One Coin in the Fountain

by Anita Charles

  Rose saw at once that the place seemed to be in a kind of uproar. The table was covered with papers which were obviously in the process of being sorted, a despatch-case stood waiting on a chair, a stack of books were ready to be thrust into a packing-case, and there were other evidences of intending departure in the general litter in the room. Through the open bedroom door she could see suitcases piled upon the bed and drawers standing open.

  “Do sit down.” He cleared a chair for her, and pulled it forward politely. It was his politeness that actually seemed to freeze her and caused her nervousness to increase. “It’s so surprising to have you calling upon me, Rose, that you must forgive me if I seem a little taken aback!”

  The extreme dryness of his voice made her wince.

  “I—I heard you were going away . . .”

  “Oh!” He sat down on the arm of a chair and gave a hitch to one of his carefully-creased trouser legs. “And how did you hear that?”

  “Signora Bardoli told me!”

  She saw him smile oddly.

  “You and the signora seem to have become rather close friends! At least, you meet fairly frequently, and she was telling me yesterday that she quite admires you colouring! She also seems to be of the opinion that you’re very young and inexperienced, and that you want someone to direct your path for you. I told her that Prince Paul de Lippi was planning to do that!”

  Rose looked down at the clasp of her handbag and hoped he didn’t notice that her hands were none too steady as she fumbled with it.

  “Why are you going away?” she asked, ignoring what he had just said.

  “Because I think I’m growing a little tired of Rome.”

  “But you were working on some particular plans! You—you wanted to complete them, and you said that Rome held something you didn’t want to say good-bye to yet awhile,” she reminded him.

  “Did I?” looking at her with almost cynical detachment. “Well, maybe it did when I said that, but you must remember that there are certain views, or aspects of a view, which pall rather suddenly after a time, and shall we say that I’m a little surfeited with all that Rome holds? I want to get away and seek pastures new.”

  “Then you are not planning to return to— Enderby?”

  “I don’t think so—not yet. But I shan’t remain away from it very much longer.” This time he looked at her with a kind of grimness. “You mustn’t get the idea that I’m in the state of mind when I’m still looking for distraction! I’m not . . .! I’ve learned my lesson, and I’m completely cured!”

  “Yes,” she said, moistening her lips after swallowing rather painfully. “I’m afraid I—I owe you an apology for what I said to you about— about Heather!” Her eyes appealed to him, but he didn’t seem to be much moved by her appeal. “For the second time in my life I said things to you that I— had no business to say, and I don’t suppose you'll find it very easy to forgive me? I know now that Heather—well, that it isn’t you she has been seeing a lot of since she arrived in Rome, and that there was not really any danger of your being—attracted to her a second time! And I didn’t really mean that you were—weak—even if you had been

  attracted . . .”

  “You’re very good and very generous, Rose,” he told her; but instead of the words reassuring her they filled her with a sudden cold sensation like despair once she had got over the shock of looking into his eyes. For they were cold and amused and hostile—so definitely hostile that she felt bewildered. “But in future there won’t be any need for you to concern yourself about me, for I don’t imagine we shall see very much of each other. Our paths will lie very widely apart, and when I said just now that I no longer needed distraction, and that I was completely cured of a weakness you have kindly decided never existed, I really meant that I no longer had any illusions about—anyone! Do you understand what I mean by that?” treating her to almost a contemptuous regard. “And very soon now I hope to go back to Enderby and take up my life where I left it off, and this time I shall fill it with the things that really matter. And here in Rome I’ve discovered that work matters, and that the more one has of it to occupy one’s mind the happier one is! I don’t intend ever again to be at the mercy of human relationships! I’m the type of man to grow into a nice crusty old bachelor, but crusty or not,

  I shall be well content with what I have!”

  “I see,” Rose said, and stood up suddenly. She felt as if she was blundering in the dark as she made a little movement towards his door. “Well, then, I—it only remains for me to say how much I hope you’ll find that contentment, and I—won’t interfere with your packing!”

