Cherry Ames Boxed Set 17-20

by Helen Wells

  It was Cherry’s turn to stare. “I never saw Ryder serious about anything, the few times we met—not even about Shakespeare,” she said.

  The woman asked, “Are we talking about the same person? Our Mr. Ryder was most silent and reserved. Oh, yes, he did have one discussion with my husband, about cricket, rugby, soccer, and tennis.”

  “That’s our man,” said Peter, baffled. “Did Mr. Ryder leave any message?”

  The woman glanced into a file. “Sorry, sir, there’s nothing. … Oh, yes. Are you Mr. Holt? He left this book for you.” Peter thanked the woman. She hesitated. “Mr. Ryder left rather in haste last evening, after he made a long-distance telephone call. Possibly an emergency—?”

  “Possibly,” said Peter. “Well—thank you very much.” He and Cherry went outdoors. “If that isn’t just like that unreliable character! I hope he wasn’t called home by some drastic emergency.”

  “And so farewell to Rodney Ryder,” said Cherry. “But I don’t understand—how come he gave the people at the inn such a different impression than the one he gave us? Or did he naturally react like that to your lively young students?”

  Peter shrugged. The question did not interest him. What concerned him now was the fact that he and his students were leaving Stratford late tomorrow afternoon, on their bicycles, and between then and now he had people to see and arrangements to make.

  “So this is my last hour with you,” Peter said.

  “You sound like a condemned man,” Cherry said, laughing.

  “I ought to answer something witty and touching,” Peter said, “but the best I can think of is that I want to see you again. When will you and Mrs. Logan be in Edinburgh?”

  “In about a week—” Cherry opened her handbag and consulted her itinerary, tucked in her passport, which she always carried. She told Peter the exact dates for their Edinburgh stay, and the name of their hotel.

  “Fine!” he said, brightening. “We’ll be there around the same time, and we’re booked at the same hotel. But”—his intelligent face changed expression—“after Edinburgh, what? You live in Illinois and I live in Oregon. Two thousand miles apart. From the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean. Well, there are jet planes.”

  “We could always meet here in England, where the distances aren’t so great,” Cherry suggested teasingly.

  “A perfect idea,” Peter said. “Let’s go for a walk,” and he started to sing a song about “the foggy, foggy dew.”

  Along the way, as they walked, he gathered wild-flowers for Cherry. At one place she insisted he was helping himself to late roses off somebody’s garden wall, but he declared gallantly:

  “You deserve roses. They match the roses in your cheeks. Now, isn’t that poetic, Miss Nurse?”

  “My rosy cheeks indicate a preponderance of red corpuscles in my bloodstream, and a lack of any biochemical trace of anemia,” Cherry replied. “Shall I translate?”

  He laughed and said, “That distance between us isn’t so great.” When they turned back and reached her inn, Peter presented her with the bouquet. “Tell Mrs. Logan this one”—he touched a pink-and-white flower—“is the York and Lancaster rose. And tell her goodbye for me. See you next week, Cherry.”

  Peter kissed her on the cheek. Cherry was so surprised that she went upstairs to the wrong floor.

  She missed Peter that moonlit evening, an ideal evening for a country stroll. But she and Martha Logan were leaving tomorrow themselves; there were notes and packing to do, and Cherry made another routine, but careful, checkup of her patient. As eight thirty approached, Martha said, “Oh, why waste an evening on chores? We’re in Stratford, and they’re playing Romeo and Juliet tonight! Come on, Cherry, we’ll finish these little jobs later—”

  “I can see you’re feeling much better!” Cherry snatched up a coat for Martha Logan and followed her, almost running.

  They arrived puffing at the theater in time to see the curtain go up.

  CHAPTER VI

  A Fantastic Visitor

  THE NEXT FEW DAYS WERE STRENUOUS—AND FULL OF discovery for Cherry. She and Martha Logan again boarded a tour bus, leaving behind the sunny orchards and hay barns to travel northeast through the Midlands, into busy manufacturing and market towns of great age. The weather grew colder in this high north country. In Chester they walked briskly around the Roman wall, and shopped in the medieval Rows, for antique silver that Martha loved. She regretted that they had to travel so fast and were getting only glimpses of England.

