by Susan Barrie
“Why, that is kind of you, Nurse Nolan!” she said. “I’ll squeeze my feet into them somehow, if you’ll be good enough to let me have them. And perhaps—” glancing again at Miranda “—perhaps you wouldn’t mind if I accompanied you on one of your walks?”
“Of course, if you’d like to,” Lucy answered, with her own peculiarly charming smile.
“I certainly would, nurse,” Mrs. Harling assured her, and thrust her knitting somewhat contemptuously away in her elaborate knitting bag. “In London we live in what they call a mews apartment, and I get a bit tired of the outlook. So when I come to a place like this I feel I’d like to see something of it.” She looked up almost awed as Purvis bowed before her with the tray of drinks, and her beringed fingers reached out for a dry martini. “Thank you very much, Mr.—er—Purvis!” she said.
Her daughter slid green eyes around at her coldly as she sipped her own drink that Sir John himself had put into her hands.
“Nurse Nolan is not here for your entertainment, mother!” she rebuked her. “She is here to look after Miranda!”
“Oh, of course, dear,” Mrs. Harling agreed almost humbly—she was aware that she had blundered badly over that “Mr.” when addressing the butler and that Lynette was probably fuming inwardly. “But I don’t suppose she’ll mind if I trot along with her when she’s taking the child for her walks. And you know how much I like the country—and all this is so new....”
There was something almost pathetic about the way she looked around her at the dignified, age-old terrace with its flower-filled urns, and the wide windows standing open behind them providing glimpses of luxurious rooms beyond. Here there was no flamboyance, or any pretence of any kind, but there was evidence of a great deal of wealth put to a use that provoked admiration, and inspired a feeling of awe when one was not accustomed to it. And the host himself, regarding her with quite a kindly look—for him—wearing superlatively tailored flannels, a silk shirt open to reveal a strong brown column of a throat, and a very dark blue blazer. Somehow, Sir John himself made her feel nervous, for all his kindness, with his austere gray eyes, and she gulped hurriedly at her drink and choked over it, and her daughter’s alabaster complexion was overlaid by a faint flush.
Sir John said quickly that he was sure Nurse Nolan would be only too delighted to have company on her walks, and Lucy endorsed this by adding that she would be taking a walk in the wood alone that afternoon, while Miranda rested, and invited the ballerina’s embarrassed parent to go with her.
Mrs. Harling looked at her gratefully.
“That’s kind,” she said.
But Lynette, catching her scarlet lower lip between her white teeth, looked upward at Nurse Nolan.
“I hope,” she observed, “that the walk won’t be such a strenuous one that it will tire you too much to give me massage treatment for my ankle when you come back, nurse! I’d like you to spare me half an hour before dinner, at least!”
“Very well,” Lucy replied, and was aware that Sir John was studying her rather attentively as she wheeled Miranda’s chair away along the terrace.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Mrs. Harling, in a pair of Lucy’s carefully preserved brogues, proved to be an intrepid walker, and by the time they returned to the house after completely encircling the lake Lucy was aware that she was feeling, if not exactly tired by the exercise, at least grateful that it was over for the time being. Mrs. Harling had chattered away very much like the bird her bright eyes suggested—to Lucy a chirpy London sparrow resembled her more closely than anything else—and she was naive in the confidences that she had reposed in Lucy, and that were mostly concerned with her daughter.
Lynette was her world, and everything that made life worth living had its connection with her. Lucy listened to a story of pinching and scraping during Lynette’s early years, and life in squalid rooming houses in order that the child who promised so well should have every possible advantage that would secure her a much better time in the future. Lynette had danced her way to success on the sacrifices of her mother, and now her mother was so delighted by that success that she thought of little else during her waking moments. Lynette’s successful tour of Europe—Lynette’s reception in America—it was all almost bewildering! And now Lynette’s association with Sir John Ash—fabulously wealthy widower!
It was fairly safe to predict—or so it seemed—that Lynette would one day be Lady Ash.
Lady Ash of Ketterings!
“But, you know,” said Mrs. Harling, lowering her voice expressively as she was attacked by a wave of sympathetic commiseration, “I do feel that it’s very unfortunate for him that his only child should be so much an invalid! Such a tragic thing for the poor man, and as for the child herself....” Her voice trailed off, alive with feeling.
Lucy agreed with her, although silently.
“Do you think she’ll ever walk again, nurse? Or is it a hopeless case? She looks so pathetically frail.”
Lucy said with deliberate brightness, “We certainly hope she will walk again before very long. But naturally, at the moment, it is difficult to say when.”
“Yes, I suppose so.” Mrs. Harling removed a bramble that was seeking to obstruct her path. “I must admit, though, that when I saw her for the first time this morning I got rather a shock. There’s nothing of her, for one thing, and for another—” She looped the bramble back into the hedge, and then examined her plump hands for thorns. “You may think me fanciful, nurse, but there’s a look in her face—something I don’t like to see....”
“What do you mean?” Lucy asked, feeling suddenly rather cold inside.