  He looked at her with an unchanging expression in his eyes, but there was a rather hesitant note in his voice as he protested:

  “But I haven’t even offered you a glass of sherry! You were kind enough to visit me, too”— back on the note of derision—“and I haven’t yet learned what you came for?”

  “It wasn’t anything important. Just to—well, as I heard you were going away, to say goodbye . . .”

  “You didn’t think I’d come and say good-bye to you?”

  “I wasn’t sure.”

  He smiled slightly.

  “I hadn’t quite made up my mind as a matter of fact,” he admitted carelessly. “For one thing, I didn’t know whether you could find time to see me, and for another I haven’t a great deal of time myself. I’m flying to America by way of the Bahamas tomorrow morning, and I’ve still quite a lot of things to clear up here.”

  Rose suddenly felt so appalled—so horrified by the thought of the miles that would separate them after tomorrow—that she simply couldn’t say anything at all, and he glanced at her curiously as he walked behind her to the front door.

  “You have my solicitor’s address, Rose, and the address of my bank—and if you want to get in touch with me at any time your letter will be forwarded. I should particularly like to hear when you’re getting married, and then I can send you a wedding present.”

  But Rose heard herself say, as if she was talking in a dream, and therefore the words sounded curiously stilted:

  “I’m not getting married—I never had any intention of getting married! And if I did I— wouldn’t want any present from you!”

  He frowned quickly, but his voice was still mocking as he said:

  “Don’t tell me the Prince didn’t come up to scratch?”

  “If you mean—did he ask me to marry him? Yes, he did,” she answered mechanically, and opened the front door before he could reach it.

  “Then I don’t think you were very wise to refuse him, Rose!” But there was not quite so much inscrutability about his expression as he looked down at her, and it was even very faintly concerned. “What did Mrs. Wilson-Plunkett say?”

  But Rose simply turned and held out her hand to him.

  “Good-bye,” she said, without looking at him.

  He frowned more noticeably.

  “You’d better let me drive you back to the hotel,” he suggested, “or at least get you a taxi. If you’ll wait here I’ll telephone for one.”

  “I don’t want a taxi,” Rose answered, with a stubbornness in her voice that he had never heard before. “And I certainly wouldn’t allow you to drive me back to the hotel! You have your packing to attend to, and I mustn’t keep you. Goodbye,” she repeated, snatched her fingers from his hold, and then darted towards the lift just as it ascended and the liftman invitingly held open the gates.

  Sir Laurence strode after her and exclaimed, “Rose!” commandingly, but she said urgently to the liftman that she was in a hurry to keep an

  appointment, and the gates clanged and the lift descended before Sir Laurence actually reached it.

  CHAPTER XVI

  Rose emerged from the flats and walked without realizing where she was going for nearly half a mile, and then she took a taxi back to the hotel. She only took the taxi because she suddenly recognized that she was in unfamiliar surroundings, and it was the only way to prevent her
self from becoming completely lost.

  Arrived at the hotel, she settled the fare, fumbling, as if only half her mind was alert to what she was doing, in her handbag for her purse, and then went up to the suite she shared with Mrs. Wilson-Plunkett. But that good lady was in the hands of an Italian beauty expert who was making it more and more difficult for anyone to tell her age, and she was not expected back until sometime in the afternoon.

  Rose ordered a light sandwich lunch for herself to be sent up to the suite, discovered that there was a letter for her from Yvonne de Marsac, with whom she had kept up a fairly regular correspondence, and sat down to read it. Yvonne, while openly envying her all the delights of Rome, was full of excitement because at last she had obtained a really worthwhile job, and she had even found herself a tiny flat in which to live, and where she could be completely independent of her parents. The only snag was that the rent was rather high—but rents all over Paris were alarming, she assured Rose—and she wished she had someone to share it with her who would help reduce expenditure. If only Rose wasn’t living in the lap of luxury, and was still looking for a job, how marvellous it would be if they could share the flat together!

