He had wanted to give her lunch, and to keep her away from the house all day, but she had decided that they had better return. But over coffee at the Red Lion, and whilst exploring the quiet yew paths of the ancient churchyard, they had discovered that they shared similar tastes. They both loved opera and ballet, quiet evenings at home, museums and art galleries—though not to the fanatical extent Jennifer loved the latter—misty autumn mornings, and spring evenings with the promise of splendidly full summer days ahead. They loved the river, and fields full of ripening grain, deep mauvish-red roses (the kind that are dying out) and Mrs. Sinkins pinks. They loathed circuses and flower-shows and modern architecture, and thought life would be wonderful if lived partly in the country and partly in town.
And Bruce had made Susan promise that as soon as she returned to London she would dine with him, and he had asked her whether she had formed any plans for her future life now that she had the means to try and adhere to some sort of a plan.
“If you want advice, or help of any kind, you mustn’t hesitate to apply to me,” he had said, very earnestly.
“Or if there are any awkwardnesses you want smoothed over... ”
And she wondered whether he was referring to Justin.
But just now, with Justin’s dark, enigmatic, eternally mocking eyes—or it seemed to her that they mocked eternally—on the fresh pink curves of her mouth (not an exotic mouth, like Rosalie Freer’s, but gentle and vulnerable and rather seductively soft-looking) all this ceased to have any importance—even future importance— and a much too disturbing memory caught at her and shook her and eclipsed all other memories. The memory of herself held fast in a dusky summerhouse, and two widely different types of kisses pressed on her lips.
The first kiss she might have forgotten quite soon— might have forgotten. . . . The second, that lasted so much longer, had seemed to alter the very feel of her own lips; and at intervals during the night, when she found it strangely difficult to get to sleep, she had put a wondering hand up over her mouth as if to ascertain, or attempt to ascertain, what the momentous thing was that had happened to it. For, even if she herself hadn’t suffered a momentous experience, her mouth had come awake. It was a traitorous thing that could respond to a dominating influence without even consulting her will.
Yet again as she looked at Justin Storr she felt vaguely afraid. . . . And as their eyes met, and held, she thought his reflected amusement.
He knew that she was afraid.
They all went into the house, and Bliss appeared with a tray of drinks, and everyone relaxed in the calm and soberly luxurious atmosphere of the library. Susan was sure that Mrs. Freer, occupying one of the most comfortable chairs, was studying the furnishings and the decorative condition of the room somewhat critically, and probably making up her mind about recommendations she would make to her daughter later on concerning various improvements to the library. Sir Adrian had been content with it as it was, but the new baronet, in possession of a lovely young wife, would have to study the latter, and spend some of the money Mrs. Freer was simply aching to have the right to expend according to her own ideas. And she could only do that once a generous sum had been deposited in the bank for Rosalie.
Mrs. Freer was always preoccupied with calculations about money, and how far certain pitifully small sums would go. She had always lived above her income, and in her husband’s lifetime the financial crises they had run into had been frequent. For he, too, had his own methods of disposing of the little that came his way, and in addition he had a love of the turf and other doubtful means of making a quick fortune that had been infinitely distressing when they never bore any sort of fruit, save purely temporary fruit. And with a pampered child to bring up and educate and provide with all the facilities for one day acquiring a rich husband the road had been anything but easy for Mrs. Freer.
But now, at last, the road was broadening out, and the rich husband for Rosalie had already been attracted, caught, and only a legal ceremony was necessary to make the whole thing completely water-tight. Mrs. Freer, feeling as if she had had a hard race to run, could lie back and get her breath a little, and Susan felt a certain amount of sympathy with her because, in spite of being a very faded little female figure, she was always very elegant herself, and the weight of the bills pressing upon her conscience
must be tremendous.
No wonder she had almost cried when the skirt of Rosalie’s little cream suit had been ruined by tomato soup! The suit had a label inside it that was enough to inspire envy in the breast of any feminine follower of haute couture.
Mrs. Hollyhead served a perfect lunch, and then everyone dispersed to various corners of the house to recover from it. The three men went off to the gunroom, which had been Justin’s special sanctum in the days when he shared the house with his uncle, and contained such an assortment of lethal weapons, as well as more soothing and less menacing implements such as fishing-rods and pipe-racks and endless bags of golf-clubs, that it was an ideal place from the masculine point of view in which to relax. Mrs. Freer went to lie down in the Jade Room, which her daughter had so insistently claimed for her because it was on the right angle of the house, and Rosalie herself retreated to the White Room, which was such an entirely fitting background for her that she spent the afternoon happily trying on some of her newest dresses, and trying out a new make-up in front of her mirror.
Susan and Jennifer went upstairs together, and in Jennifer’s room—a rosebuddy room with a soft pink carpet, and an outlook over one of the widest of the lawns towards the lake—she said eagerly that she had a piece of news for Susan. She had decided to keep it until after lunch because she wasn’t quite sure of Susan’s reaction, but from her point of view she thought they were genuinely on to something, and it would solve all sorts of plans for the future.
Susan curled up on the window-seat and looked rather dreamily out at the lake, and then asked a little abstractedly what she was talking about.
