by Susan Barrie
Again his lips twitched.
“Please!” she begged, and he gave her fingers a little squeeze.
“If that proud, patrician employer of yours thinks you are sinking too low, tell her I can afford to take you out sometimes. And although our meetings may have to be arranged somewhat suddenly, and occasionally I may have to disappoint you, you won’t mind very much, will you? You won’t suddenly decide that the whole thing isn’t worth it, and tell me to find someone else to take out?”
“Of course not,” she breathed, and the brilliance of his dark eyes looking into hers made her feel as she had felt once before—on the occasion of their first meeting, in fact, when he was choosing a tie-pin in Mr. Halliday’s jeweller’s shop—as if her bones were melting, and her heart was labouring to force the blood through her veins, so that all at once there was a strange breathlessness in her throat.
“We’ll get a taxi, and I’ll take you home,” he said. He stood up, smiling at her. “I’m on duty tonight. Let’s hope a lot of kind-hearted patrons will reward me with as much generosity as your Countess did last night!”
Before he helped her to alight from the taxi, and they said goodbye, he asked:
May I telephone you to arrange our next meeting? And may I telephone you sometimes in any case?”
“Of course,” she answered.
“Her Highness isn’t likely to object?”
“As a matter of fact,” she confessed, “I think she’ll be intrigued.”
He was thoughtful for a moment, and then he admitted:
“I think you are very probably right.”
CHAPTER VII
BUT the Countess wasn’t so much intrigued as sharply curious about the progress of Lucy’s little affair, as she called it, with a waiter who didn’t look the part, and who was too independent to appeal to her.
“Years ago I would have known how to deal with him,” she declared, her old eyes flashing fire as she put endless questions to Lucy after her meeting with Paul Avery in the park. “I dislike arrogance on the part of those whose lot in life it is to attend to the wants of their betters, and that young man is arrogant. I would have complained about him if I’d thought it would have done any good, but this is a democratic age, and he certainly wouldn’t have been dismissed. I should have been told it is difficult to find these people nowadays, and that he has some special talent which renders him indispensable.”
Lucy was almost aghast.
“You don’t honestly mean that you—that you would have lost him his job if you could?” she demanded in shocked tones.
The Countess regarded her with a cynical gleam in her eyes.
“Oh, what a thing it is to be young!” she exclaimed. “My dear, you don’t need to be quite so transparent. This Paul Avery is personable, and he has you eating out of his hand after you have known him only a few hours! What will it be like after you have met him another half-dozen or so times? You will have lost your heart to him so completely that there will be no regaining it!”
Lucy felt herself flushing scarlet. She denied anything of the sort.
“I—I think he is very pleasant,” she insisted. “He has been very kind to me...”
“Kind?” the Countess sneered. “In what way? He bought you tea, and walked with you in Kensington Gardens, and you talked about the ducks and things together.” Lucy had rather naively revealed that Avery had arrived prepared to feed the swans, if that was what she wanted. “Such an afternoon’s excursion I find wildly exciting!” with increasing sarcasm. “What will you do next. Take a bus to Hampton Court and get lost together in the maze there, or a trip on a river steamer that will involve you with all the other passengers, singing lustily on the way home? Especially if there’s a moon! Young lovers always adore the moon!”
Lucy stared at her, wondering at the harsh note in her voice, and the unfeeling mockery in her eyes. At the same time, the glow in her cheeks grew more brilliant.
“We are not in the least likely to become lovers,” she stated stiffly.
“Oh no?” The old lady cackled. “Then what will you become? Duck fanciers? Or connoisseurs of afternoon tea? Believe me, I didn’t buy you an entire new wardrobe of clothes to enable you to throw yourself away on a hotel waiter.”
At this Lucy felt indignation rise up in her, and she spoke indignantly.
“I didn’t ask you to buy me any new clothes, madame. And if that is the way you feel about my private concerns I would rather that you took them back.”