  This wistful conclusion passed Rose by—by no means in a state of mind when anything penetrated very deeply—until all at once, as if she was enveloped

  in a blinding flood of daylight, and a bell rang a kind of clarion call in her ears at the same time, she knew exactly what she must do.

  She looked around her at the luxurious sitting-room, with its flowers and its costly personal trifles scattered about that did away with the impersonality of a hotel sitting-room. She went into her room next door and stood looking at her dressing-table loaded with toilet articles, and opened the door of her wardrobe and examined, as if she was seeing them for the first time, all her expensive dresses. She felt almost appalled by the amount of money that had been spent on her recently, with so little return for Mrs. Wilson-Plunkett. Not even the satisfaction of having cleverly contrived a highly satisfactory marriage for her protegee!

  Rose felt almost sick with shame as the full realization of how much she had taken and how little she had given welled over her. She was genuinely devoted to Mrs. Wilson-Plunkett, and the latter undoubtedly gained a lot of pleasure from her constant society, and the little things she did for her, but to go on like that—to permit Mrs. Wilson-Plunkett to keep her in luxury indefinitely was suddenly unthinkable.

  She thought of Yvonne, whose parents owned a huge but mouldering chateau south of the Loire, living in a tiny flat in Paris—probably something tucked away in a none too salubrious district, reached only by flights of stairs, and with smells of cooking dwelling always in the atmosphere around her—and told herself that if her old school friend could put up with that sort of thing so could she, Rose. She could break away from being sheltered and protected, and begin to fend for herself. It was high time she started to fend for

  herself, and the big mistake she had made was in allowing herself to be looked after by other people too long.

  As she reached for a light suitcase and started to pack things automatically—just a change of underwear and some night attire, a spare skirt for her suit, and a couple of blouses—she wouldn’t admit to herself that it was because she simply had to get away from Rome that she was doing this. She wouldn’t admit that she was numb, dazed and confused, appalled by the thought of staying on in a city where everything would remind her of Sir Laurence, and where, after tomorrow morning, he would no longer even be living near her.

  His flat would be empty, the key handed over to the caretaker or the porter, or whoever it was one handed keys over to when one lived in a block of modern flats, and his car would probably be on its way back to England, if he wasn’t taking it with him to America. She wouldn’t even see his car in the streets, flashing past occasionally along a broad thoroughfare.

  And America!. . . The Bahamas, where he was once to have spent part of a honeymoon, and then America! . . . So far away that she gulped when she thought of it.

  And when she thought of the way he had looked at her, the drip of ice in his voice each time he had spoken to her, the complete casualness of his manner when he said good-bye—although he had tried to stop her departing quite so abruptly— the lump in her throat assumed the proportions of something that could actually choke her, and her fingers shook as she fumbled with the locks of her case.

  No; she would go right away . . . Mrs. Wilson-Plunkett would understand and forgive her in time! . . . She would leave a note asking her not to worry about her, and to let her know that if there was an afternoon plane to Paris she was going to catch it. She had just about enough money in her purse, with sufficient left over once she had brought her ticket to keep her for perhaps a week. And Yvonne would help her after that, she felt sure she would, if she was slow in obtaining employment . . . Yvonne wouldn’t let her starve . . .

  She went back into the sitting-room and wrote the note, leaving it in a prominent position, where Mrs.

  Wilson-Plunkett couldn’t possibly overlook it. Then she looked at the lunch she had ordered to be sent up, decided that she couldn’t touch the sandwiches on the tray, but poured herself a cup of half-cold coffee and drank it feverishly.

  She took a last look round the sitting-room of the suite, and felt one solitary pang because she was leaving it—and that was only in connection with Mrs. Wilson-Plunkett, who had treated her with such excessive kindness and generosity. And then she went down in the lift, and outside the hotel she got herself a taxi.