“It’s the gardener’s cottage,” Jennifer explained. “I asked Sir Justin about it last night, and he said we could have a look at it on our morning ride. It’s been empty for a year, and is the most Hansel and Gretel-ish sort of a little house . . . not exactly a cottage, because it was once a Dower House. I was absolutely enchanted with it, although the garden’s wildly over-grown, and I expect there are a few rats in the attic! But Sir Justin has promised that he’ll have the roof looked to, and that sort of thing, if we decide to take it. . . . And we can rent it, furnished or unfurnished!”
Susan looked at her with slowly widening eyes.
“Sir Justin has promised! ... But I haven’t even seen it!”
“No, darling, but we can see it straight away if you don’t feel averse to a little exercise! A short walk across the park, and then through a little coppice that must be thick with nightingales on summer nights, and there we are! Pure Hansel and Gretel, as I’ve said before! And empty!” She tied on a head-scarf before her mirror. “When I think of all the work I could do there, and what bliss it would be to really live in the country!... You will come and have a look at it, won’t you?”
“It was Paris you were dreaming of settling down in a week or so ago,” Susan reminded her with great dryness.
“I know, darling, but think how terribly expensive that would be. And I couldn’t afford it, even if you could! And if we settle down at Storr I can pop up to Town as often as I please, and so can you. . . . Nice little dinners and theatres and shopping expeditions in the mad metropolis, and then the heavenly peace of a place like this! I can hardly wait to get you to the cottage!”
“I’ve made up my mind to have nothing whatsoever to do with Sir Justin or any of his property,” Susan remarked, as they walked across the park. “And I’ve made arrangements for you and me to go to the Red Lion.” Jennifer glanced at her.
“Wait until you’ve seen the cottage! . . . But I’ll willingly go with you to the Red Lion until the place is got ready, for I don’t enjoy scrounging on an
yone, and Miss Freer’s the nastiest little snobby piece I’ve ever met, in a rather clever
way! This morning she hated to see me riding the grey, and she wouldn’t let the subject of you and the chestnut drop.
In the end Justin told her rather curtly to forget it, and added that he was going to sell the mare. She was furious!”
“Why?”
“Because she looks upon it as her own mount.”
“Has he given it to her, then?”
“No, and she’s not married to him yet! I think he will sell it! I think he does whatever he wants to do while the mood is on him.”
Susan was quiet, walking across the park, and suddenly the outlines of a house rose up in front of them. It seemed to be embowered by the coppice that Jennifer insisted would be alive with every kind of bird voice, including the voices of nightingales, when the days were long and warm, and the evenings still as the calm waters of the lake behind them, and its chimney-pots showed above the clustering trees. There was a railing that surrounded it, and enclosed the rank garden, and a little gate admitted to a strip of crazy-paving. At the head of the crazy-paving a small porch was festooned with every kind of briar rose and a positive cascade of winter jasmine, which made it difficult to fight a way through to the door itself.
Susan looked at the deep-set windows, and the leaded lights, and thought of Sleeping-Beauty, and the touch of magic that the place awaited. If it had only been empty a year then the previous tenants had neglected it shamefully, and ignored the garden altogether. But, even as she got caught up on a thorn bush and strove to extricate herself without tearing a jagged piece out of her coat, she caught sight of a clump of snowdrops in the shelter of the hedge, and there was even a wan-looking daffodil wavering unsteadily on a pitifully slender stem in close proximity to the snowdrops.
She picked the daffodil, and one or two of the snowdrops, and carried them into the house with her as soon as Jennifer had got the door open. Apparently Sir Justin had entrusted her with the key, and he had also warned her about the upper floors, which were unsafe.
“But, you can see for yourself it’s a gem of a place,” Jennifer observed happily, as they stood together in the main sitting-room, which had panelled walls and an open fireplace. The dining-room was similarly panelled, and there was a little room which had once served the purpose of a kind of study, and which Jennifer declared would make a delightfully cosy little den. “Pretend to yourself that someone has waved a magic wand, and that this place is carpeted, and properly furnished,” she said. “There’s a little Sheraton writing-desk over there, and one of those Chippendale chairs with a straight back and dark crimson-coloured brocade covering the seat and arms in that corner by the window. There’s a Jacobean basket in the fireplace, and shelves of books in the inglenook, and a thick red Turkey carpet—one of those that never show any marks, and are so delightfully comforting to the feet—covering most of the floor space. And I think there ought to be a skin rug in front of the fireplace—preferably a tiger-skin! —and one or two more brocade-covered chairs, and curtains of satin-damask—rose-red. . . .”
“Wait!” Susan said, regarding her rather oddly. “Who is providing all this furniture?”
“Sir Justin has said that we can help ourselves to a lot of spare stuff in the house.”
“Sir Justin has said—I” Susan caught up her lower lip between her teeth. Jennifer avoided her eyes. “Do you imagine I would take advantage of his offer?”
“I can’t think why not.” But Jennifer still avoided her eyes.