  They traveled farther north into hills and green forests and the calm blue waters of the Lake District. The mid-September weather grew still colder, sometimes rainy. They wore coats, and Cherry tucked woolen lap robes around her patient and herself in the bus. They were grateful for hot baked apples with custard and steaming tea when they arrived at Windermere late Saturday afternoon.

  They were to stay for three nights at this rambling old wooden country hotel beside a lake. The Carewe Museum was in this area, forty miles from the hotel. The hotel manager said he would engage a local taximan to drive them there; after a day’s rest they would visit the private museum.

  Cherry was concerned that Martha might have grown overtired. That Saturday evening the most Cherry would allow her patient to do, after dinner, was to watch television in one of the hotel’s public sitting rooms. After a newscast, white-bearded Shah Liddy came on the screen and gave another interview. Martha Logan was diverted by his bristling white eyebrows, white beard, and extravagant mannerisms. She was so amused she scarcely noticed that it was only nine o’clock when her nurse shooed her to bed.

  Their day of rest fell, appropriately, on Sunday. The sun shone, and it was a joy to be deep in the country this autumn day.

  “Let’s walk to the village,” Martha said eagerly to Cherry. “The Lake District is a hiker’s paradise, you know.”

  “Aren’t you being awfully ambitious?” Cherry asked. She knew that her patient’s bruised legs were nearly healed by now, and Mrs. Logan had recovered from the shock of the fall—but her general health still lagged. “We’ve already done quite a lot of traveling and sightseeing on the way up here,” Cherry cautioned her. “What about a drive today, or just a short walk?”

  “Oh, I’m fine!” Martha Logan made an impatient, clumsy gesture with her right arm in its cast. “Besides, it’s a perfectly beautiful day!”

  Cherry reluctantly gave in. A walk in this bracing air might do her patient good. The village was not very far away, along a road that rose to cut through forests, and dipped beside meadows. One thing struck Cherry as they walked—on either side of them, tall, thick hedges enclosed the meadows, high stone walls guarded the privacy of gardens. At times she and Martha were walled in on the road, unable to see anything except treetops and the unwinding ribbon of road straight ahead.

  “We don’t usually have walls, or walls of hedges, at home,” Cherry said uncomfortably. “I guess I’m used to ‘the great wide open spaces.’”

  “Well, we have immense lands and a relatively small population per square mile, outside the cities,” Martha Logan said. “For a long time, while our wild new, young country was being settled, parts of it had no population, except for Indian tribes, and one or two lonely settlers. It was a rare event when a traveler or a new settler came by—people were glad to see him, and gave him food and lodging and helped him. That’s how it happens that Americans are generally very friendly. With Europeans, who have smaller countries and dense populations, living close together, they’re inclined to be more cautious and reserved. Also, they’re much older peoples than we are, more sophisticated—” Martha Logan smiled. “Our differences can enrich one another. The main thing is for us to get better acquainted.”

  They came to an open view. Martha’s serious expression turned joyful. “Oh, look at that lake with the sun on it!” She recited a snatch of a poem, then broke off. “This is Wordsworth country, Cherry.”

  Cherry obliged by chanting, “‘I wandered lonely as a cloud,
That floats on high o’er vales and hills …’ Anyway, I can’t help wondering what goes on behind these walls and high hedges.”

  “Wait until tomorrow. We’ll go behind the walls of the Carewe estate. Ah—you know, Cherry—I do feel a little tired.”

  They turned back without ever reaching the village. Cherry insisted Mrs. Logan rest in bed for the greater part of the day “and eat all the nourishing food you can hold.”

  Martha Logan grinned. “For once I won’t argue with you. Tomorrow is the big day.”

  A maid knocked on the door of Martha Logan’s room Monday morning. “The taxi you ordered is waiting for you, ma’am.”

  Cherry, putting on her coat in the adjoining room, heard Martha call out, “Thank you. We’ll be right down.” Her voice sounded tired.

  Cherry rapped, went in, and said, “If you aren’t feeling too well, do you have to go to the Carewe Museum this morning? Couldn’t you telephone and ask whether you could come tomorrow?”