The Countess smiled at her suddenly, and rather humorously.
“My sweet child, there is nothing I could do with them,” she observed complacently. “You will have to wear them, and go on wearing them, and I will admit that I have formed plans which will provide us both with a lot of distraction in the future. I think it is high time we shut up this dark little maisonette for a few months, or allowed Augustine to remain behind and take care of it, and went abroad to the Continent to stay in some smart hotel, or perhaps rent a villa. Then you can meet the kind of people I wish you to meet, and perhaps marry well. In that way you can justify all the expenditure I have been put to on your account,” as if some justification was essential after such an orgy of spending.
Lucy experienced the chill of dismay.
“But you don’t really want to go abroad, do you, madame?” she asked. “I mean ... why should you?”
“Why should I not, if it comes to that?” Her employer helped herself to a sugared almond from a dish on the centre table. “I have discovered how easy it is to raise a little money by the sale of some of my jewellery, and for years I have lived in a state of poverty and misery which I now deplore. In future we will live very differently, and you, because you are young, must have some fun ... lots and lots of fun! And I shall be so much amused looking on at you having it!”
She beamed at her companion.
“And now take the dogs for their usual walk, and don’t look so upset. This question of where we shall go will take some little time to decide, and in the meantime you may go on seeing your waiter ... so long as you remember that I cannot allow you to become serious about him! And most definitely I could never allow you to become serious about a waiter!”
Lucy bit her bottom lip hard, to keep back a retort which might lose her her job and seriously offend the Countess. Instead, she said very quietly:
“Mr. Avery may be nothing but a hotel waiter, but he is also a Seronian. I thought you might be interested to hear that.”
The Countess smiled again.
“Dear child, it wasn’t difficult to guess. He is probably the son of one of my old gamekeepers, full of ambition to become a gentleman.”
“He is a gentleman,” Lucy insisted.
The Countess directed at her a shrewd look.
“Are you old enough to be able to tell?” she enquired.
Lucy went off to exercise the dogs, and on her return Augustine met her with a conspiratorial look in her face. She was also unusually flushed and excited.
“These came for you soon after you went out,” she said, and produced a carton of spring flowers. There were jonquils and narcissi, violets and scillas, white lilac and hyacinths, and at sight of them Lucy looked utterly astonished. She allowed Augustine to pounce upon the card that was lightly attached to the pale green stems, and she even allowed the old servant to read aloud the message that was written above the signature.
‘I can’t make up my mind about the colour of your eyes, but each one of these flowers is like you. Paul Avery.’
“We-ell!” said Augustine, regarding her employer’s young companion with entirely new eyes, as it were.
“I—I can’t believe that they’re really for me!” Lucy exclaimed, eyes shining as she gathered the flowers into her arms. The scent of them, the coolness, the moisture that clung to them, was a combined wonder. And what such a profusion must have cost she couldn’t even begin to think.
But Augustine, more practical, examined the lid of the box, and at
sight of the florist’s name she expressed the opinion that Lucy’s gentleman friend must be made of money. And if he wasn’t made of money then she must have made an extraordinary impression, for such a tribute must have cost far more than they expended on fruit and vegetables in one month.
Lucy couldn’t help smiling at Augustine’s preoccupation with housekeeping, and she pointed out that the last time they bought fruit in the luxury class was when the Countess had a bout of influenza, and she insisted on a very large and succulent pineapple being procured for her. And as for Mr. Avery being made of money...
She shook her head.
“Well, he isn’t,” she said.
Augustine appeared surprised.
“In that case you have indeed made an impression!”
She offered to help Lucy arrange the flowers, and a large number of containers was brought out from various cupboards. The Countess, when she saw the display in the sitting-room, arched her eyebrows but made no enquiries, and she merely suggested that Lucy should take one of the vases to her own room.
“Your admirer, I feel sure, would like it if you did,” she remarked with some dryness.