“After all, according to the terms of his uncle’s will you have a right to live at Storr, and if you sacrifice that right because of the unpleasantness of himself and his fiancee, well, then, he ought to make it up to you. Even the sharp-tongued Miss Freer made some sort of a suggestion along those lines... ”
“And the suggestion put this idea into your head? —
This idea of the gardener’s cottage!”
“Well, it isn’t exactly a gardener’s cottage, as you can see for yourself. It was almost certainly built for the dowager Lady Storrs to retire to when their sons married.” Suddenly she appealed to Susan. “We can buy the furniture between us, if that will make you feel happier. And I told Sir Justin that we would absolutely insist on paying rent.” “You did, did you?” Susan smiled faintly but dryly as she sank down on the wide window-seat, below the window with the leaded-lights. “And of course he suggested something purely nominal?”
“He didn’t suggest anything at all. We both knew he would have to talk it over with you—or you with him, I should say!”
Susan regarded her with exasperation, recognising that she was bent upon installing them in this one-time Dower house.
“But what about you and your work?” she asked. “The light in this room strikes me as pretty bad, unless the windows are coated with grime; and old houses seldom cough-up a suitable studio for an artist. And I haven’t precisely retired, you know!”
“No, but you’ve earned a spell of inactivity,” Jennifer replied swiftly. “And, as for the studio, it’s upstairs!” “Where?” Susan asked, as if she expected to be informed a ready-made studio was available—as the result of some miraculous wand-waving on the part of Justin Storr!
“Well, at the moment you could hardly call it a studio ...” Jennifer admitted. “But it’s right at the top of the house, and has all sorts of possibilities, including an enormous fan-light. And the fan-light will let in every shred of daylight until the sun sets.”
Susan smiled at her suddenly.
“You’re in luck, aren’t you?”
Jennifer returned eagerly:
“Come up and see it with me? You’ll be impressed! . . . And we can decide upon which room could be easily converted into a bathroom.”
But Susan shook her head at her.
“You go, and fix upon the bathroom yourself! And be careful you don’t come through one of the floors, since they don’t appear to be too safe.”
Jennifer was delighted. She had the feeling that Susan was yielding, but Susan herself had no real idea how she felt about anything as she sat there in the darkening room, with a long, trailing tentacle of briar rose tapping against one of the panes behind her. There was also a rustling noise in the chimney, as if birds had nested there, and some young ones were growing restless.
Anyone who was not impervious to the charm of old houses would recognise the appeal of this one, even if it was in a very bad state of repair. Susan thought the atmosphere was a little forlorn, as if it had been empty too long, and it was crying out to her for the comfort of log fires and solemnly ticking grandfather-clocks and voices that stayed within its walls. She felt sure that it mourned the passing of twinkling brasses and firelight flickering on a silver spirit-kettle, the smell of hot toasted tea-cakes, and the sight of the vicar calling for afternoon tea.
Whoever had handed the house over to a gardener had been a little lacking in sensitivity for the house, the bricks and mortar that had endured so long. But, then, in these days, far finer houses had had to be handed over for more demeaning purposes, and many of them would never be lived in again. Many were just carelessly demolished to make way for more modern erections.
Susan tried to picture herself and Jennifer living there, separated from Storr Hall by only a few acres of parkland. At nights they would be able to watch the lights coming on in the great house, twinkling through the trees, and in the mornings they would hear the thud of horses hooves as the new Lady Storr, and her saturnine husband, took their before breakfast gallop across the park.
Lady Storr would be very patronising when she met them, and Sir Justin would always have that derisive gleam in his eyes. Occasionally they would receive invitations to dine at the Hall, and when there were shooting-parties they would receive a present of grouse. At Christmas, and at various other intervals during the year, there would be gay house-parties, and long, shimmering cars would go gliding up the drive, and they would see their head-lights
, like the lights of the house, through the trees. Occasionally Sir Justin and his wife would go away—abroad—and when they returned Rosalie would look golden with tan, and their children would look golden with tan....
Susan gave herself a little shake. She had been seeing all these things as clearly and sharply as if she had been gazing into a witch-ball and she felt bemused and perturbed. In the dimness of the Dower House sitting-room she knew that she couldn’t bear to stay there and see them happening—becoming actual fact! —and that the thing she wanted to do most of all at that moment was go away back to London. Have dinner with Bruce Fairburn, and go to the opera with him. Forget all about Justin
Storr.... Forget that she had ever known him, been crudely
insulted by him, made to feel utterly insignificant, given an ugly bump on her forehead, and finally kissed by him!
If only he had never kissed her!...
A shadow moved at the opposite end of the room, and for the first time she realised how terribly dark it had grown. She could barely see the fine linenfold panelling that covered the wall facing her, and the door seemed to be moving slightly on its hinges. A cold feeling of panic seized her, and she wondered what Jennifer could be doing remaining upstairs for such a lengthy period of time. Judging by the light she must have disappeared at least half-an-hour ago, and there had been no sound of her movements overhead.
The door gave a little squeak, and her blood froze. She remembered the age of the house, and thought of things like ghosts. . . . And then across the room a calm voice spoke to her, with just a tinge of amusement in it.
Dangerous Love Page 7