"That's all right. I'm taking Alix to supper with me," Barry said smilingly. "She wouldn't agree until she knew what you were doing. But now that you won't need her, that's settled."
Varoni said nothing at all for a moment. It was Moerling who said casually:
"An excellent arrangement. Now the new frock will not be wasted. Alix looks charming tonight, don't you think, Nina?"
"Charming," Nina said, and smiled at her daughter. But
Alix wondered if it were only her imagination that there was something slightly steely in that smile.
Varoni nodded "good night"' to the group of admirers, and kissed her little "sister" very charmingly.
"Don't keep her out too late, Barry," she said, and swept out of the room, followed by Moerling.
Barry waited until she had gone, then swept Alix out of a side door and into a taxi which drove them to one of London's more celebrated restaurants.
Barry was evidently very well known here, and it was fun to have the head waiter lead one deferentially to a corner table — sufficiently secluded for talking, but sufficiently near to the dance floor to tempt one on to it occasionally.
"Do you dance, Alix?" Barry asked, when he had ordered their meal with the careless certainty of the connoisseur.
"We-ell, I do dance, and I love it, but perhaps I don't dance specially well by London standards," she suggested a little shyly.
"Come and dance with me now, and we'll see."
Alix came. And after the first few seconds, her trepidation gave way before the most perfect enjoyment. She had never danced on a floor like this before. The lights and the colour and the sensuous perfection of the music combined to make an intoxicating whole, and most heavenly of all was the light touch of Barry's arm round her.
He seemed very well content too, for as they returned to their table he said:
"You dance most beautifully. Even better than your sister, I think — and that's saying something."
She didn't reply. She sat there slowly swallowing spoonfuls of her iced consomme, and wondering a little uneasily how often he had danced with Nina.
"Alix—" Barry leant his elbows on the table and smiled at her — "will you come into the country with me one day this week? You shall teach me just as much as you like of the appreciation of simple pleasures on the way, and / will introduce you to my home and my father. He'll approve of you tremendously. He doesn't imagine I know anyone like you at all."
"Am I so — odd?" She was not entirely pleased by his
last remark, but the thought of the expedition delighted her.
"Not odd, dear. Just most lovably unusual. At least, to me you seem that. Perhaps I've been wasting a stupid amount of my time among people who don't matter."
Alix looked at him more tenderly than she knew.
"I'd like to come very much," she said simply. "And I'm glad you like me."
"When will you come?"
"I — don't know. I'll have to ask Nina."
"Confound Nina!" Barry said, but good-temperedly. "Does she rule every single moment of your life?"
"Oh no. But I shouldn't like to do anything that clashed with her plans."
"Does she make so many plans for you?"
"Not exactly."
She made practically none, of course, only one was always waiting in case she should.
"Will you ring me up when the chance comes?"
Alix smiled with pleasure.
"Yes, of course. Can we really leave it like that? Only you mustn't think you have to put off anything else for it."
"I shan't think I have to — but I shall do so, all the same," Barry told her. "We shall have to start quite early, you know."
"Shall we? Where is your home?"
"In Warwickshire. Do you know that part of the country?"
"No."
"It's very beautiful. I shall enjoy showing it to you."
She thought he couldn't possibly enjoy it more than she. And when he finally took her home — not too late, as Varoni had ordered — she felt this was much the happiest evening she had spent since she came to London.
During the next few days there was certainly no opportunity to make plans for visits to the country. Varoni was busy with rehearsals, but for some part of each day she was always free, and she seemed to expect — and indeed like — to have Alix with her then.
She took Alix shopping, and was incredibly generous — though Alix once heard her speaking very angrily to Pres-cott over some quite tiny sum which she considered had been wasted. Alix was also taken to one or two social
engagements, but, on the whole, a good deal of her time was spent in waiting to see if Varoni would need her and finding that she did not.
Once she asked timidly if she might go to a rehearsal.
"I'm afraid not, darling," Varoni said.
"Moerling doesn't allow it," Prescott explained.
But Moerling, without looking up from something he was reading, said: "She may come."
