But she knew he was only joking, and she returned the pressure of his fingers.
“Stay here,” she said, “where you’re needed! Jennifer and I would find it difficult to get on without you now that we’ve grown so used to you!”
But as she spoke she thought wryly that if only his interest was in Jennifer. . . . And if only her interest was
in someone more like himself—someone who had never antagonised her, or threatened her, or made her bones turn to water!
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
When Susan and Jennifer moved into the Dower House the owner of Storr Hall was in America. He had barely waited for Rosalie to get over the measles before disappearing from the London scene and the Wiltshire scene as well, and anyone with the right to make inquiries in the head offices of Storr Line would have received the explanation that his trip across the Atlantic was entirely in the interests of the firm.
But, as days and weeks passed, and he did not return, the situation began to look a little odd. Mrs. Freer let it be known that Rosalie was in very low health after her unfortunate attack of measles, and the doctor had
recommended that she convalesce for a while abroad. Susan might have thought this a fabrication if she hadn’t met Mrs. Freer in Kensington Gardens, and been struck by the contented expression of the widow. Rosalie was to go to Cannes, and Mrs. Freer was very happy about it, and was accompanying her, and there was no thought of marriage plans being abandoned. In fact, marriage plans were very much in the air, and Rosalie became the wife of the slightly weedy young man with the fair hair who had pounced upon her at a London first night whilst Susan was a looker-on.
Apparently he was of very good family. . . . Mrs. Freer emphasised this in all the letters she wrote to her friends.
. . . And might one day be a baronet himself, and although there was not a great deal of money in the family they would do very nicely, and Rosalie was completely in love!
Mrs. Freer had to return several hundred wedding presents, but a large number of them came back with tactful little notes from the donors, and were able to be put to good use after all. And Mrs. Freer continued to look thoroughly well satisfied because in spite of the admittedly straitened circumstances of her son-in-law, Rosalie had inherited a windfall from an aunt they had forgotten all about, and in addition the new husband had acquired a partnership in an orange farm in Rhodesia, and altogether the future was most promising. From the point of view of Mrs. Freer, Rosalie, and the fair-haired young man she had married!
From the point of view of Susan—once the news leaked out that Rosalie was married, and not to Justin! — the future also began to look a little more promising, but she hardly dared to let herself really hope in those first few weeks after the news broke. Justin was free of all entanglements—having undoubtedly fixed things up very smoothly for Rosalie, and almost certainly he was the other partner in the orange farm—and although when he was suffering under the lash of hurt he had said that whatever happened in the future he would never ask Susan to marry him again she couldn’t honestly believe that he had cold-bloodedly meant it.
At the time there had seemed no hope that he would ever be in a position to ask her to marry him again. . . . But now! Now he was free, and her heart sang when she awoke in the mornings, and she never went to bed at night without looking forward to the new day, and the wonderful possibility that there would be a letter for her from Justin.
Only, as the weeks became months, and still she did not hear from him, and still he did not return to England, did her feeling of optimism begin to waver a little. Jennifer did not dare to cause it to waver altogether (although by now she knew the whole of the story of Susan and Justin) but her conception of Justin was a little different from Susan’s.
She had never thought him a weak man—although she knew he could be an extremely awkward man—but she suspected that he had the weakness of the overindulged. He was not used to being denied something that he badly wanted, and it seemed that he had badly wanted Susan. That she could withhold herself from him—that she could put principles and a foolish widow’s peace of mind before his own happiness would have damaged his pride badly, and with the curious sullen twist in his nature that might not wear off as time went by. It was quite likely he had done a lot of brooding, and resentment had grown, and his love for Susan had proportionately diminished— although if it had done that it wasn’t the sort of love that would be any good for Susan’s eventual happiness.
But how, Jennifer wondered, was she to convince Susan of this when her own love grew stronger with every day of waiting to hear from him? To her, when one desperately wanted someone—as she desperately wanted Justin—pride couldn’t be allowed to intervene. There was no such thing as pride when your love was something that filled your heart to overflowing, and even the thought of the future was too desolate to be borne if the
loved one was never to become a part of it.
Susan had been willing to renounce love, but now that renunciation was not called for her whole being expanded with new hope, like spring flowers beneath the touch of the sun. And watching her hurrying to collect the post when it arrived, and never finding the letter she was waiting for, knowing how often her ears were stretched for the telephone—hoping that perhaps it might ring— Jennifer’s uneasiness grew, and her vague fears that Justin’s warped twist would prevent him from rising above resentment and disappointment became crystallised until they were not in any sense of the word vague.
For this silence of his was a punishment that had nothing to do with love, even if he was suffering him-self—or his pride was still suffering! —and if it went on much longer even Susan would surely interpret it aright. She would know that he had meant it when, after watching her run from him into the rain, he had returned to Storr Hall and let her go on her way without once looking back before she disappeared from sight.