  “Of course I must go this morning! You’ve heard how fussy the Carewe Museum people are about appointments. I feel perfectly well, just not very energetic.”

  Well, they had crossed an ocean to keep this appointment, so difficult to get in the first place. Cherry decided she had no reason to worry, provided her patient did not overdo today. She escorted Martha Logan down the hotel’s wide staircase and out into the courtyard.

  A chunky, fair-haired man in a rumpled suit and chauffeur’s cap—a local man—came up to Mrs. Logan and said, “Good morning, ma’am, at your service.” He looked pleasant and responsible. Mrs. Logan asked him his name. It was Edwin. He said he could give them as much of his time today as they might need. He led them to an old, well-kept sedan and helped them in.

  During the leisurely drive to the Carewe estate, Edwin was closemouthed. He did point out a few sights, and when Mrs. Logan ventured to ask him, said he had lived in this part of England all his life, and he and his wife had six children. Cherry thought, in amusement, how an American taxi driver, if he were driving foreigners through his own part of the country, would regale them with local history and anecdotes, and would ask the visitors questions about their country. But Martha Logan was silent, too—probably thinking about what she most wanted to see at the Carewe collection in relation to her book. Cherry kept quiet, enjoying the countryside and occasional villages they were driving through. The roads were nearly deserted. Only a public bus or two and a few farm wagons passed along these hilly roads.

  Punctually at ten o’clock they arrived at the Carewe estate, which was enclosed by a high stone wall. At the gate a guard inspected their letters of admission. Edwin was permitted to drive his passengers up the short roadway to the stone mansion and to park there, with the understanding that he remain in or near his taxi, within sight of the gate guard. Cherry noticed another guard patrolling the grounds outside the mansion.

  “The house is smaller than I’d expected,” Martha murmured to Cherry as they rang and waited at the carved double doors. “Small and elegant.”

  “Does Mr. Carewe live here?” Cherry asked.

  “No, this is now a museum, not a residence. I believe Mr. Carewe lives in a newer house on another part of this estate—when he’s here at all.”

  The door opened, and a woman in brown with her hair severely pulled back admitted them. Martha Logan introduced herself and Cherry.

  “Come in. You are expected,” the woman said. Her voice was clipped and precise. “I am Miss Hayden, Mr. Carewe’s secretary. Will you wait in the library? Mr. Carewe will see you in a few minutes.”

  They stepped in. Martha looked faintly surprised. “I hadn’t known we were to have the privilege of meeting Mr. Carewe.”

  “Mr. Carewe makes a point of meeting visitors to his collection,” the secretary said. Her voice held overtones, suggesting the great collector’s fondness for these particular paintings, and his critical attitude toward the few visitors he chose to let see them. Cherry felt the intimacy of the place, even as she glimpsed a guard in a room beyond.

  Miss Hayden led them through a marble foyer hung with pictures and into a library. Here, at a long table littered with books and papers, another woman was working. She was plump, untidy, and jolly looking behind her heavy glasses.

  “This is Mrs. Ogilvie, our librarian and scholar, who catalogued the collection,” said the secretary. “Mrs. Logan, and her nurse, Miss Ames.”

  They all said, “How do you do?” The librarian invited them to sit down, regretting that there was no couch, only some antique and very hard wooden chairs.

  “Are you the curator, too, Mrs. Ogilvie?” Martha Logan asked.

  “Oh, dear, no,” the librarian said cheerfully. “Mr. Carewe is his own curator. When he is away, as he often is, Mr. Patwell is in charge. Mr. Patwell doesn’t often have a holiday, I can tell you. Today is one of his rare ones. Wouldn’t you like a catalogue?” She gave them each one, and they thanked her.

  Cherry could see into an adjoining office, where the secretary was talking with a tall, rawboned spare man, wearing an easy-fitting, worn tweed jacket. He turned around, and Cherry saw his face was a spider’s web of wrinkles, and his hair ash white. John Carewe must be a very old man.

  He came in with the secretary, and regarded the two visitors quizzically while Miss Hayden introduced them. He shook their hands.

  “It’s kind of you to let us come,” Martha Logan said to him. “It’s especially kind of you to make an exception on short notice for Miss Ames.”