  Arrived at the airline offices, she again counted her money while she was waiting to be attended to in order to make certain that she really had enough for a ticket, and felt almost pathetically grateful when the information was conveyed to her that there was a last-minute cancellation on the afternoon flight to Paris, and that it was hers. She again got herself a taxi, and at the airport went through Customs formalities, the business of having her luggage checked and weighed, ticket inspected, and so forth, with the feeling that nothing that was actually happening to her was quite real, and that at any moment she might expect to wake up and discover that it wasn’t real.

  Once aboard the aircraft there was still no real feeling of kinship with her surroundings and none of the excitement one normally feels at undertaking a sudden journey; and the air hostess, after one or two shrewd looks at her, decided that she wasn’t feeling particularly well, or that she was suffering from nervous tension, and as soon as they were airborne endeavoured to persuade her to drink a cup of coffee or tea. But Rose was quite certain now that she couldn’t swallow anything—not even liquid—and she merely smiled her thanks rather wanly, and then tried to concentrate on some magazines.

  Despite the air conditioning, it was very warm — Rome lay bathed in golden sunshine when they left— and the first hour seemed to pass very slowly? Rose grew tired of pretending that she could make any sense of the printed pages in front of her, and took to looking out through her window and studying the vague carpet of land over which they were flying. All around her the sky was very blue, the sunlight was a persistent hot dazzle, and at one time she saw blue sea below her. Then they were turning inland again, and making for the mountains, and her thoughts winged backwards to Lausanne and the far-away days when she had lived there for a whole year, and had—or so it seemed to her now—not a care in the world.

  She felt nostalgia seize hold of her when she caught her first glimpse of the snow-capped peaks. She remembered how she had been taught to ski up in that guardian circle of mountains, and how exhilarating it had been, although she had never become a very polished performer. She was a little too timorous by nature for the hazards of a really exciting ski-run, although Yvonne de Marsac had never shown any fear of any kind. But Yvonne was like that about most things she found herself forced to tackle—eager, as she would put it, to “try anything once,” not in the least afraid that it would be beyond her, fatalistic if by any chance something she attempted shou
ld turn out to be beyond her.

  And very soon now Rose would see her again. They would be sharing that tiny flat in Paris, and Yvonne wouldn’t ask any questions, because she could be discreet when she chose—and in any case Rose would be too numb to answer. She would just say that she wanted to be more independent, that she wanted to have a real career. And perhaps in time she might be able to embrace some sort of a career. There were such things as nursing, child welfare, overseas organizations that looked after displaced persons, and where help was badly needed, for which she would not need to pay to train. Those were the sort of things that would really occupy her mind, and be much more rewarding than trying to be a secretary, or something of that sort.

  She wasn’t the type to make an ideal secretary. She wanted more human contacts . . .

  The afternoon light became tinged with a warm redness as the sun westered and the snow peaks below her were tinged with red. They sparkled like the many facets of a diamond with a rosy arc-light concentrated on it.

  Rose began to feel an utterly weary drowsiness overcoming her as she stared down as if fascinated through her window. The peaks didn’t really seem to be so very far below her, and she could make out with ease the green valleys dropping away below the snow-line, and the forests of pine and juniper that clothed some of the slopes. There were toy-like houses, too—chalets, she remembered. But these were probably climbers’ huts, and the green plateaux on which they stood were a vivid emerald in the slanting light.

  She made out cataracts tumbling down the mountainsides, and actually saw one disappearing under a primitive kind of wooden bridge. She watched it, imagining the roar as it tumbled into the depths below the bridge, and then started to be vaguely puzzled by the fact that she was seeing so much detail.

  She looked up with rather more alertness than she had hitherto shown that afternoon, and observed that the air hostess had just stepped through the door which led to the crew’s quarters. She was very smart in her uniform, and her cap was worn at a jaunty angle on her beautifully dressed hair, but she seemed to be smiling rather an unnatural smile, or so Rose thought.