only after extracting his promise that he would turn back before he was really tired.