Mrs. Harling gazed at her half-apologetically.
“Oh, nothing—only she’s so wasted, and the poor mite looks
as if she suffers a good deal, and her eyes are tired....”
They walked on over the woodland path, and birds rustled in the branches above them, but for several seconds neither of them said a word. And then Mrs. Harling inquired abruptly, “Is Sir John very much concerned about his daughter?”
“What Sir John thinks and feels he keeps to himself. That’s his way about most things,” Lucy replied cautiously.
“Ah!” Mrs. Harling exclaimed, and nodded her head in entire agreement. “That was my own impression of him! A man very difficult to get to know, although I imagine Lynette knows him quite well by this time.”
“If she doesn’t, she’s most unwise if she’s seriously considering marrying him,” Lucy observed, a note of cool primness in her voice.
But secretly she wondered whether anyone—even a woman with opportunities to get to know him—would ever really understand what went on behind that inscrutable mask Sir John adopted to confound most people with whom he came in contact.
When she went upstairs to have tea with Miranda she was feeling, if not exactly depressed, at least strangely cast down as a result of her walk and her talk with Mrs. Harling. That remark about Miranda having something in her face! What exactly, had the older woman meant? But, then, Mrs. Harling was the type Lucy could imagine examining tea leaves at the bottom of her teacup, and consulting crystal gazers, and believing in signs and omens. And Miranda was looking so cheerful, when she, Lucy, joined her, sitting in her wheelchair with Gentian curled up and purring on her lap, and instructing Fiske how not to burn the tea cakes she was toasting in front of the sitting-room fire, that Lucy told herself almost fiercely that of course everything was going to be all right for her again one day. It had to be!
Lucy went down to give Lynette Harling her massage treatment just before dinner, but although the ballerina submitted to her ministrations, she had nothing to say to her, preferring instead to peruse a fashion magazine, and to issue occasional languid instructions to her maid concerning what she was going to wear that evening. Only when Lucy advised a few daily exercises that Miss Harling could carry out herself without supervision, and which she explained carefully, did Lynette reply to her in a distant sort of way, and as soon as the instructi
ons were over she dismissed her in very much the same manner as she would dismiss her maid.
Lucy withdrew from the lovely white room biting her lip, and later she heard Lynette go tripping lightly downstairs to the drawing room as if there was nothing in the least wrong with her ankle. Lucy, who was on her way back from her bath to her bedroom, leaned over the balustrade that followed the graceful sweep of the stairs down into the deep well of the hall below, and saw the tall figure of Sir John, black and white and elegant, emerge with the impulsiveness of a boy—or so it seemed to her—from the doorway of the drawing room, and greet her with both hands outstretched. Lynette was wearing the white dress with the golden roses, and tonight Lucy felt sure she was the Princess Aurora awaiting the kindling kiss of her lover—perhaps not so much awaiting it, as expecting it!
Two nights later quite an impressive dinner party was given by Sir John, and among the guests were several of his neighbors who did not normally see very much of him. Lucy received a summons, couched in polite phrases, to make a fourth at bridge, and she changed hastily into the only dress she had that she thought was really suitable, and went down to the drawing room.
It reminded her of a stage set with its lights and its flowers, but it was an extremely elegant stage set, and the one figure in the room who instantly compelled attention was Lynette, with her vivid, flame-like hair. She was behaving with kittenish playfulness and receiving all the attention of Sir John, who was standing close beside her chair and regarding her with obvious admiration, while the remainder of his guests formed themselves into little groups, and the man called Francis Burke stood rather noticeably alone before one of the tall windows, looking out into the night.
Lucy spared him a quick, rather surprised look, for he was not precisely a young man, and yet Lynette seemed to favor him when she was not bestowing more important favors on her host. Lucy was inclined to wonder a little about their relationship, and why he had formed one of the house party at Ketterings—and, if it came to that, why Sir John had allowed him to be included when it was quite plain that his feelings for Lynette were most decided. But when Lynette was otherwise occupied he had a lonely air about him—almost a neglected air—and Lucy felt vaguely sorry for him.
She herself was asked to join a bridge four with the vicar as her partner, and his wife and a prominent local landowner opposing them. Lynette had no interest in bridge, and did not even pretend that she had, and her mother sat on a striped regency couch and knitted away indefatigably at the heliotrope sweater.
Sir John was called away after a time to the telephone, and very shortly after that Lucy noticed that both Lynette and Francis Burke were missing. Lucy went on playing bridge, finding it very heavy going, until at last the dinner guests began to break up. Sir John returned just in time to receive their farewells and thanks. Lucy herself stole thankfully away, but suddenly remembered that she had left a book she was reading in the chair that took Miranda on her trips about the grounds. This chair was kept for convenience in the little room that gave access to the terrace, and that had once been a part of the drawing room. So she opened the door and switched on the light to retrieve it.