And inevitably, after the first flush of hope, Susan began to have doubts, and finally they too, crystallised, until she knew that she had been very foolish. She should have known that Justin, with his dark, strange eyes— eyes that had literally smouldered at her more than once—was not the type to forgive an affront to himself. And she had preferred to know that her conscience was in every way clear, instead of falling into his arms and smothering her conscience altogether beneath the mad torrent of his kisses, and that was an affront to the power of his charm, the inescapableness of his appeal.
In a sense she had denied his appeal, and he was not used to that sort of thing.
And somewhere about the middle of September Jennifer came upon a picture and a caption concerning him in an American glossy magazine, and the caption said simply that he was the guest of a well-known Philadelphia family, and there were rumours that he and the daughter might become engaged. The daughter—not in the least the simple type, if the photograph was anything to go by—was clinging to his arm on an impressive terrace, and she was as golden as Rosalie was dark.
After that a regular search of the few American society journals that came her way provided Jennifer with one or two more interesting photographs, and in each case Justin was seen with the same girl, and the captions grew steadily more arch. Either he was being driven by her in a super-Cadillac, or they were both draped on the edge of a swimming-pool, dancing in a new night-club, or attending someone’s garden-party. But, whatever they did, they appeared to do together.
Jennifer thought she was being rather clever in keeping these photographs and news items out of Susan’s way, and it was quite a shock to her one day to find out that Susan had seen the first one, and had also been looking out for others. Which was the obvious explanation of the reason why she had lately begun to look as if someone or something had caught her an unexpected blow, and dazed her a little. Her face seemed to have actually shrunk a little, and her eyes had an unbelieving look in them. Jennifer understood that “hope deferred maketh the heart sick,” and on top of that Susan had had to cope with the coy predictions of American gossip wr
iters.
No wonder she looked as if she was no longer quite certain about anything at all, and her reactions were much slower than they had been! Indeed, she appeared to have been slightly stunned.
With the approach of autumn the weather grew wild and blustery, and life at Storr took on a certain monotony. The great house was empty save for the servants, and the grounds were the first to display all the colours of autumn in the wide herbaceous borders. Susan had never seen such a wealth of dahlias and begonias and white china asters; and where the wallflowers had bloomed under the sheltered south terrace there was now a yellow wave of golden-rod, backed by the misty-mauve of Michaelmas daisies—always a sure indication that summer had sped, or was speeding, on its way.
The swallows beneath the eaves of the Dower House made long experimental flights, that daily grew longer and longer, and colour dripped from the trees in the woods, and lay waiting to be trampled under-foot Susan exercised Blobs—who now seemed to have become her property—in the great-park at Storr, and never crossed the ride where she had been all but run down by a couple of flying horses without recalling the moment when Justin had helped her to her feet and held her in his arms under the very eyes of the woman he had been planning at that time to marry.
Now, apparently, he was planning to marry someone else, far away on the other side of the Atlantic. And Susan walked more quickly when she reached the ride, and tried not to be haunted by the careless captions the American news-writers thought up to give point to their revealing pictures.
Sir Justin Storr and Miss Elizabeth Van Johnson.... Sir Justin and Miss Elizabeth Van Johnson inspecting the palatial house on Long Island which the Summerlea family are parting with. Are they planning to make it their summer residence?
Sometimes Susan looked across at the lake, grey and sedgy with the advance of autumn, and thought of the afternoon when she had sat on the window-seat of Justin’s mother’s room, and, holding her work-box in her hand, looked at the still sheet of water from that angle. She didn’t suppose she would ever again enter that room, or ever again see the piled-up woods on the far shore of the lake as one could see them from that highly-placed window.
Towards the end of October she caught a chill that kept her indoors for a fortnight, and the first week in December she caught another chill that prevented her taking very much interest in preparations for Christmas. But Jennifer decorated the Dower House with holly and ivy and other evergreens from the park, and with big fires roaring half-way up the chimneys they were cosy but quiet. Bruce spent Christmas day and Boxing day with them, putting up at the Red Lion, and he provided champagne and an outsize turkey as his contribution to the festive fare. He also gave both girls a present of a delicate pair of ear-rings, which were exactly alike, so neither of them could feel that they had been favoured above the other.
On Christmas morning, just before they set off for church—or, rather, just before Jennifer and Bruce set off for church, for it had been decided that Susan’s little annoying cough which was a legacy of her latest chill must prevent her from facing up to an icy wind which seemed to be coming straight off the wastes of the Antarctic—one of the under-gardeners at the Hall arrived with a bunch of white roses which were specially forced along in the hot-houses. There was a message from the head gardener to the effect that he had been ordered to cut them and see that they were delivered to Miss Susan Willowfield, but apart from that there was no message.
Susan turned as white as one of the paper-white roses herself when she took them and held them in her hands, and then the colour seeped back into her face until there was a stain like a scarlet holly-berry in her cheeks, and her sparkling eyes as she raised them to Jennifer asked:
“Justin?”
But Jennifer shook her head gently but decisively.
“Nice of Mrs. Holly,” she remarked. “And she’s in charge at the Hall now, so of course it must have been she who ordered them to be cut! I heard that she sent several dozen to the church for the Christmas decorations.”