  Mr. Carewe nodded and said, “Happy to have you,” in an indifferent tone. Something about him made Cherry think of a giant whose strength was spent. He complimented Martha Logan on her work and asked a question or two about the book for which she was doing research. As she answered, his eyes grew sharp and bright.

  “Then the portraits here should interest you very particularly, Mrs. Logan,” he said. “May I have the pleasure of showing you some of them?”

  With a slight gesture he led them out of the library, through the foyer again, and into a room hung with paintings. Apparently once a drawing room, it still held a few fine chairs and small rugs on the parquet floor. Mr. Carewe took them around the room and Cherry saw another lovely room beyond.

  Mr. Carewe said, “This is a famous Reynolds portrait, as you know.” They paused to admire it. “This Romney—which I myself think even finer—has a unique historical interest.” He began telling them about the lady in the portrait.

  “Cherry, will you please take notes?” Martha Logan whispered. “This stupid cast—” she half apologized to Mr. Carewe.

  He nodded and finished his story. Then he said, “Perhaps now you would like to be free to browse by yourselves? Most visitors prefer to do that. You’ll find the paintings are displayed in ten rooms, and there are two floors. If you have any questions, I or my staff will be happy to try to answer them.”

  Martha Logan started to thank him, but was cut short by voices and some confusion at the entrance door. Miss Hayden came in with a look of suppressed excitement. She said in a low voice to Mr. Carewe:

  “I beg your pardon—unexpected visitors, Mr. Carewe—the Shah and Lady Liddy. They’ve motored up from a friend’s country place, although they haven’t ever applied for admission. They’re hoping you might just receive them.” She looked overwhelmed.

  “The Shah! Indeed,” said the old collector. Cherry could not interpret his sudden change of expression. He glanced at his watch, remarking that it was ten fifteen and he wanted no visitors after twelve. “Well, at the very least we mustn’t keep them standing on the doorstep, must we? If you will excuse me, Mrs. Logan, Miss Ames—”

  He and the secretary went into the foyer where the door stood open. Cherry and Martha frankly watched and listened. The Shah was every bit as theatrical looking as on television, and a great deal more forceful when seen in person. His presence was like a strong wind blowing on all of them. His voice boomed out and his white beard waggled as he announced:


  “My dear Mr. Carewe, I realize this is a frightful imposition! If time weren’t running out for us on this trip, I shouldn’t be throwing myself on your kindness in this way. But I can’t leave England—not knowing when either you or I shall be back again—without seeing one of the last great, privately held art collections in the world! Do, I beg you, let us see your fabled treasures!”

  Cherry noticed that John Carewe looked flattered. Lady Liddy, a delicate-looking blond young woman in a wide-brimmed hat, luxurious suit and furs, entreated him, too.

  Cherry missed Mr. Carewe’s reply as Martha Logan spoke under her breath. “The world’s great personages and the leading art scholars come here—the Shah is celebrated on both counts. How can Mr. Carewe possibly refuse him?”

  John Carewe hesitated only a second or two. He bowed to Lady Liddy, then extended his hand to the millionaire art patron, saying in his dry, tired way, “This is an unexpected pleasure for me—a great pleasure to meet you. Come in, come in. Miss Hayden,” he instructed the secretary, “will you kindly tell the Shah’s chauffeur to be ready for them at twelve?”

  Through the window Cherry saw an imposing black car and a uniformed chauffeur waiting. Miss Hayden went out to speak to him, while the Shah made a deprecating remark about his rented car. “However, it’s my usual practice to rent cars, so much less nuisance than dragging along one’s own car across the Continent. But of course we bring our own reliable chauffeur.”

  “Quite,” said Mr. Carewe. “Lady Liddy, would you and your husband be good enough to sign my guest book?”

  At this, Martha Logan grinned at Cherry. He hadn’t asked them to sign. John Carewe called out, “Mrs. Ogilvie! We require two catalogues for our distinguished guests.” The librarian bustled out with the catalogues as Mr. Carewe had the imposing Shah and his young wife sign the register. The Shah complained that he felt the cold, being accustomed to the hot weather of the Near East.