Instantly she regretted what she had done, for instead of being empty the room contained two people. They were standing very close together, near the window, and with the abrupt switching on of the light one of them turned swiftly
toward Lucy. She wore a white dress that billowed around her like a white mist, and was ornamented with large golden roses, and her hair was a living flame of red. Her eyes were brilliantly green, and angry.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, and she sounded as if she was speaking through clenched and faultless white teeth. “So you add spying to your other accomplishments, do you. Nurse Nolan? Well...!” and she threw off the restraining hand of Francis Burke from her shoulder, and swept into the middle of the room to confront Lucy. “I’ll see to it that Sir John hears about this!”
Lucy looked at her as calmly as she was able.
“I’m sorry. Miss Harling, if I’ve interrupted something private, but this room is not usually used by anyone, and for that reason we keep Miranda’s wheelchair in here.” She looked toward the chair, with its neatly folded camel’s hair rugs reposing on the seat, standing against the wall, but Lynette did not follow the direction of her glance. “I came to recover a book I left on the chair this morning, but naturally I didn’t know there was anyone in here.”
Lynette had all the appearance of being about to say something almost violent, but instead she bit her lip until it very nearly bled, and then turned to the man who was now standing uncomfortably at her elbow, and looking at Lucy with something like apology in his distinctly nice eyes.
“Come along, Francis!” she ordered. “We might as well go back to the drawing room. In this house, apparently, it is impossible to be at all private!”
And she swept past Lucy without even glancing at her again, while Francis Burke followed more slowly, and even offered to switch off the light for Lucy once she had recovered her book and was herself moving toward the door. But Lynette called to him imperiously over her shoulder, and he went with a slight, helpless shrug that spoke volumes to Lucy, who recognized that where the dancer was concerned, at any rate, he had practically no will of his own.
Lucy went thoughtfully upstairs to her room, and for a long time after she reached it she stood by the open window, in the star-pricked darkness of the early autumn night, looking out at the lake that shimmered like a pearl where the stars were reflected in it. And presently the French windows immediately below her were thrown outward, and Miss Harling and her host stepped out onto the terrace. Lynette now had a mink stole around her shoulders, over the drifting white gown, and she was clinging to the arm of Sir John, whose gaze seemed to be compelled by the sheer mystery and magic of the lake.
But Lynette was talking to him with little expressive movements of her hands as they moved toward the head of the terrace steps, and Lucy found herself wondering what she was talking to him about. Was it likely that she was telling him about the hour or more that she had spent alone with Francis Burke in the small drawing room?
Lucy was quite certain she was not, but it did occur to her that she herself might figure in the conversation. And then she sighed suddenly as she watched the two figures—the one not actually tall, but with a masculine grace and ease of carriage that was beginning to awake something like a faint admiration in her own heart, and the other a sylphlike creature who always seemed to be enacting one of the roles she danced, as light as gossamer on his arm—treading the shaven surface of the lawn in the direction of the lake.
But she could not have told anyone why she sighed.
CHAPTER NINE
For more than a week Ketterings provided a high standard of comfort and entertainment for its guests, and during that time Lucy saw comparatively little of any of them. She devoted half an hour each day to Miss Harling’s ankle, and she occasionally walked in the park with Mrs. Harling, and chatted once or twice with Francis Burke. The latter fitted in even less well with his surroundings than the ballerina’s mother, who never ceased to feel overawed by the style in which her host lived. But the reason for Burke’s inability to feel at home at Ketterings was entirely different, for he knew himself to be the odd man out. He was in love with Lynette—had been in love with her for years, for he was considerably older than she was—but it was a love that was doomed to be unrewarded.
Sometimes, when she watched him strolling restlessly up and down the length of the terrace, gazing unhappily at the lake, with his hands thrust deep in the pockets of his always meticulously tailored jackets, Lucy wondered why he had allowed himself to be included in this house party. And she wondered also why Sir John, who was favorite No. 1 with Lynette Harling, had permitted him to be included, when every glance he sent in the lovely redhead’s direction gave away the extent and depth of his feelings.
Lucy saw little of Sir John. He did occasionally make his appearance when she
and Miranda were together, but he obviously preferred to visit Miranda when she was alone, and at such times he sometimes devoted half an hour to sitting with her. Miranda admitted almost in surprise that she no longer felt badly in awe of him when he came near to her—in the past the mere threat of a visit from him had made her want to cling to Fiske, or have someone else near to share the embarrassment with her—but now she even enjoyed it when he picked up one of her books and read to her, and she was aware that he studied her more attentively during his visits.
One morning Lucy got up early to take a stroll in the gardens before breakfast—a thing she had delighted to do often before the arrival of the visitors—and she met him taking the short cut through the rose garden to the house. He had plainly been riding. He looked astonishingly well in riding clothes—so astonishingly well that her heart gave a queer little jolt of pleasure when she saw him running lightly up the time-worn steps that led from the shrubberies, and came to a surprised halt in front of her. It might have been the clear, primrose yellow of his polo-necked sweater, or the fact that his eyes were sparkling—sparkling and alive under the sooty black eyelashes that shadowed them—but he seemed at least several years younger to her this morning, and he was actually smiling. It was a gay, inquiring smile.