The following morning the telephone rang for Lucy. It was Paul Avery, and he asked her whether she could lunch with him the following day, which was Saturday.
“Your—day off?” she enquired, a trifle breathlessly. She could almost see him smile.
“Yes.”
“I’ll have to ask the Countess,” she said, the same breathless note in her voice.
“Then do you mind running away and doing so now, while I hang on? I haven’t got a great deal of time, and if I say I’ll ring you later I may not get the opportunity.”
She approached the Countess with a certain amount of timidity, for the old lady was not in one of her sunniest humours. She had slept badly, and her rheumatism was troubling her, and in addition she declared that the scent of so many flowers in the house had given her hay-fever. Lucy didn’t believe in the hay- fever, but she did believe in the sleepless night and the rheumatism. Her employer’s eyes were tired, and she moved her hands stiffly and awkwardly when she reached for anything.
“I don’t know that I can spare you for a whole day,” she returned in response to Lucy’s request. “And if you have lunch with this man, and it’s his day off, I suppose his idea is to keep you with him for the whole of the day?”
“I don’t know,” Lucy answered, thinking however that a whole day in the company of Paul Avery would be too much to hope for. “And of course, if you can’t spare me—”
“I didn’t say that I can’t spare you,” the old lady snapped. “I said that I didn’t know whether I could spare you. But as it would be intolerable for me to have you mooning around the house looking as if someone had deprived you of something, I say that you can go off for the day if you want to. But don’t make a night of it as well as a day! That’s all I ask!”
“Of course not,” Lucy gasped, in gratitude. “As if I would!”
“Be back here by six o’clock.”
“Oh, I will, madame.”
The Countess smiled at her unexpectedly.
“Cheer up, child. You’re entitled to a day off since I can’t remember when you had one last, and see to it that you enjoy yourself. Make yourself as attractive as possible for the young man’s benefit, but don’t bowl him over completely. Remember we have only a limited number of vases!”
Lucy raced back to the hall and the telephone to let Paul Avery know that it would be all right. She could almost see the smile enter his eyes when she confided that the Countess had given her the whole day off if she wanted it. So long as she was back by six o’clock!
“Fine!” he said, and for the first time she thought his voice sounded faintly American. “I’ll see to it that you’re safely returned to your doorstep by six o’clock. And I’ll call for you about midday, if I may?”
“Of course,” she answered. And then she thanked him for the flowers. “They were wonderful,” she said. “I’ve never had so many flowers all at once in my life before.”
“In that case I’m sorry I didn’t double the order. .But that’s something that can be rectified in the future. Until tomorrow, Lucy!”
As she set down the receiver she breathed into the silence and the heavily flower-scented atmosphere of the hall, “Until tomorrow!”
CHAPTER VIII
UNLIKE her employer, Lucy was not particularly interested in food, but she did realise that the lunch they consumed in a small Soho restaurant was good.
She thought it was an Italian restaurant to which Paul Avery took her, until he corrected the impression and explained that the man who ran it was a Seronian. His eyes flickered towards the dark little man who stood watching them and beaming as Lucy sipped her coffee appreciatively at the conclusion of the meal, and then beckoned him towards them.
“This is Mademoiselle Gray, Andrei,” he said. “She has the honour to be employed by Her Excellency the Countess von Ardrath.”
“The Countess von—?” The little man’s eyes rolled in a kind of awe. “But that is wonderful!” he declared. “That is very wonderful!”
A gleam that might have been amusement lit Paul’s dark eyes. He said softly to Lucy:
“So now you understand that it really is an honour to work for the Countess! Especially when she despatches you on an errand connected with the sale of her jewellery!”
The proprietor of the restaurant was concerned to find out whether Lucy really had enjoyed her meal, and whether everything had been entirely to her taste. She assured him that lunching at his restaurant was an experience she wouldn’t forget, and his worried expression vanished and he started to beam again in a relieved fashion, although a slight mistiness in his melting dark eyes betrayed the emotional fervour which any link with his fatherland aroused in him. The Countess von Ardrath was a princess of Seronia by birth, and as such he must always revere her.