And slowly the colour seeped out of Susan’s cheeks, until she looked more fragile than one of the roses, and Jennifer wondered whether she had been unnecessarily brutal. But she was too fond of Susan to let her start building any more false hopes that would inevitably be centred round Justin.
On the whole it was a very happy Christmas day, and a very pleasant Boxing-day, but Susan didn’t regain much colour. She wore the leaf-green velvet dress she had once worn for a cocktail-party, and sat quietly by the fire, and the roses were left to decorate the hall, and no one knew how she ached to carry them up to her room and put them in a vase beside her bed.
For why should Mrs. Holly send her white roses? And why white roses, in any case?
After Christmas it snowed for a week, and the trees in the park looked so beautiful beneath their mantle of white that in spite of the various disadvantages of snow Susan was very sorry to have it vanish overnight. It had been such a wonderland of beauty, and beauty was all she had these days. The rest of January was raw, cold and wet, and the local doctor shook his head over her because she couldn’t get rid of her cough.
He talked of going off somewhere to look for the sun, and Bruce conceived what he thought was quite a brilliant idea. His sister had just returned from a winter sports holiday in Switzerland, and she knew of an excellent little hotel in the mountains which she could recommend. She said it would be ideal for Susan and Jennifer if they could be persuaded to accept her recommendation, but although Jennifer was instantly keen, Susan was a little difficult to convince. What, she thought secretly, if Justin should come back to Storr in her absence, and there was no truth in those gossip-writers’ insinuations... ?
Then the realisation that she was still pathetically clinging to a faint hope that one day everything would come right between herself and Justin caused her to despise herself so much that, on a tide of rebellion against her own pathetic weakness, she decided to listen to the coaxings of Jennifer, and the persuasive voice of Bruce. She consented to his making all the arrangements for their journey, which he did gladly, and was pleased when he said that, pressure of work permitting, he would join them in the mountains somewhere about the middle of their stay.
After that she tried hard to look forward to the holiday, and if she didn’t actually enjoy the rush to buy parkas and sweaters and vorlagers Jennifer frankly did. And at the end of the journey, when she saw the sun on the snow, the dark woods and the blue sky, and the ceiling of cloud that was like an enormous eiderdown spread between them and the valley, Susan’s heart underwent a quick uplift, too. For it is impossible to view the beauties of Switzerland in winter, and arrive at a gay winter-sports hotel, and remain in a state of suspended unhappiness.
Susan’s unhappiness lightened appreciably as soon as she had penetrated that ceiling of cloud.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
And the hotel was not such a little hotel, either. Susan had imagined something chalet-like, clinging to the side of the mountain; but this was new and rather palatial, packed to the doors, or so it seemed, with enthusiasts in rainbow hues who gave wonderful exhibitions on the ski-slopes, and others who were not so intrepid out of doors, but were excellent performers on the dance floor in the
evenings.
There was a gay little bar that was full of noisy chatter and laughter around about cocktail time, and just before lunch people sat and sipped aperitifs on a sun-flooded terrace that was rather like a platform poised in space. Susan was surprised at the power of the sun once it had really climbed into the sky, and she was glad of dark glasses to protect her eyes from the glare. Such a white dazzle of snow was a little bewildering at first, and the dark patches of woods were so sharply etched against the unblemished wastes that it was all a little incredible. And at night the stars burned like frosty lamps in a dark gentian sky, and when the moon rose and the peaks were illumined it was rather more than incredible.
When they arrived it was late afternoon, and the light of a vivid sunset
was dying out of the sky. The very air seemed to be flushed with rose, and one shoulder of mountain was the candy-pink of a birth-day-cake.
The village street was noisy with the tinkling of bells on horse-drawn sleighs, and Jennifer and Susan arrived at the front of their hotel in one of these intriguing vehicles. Their rooms were on the first floor of the hotel, and they adjoined, and were pleasant and light and airy. Susan admired the unstained wood, and the creamy rugs, and the huge built-in wardrobes. Plenty of room to hang up the one or two evening-frocks she had brought with her, and the gay, whirling skating-skirt which she might, or might not, make use of. She was still feeling a little fragile after her two doses of influenza, and it was only because Jennifer had insisted that she buy a skating-skirt, as well as the usual woollens and vorlagers, that she had done so.
The central-heating in the hotel was so extremely efficient that she had no need of the stole she took down with her to the dining-room on their first night. Jennifer was pleased to see that her eyes brightened a little, and a faint natural colour appeared in her cheeks, as she looked about her at the other diners, and obviously took note of the women’s frocks, and the bronzed appearance of the men.
Within a couple of days she herself had acquired a light coating of bronze, and she had no need to make use of a touch of rouge when she went down to dinner in the evenings. She was still a little ethereal, but it was a delicately-tanned etherealness, and her eyes were not such a clouded grey, and had a faint shimmer like the snowlight between her curving brown eyelashes. Jennifer, who took to the ski-slopes much as a duck takes to water, quickly grew as brown as a berry, and when Bruce joined them at the end of their first week Susan didn’t miss the way his eyes lingered on her, as if the combination of brilliantly fair hair and skin like dark honey actually fascinated him a little.
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