He seized a white flower from a table and held it out to Lucy, apologising for the fact that it wasn’t a white rosebud—the emblem of Seronia—but begging her to accept it in its stead.
“We who are exiles never forget our homeland,” he said, and the mistiness in his eyes spread. He turned them on Paul Avery, and Lucy thought that the way he shook his head was lugubrious. “Even you, monsieur ... even you do not forget!” he asserted.
Paul shrugged.
“There is little point is remembering,” he remarked.
The man he had addressed as Andrei spread his hands.
“But how can one not remember ... occasionally?” he enquired. Then he fairly leapt to light the other man’s cigarette for him with his own lighter, and as they were leaving he came up behind Lucy’s companion and thanked him with warmth for his patronage.
“It was good of you, monsieur,” he said, almost humbly. “It is always an honour when you come here, either alone or with your friends. Always a great honour.”
Outside, on the pavement, Lucy’s eyes fastened curiously on the man who had bought her her lunch. She thought that he looked extremely impeccable and peculiarly distinguished, and it wasn’t perhaps surprising that the proprietor of the restaurant had display such an unusual amount of subservience towards him. But, at the same time, he was merely a fellow worker in the same line of business ... employed to perform the same duties that Andrei’s attentive waiters performed!
And so far he hadn’t risen to Andrei’s level and acquired his own business!
She looked away rather quickly when she saw Paul smiling at her a little oddly, and then he hailed a taxi and put her into it. He got in beside her and said:
“We go now to pick up my own car, and as it is such a splendid day we will drive out into the country. Is that something you would like to do?”
Lucy repeated:
“Your own car?” She turned to him in surprise. “I didn’t know you had a car.”
“But of course. How otherwise do you think I get out of London when I feel the
urge?”
She felt taken aback. Somehow it hadn’t occurred to her that he was a man who would wish to get out of London for his own pleasure. She associated him with taxis and the Hotel Splendide, with formal clothes and a neatly furled umbrella, with a white tie and tails, gilt framed mirrors, and plush carpets. Today it was true he was wearing a beautifully tailored light grey suit and a casually flowing tie—an Old Etonian tie!—and he certainly had a more casual air about him, an air of having come off parade and being prepared for a little relaxation.
But as a man who drove his own car and liked drives in the country...
She felt him pat her hand lightly where it rested in her lap, and heard the amusement in his voice as he admitted:
“Of course I like to get away from crowds sometimes, and this afternoon I’m going to see to it that you get away from crowds too.” He surveyed her with a cool gleam in his eyes and a quirk to the corners of his mouth as he pressed out one of his specially blended cigarettes—she had discovered that they were specially blended—in an ashtray attached to the door-frame nearest him. “Do you know that you look like the very breath of spring itself in that pale suit, and with your golden hair? Your eyes have the cool green of a flower stem, and you make me think of a snowdrop...”
He broke off.
“Of course you must get away from London sometimes in order to breathe. And so long as we have you back under the Countess’s eagle eye by six o ’clock...!” She realised that he was laughing at her, and she laughed with him.
“But the Countess hasn’t got an eagle eye! She’s the most reasonable person to work for, and exceedingly amiable most of the time.”
“And when she isn’t amiable you forgive her.” He patted her hand again, the feel of his long fingers sending queer little electric sparks speeding up and down her arm. “I should think you find it a simple matter to forgive most people their eccentricities most of the time.”
He picked up his car in a garage that was one of a series of lock-up garages in London’s West End, and the man who was on duty as an attendant touched his cap to him very politely. The car was a low-slung elegant Jaguar in a pale cream colour, and Lucy’s eyes widened considerably when she first caught sight of it. Paul put her into the seat beside him at the wheel, and then in a riot of warm March sunshine they set off for the green lanes and the steep hillsides of Surrey.