"May I really?" Alix came close to him. "It's very kind of you."
He smiled, but without appearing to notice her in any other way.
"Why the exception?" Varoni asked, though she seemed quite pleased about it.
"Eh?" Moerling glanced up. "Oh, she is a good child and never asks for anything. It cannot be amusing for her to be so much alone."
"Yes, she is a good child." Varoni smiled contentedly as though the credit were hers. "But I don't think she minds being alone. She has her own interests. Haven't you, Alix?"
"Oh yes," Alix said, because Varoni was so obviously expecting that answer. But, actually, she never displayed the slightest curiosity about Alix's affairs.
That had its advantages as well as its disadvantages, Alix thought, on the way to the rehearsal. It meant that if ever the opportunity did arise, one could spend a whole day as one liked without feeling conscience-stricken at not making an awkward request for permission first.
The rehearsal seemed to her a rather scrappy and disjointed affair, and the unreality of it all was heightened by the almost eerie effect of sitting in that great auditorium entirely alone. She could understand very little of what was happening, because most of the time both the producer and Moerling spoke in Italian. But she liked to watch Moer-ling's authoritative gestures, and that sudden smile which ionally lit up his face.
It intrigued her, too, to notice his extreme patience, although he was absolutely firm, even with her mother, and she thought:
"He's really a very great man, and not the least of his greatness is that he bothers to be kind to anyone insignificant like me."
Afterwards, at lunch, he asked her abruptly if she had understood much of what had been going on, and when she confessed she had not, he went to some pains to explain to her.
"There's a frightful lot of work in it, isn't there?" she said seriously, whereat both he and Varoni laughed.
"You wait until the dress rehearsal of this production," Prescott said. "That's always one full day of complete hell."
"You exaggerate, Prescott," Moerling said mildly, while Alix said:
"Does it really take a whole day?"
"Sometimes," Moerling adniitted.
"When is the dress rehearsal?"
"Sunday," her mother said with a smile. "You'll have to amuse yourself all day that day, darling. Even if we finish early, I shall be too tired and bad-tempered to speak to anyone. So don't come near me."
"You needn't worry about me. I'll be quite all right," Alix told her, and her heart began to beat excitedly.
One whole day to herself, and no questions asked! Not that there was anything wrong in what she was going to do, but no doubt, the less one discussed it with Varoni, the better.
Later that day, she telephoned to Barry to arrange that he should keep Sunday free, and after that there was nothing to do but pray that the weather would be fine, and that Varoni would not question her too closely.
Varoni made no more inquiries at all, however, and when the quie
t voice of Drayton roused Alix from sleep early on Sunday morning, the sun was already shining from an almost hyacinth blue sky.
Alix bathed and dressed rapidly, scarcely able to keep from singing as she did so, but the unbroken quiet of Varoni's suite was a perpetual reminder that her mother's rest must not be disturbed.
She put on the honey-coloured silk linen suit which Varoni had bought her, and decided to dispense with a hat. Instead, she folded the matching square of honey-coloured chiffon which was meant to tie over her hair if it were too windy, and put it in the pocket of her cream blanket coat. Then, taking the coat over her arm, she stole from the room with the most delicious sense of adventure.
She had almost reached the lift when a door opened suddenly, and Moerling came out, attired in a very splendid brocade dressing-gown.
"Oh, g-good morning." Alix was afraid she must look quite absurdly guilty.
"Good morning, Alix. You're off very early, aren't you?"
"Yes. I'm — going into the country for the day."
"So? Not alone, surely?"
"Oh no."
He nodded to her.
"I see. Enjoy yourself." And he turned away.
Alix had gone a few steps before she suddenly made up her mind to something.
"Mr. Moerling." She ran back to him.
"Yes?" He glanced at her in some astonishment.
"It — it isn't a secret or anything, but — don't go out of your way to say anything to Nina, will you?"
To her surprise, he took her by her chin and looked at her with something between sternness and amusement.
"Yoif re not doing anything you shouldn't, are you?" he said, with a note of unusual indulgence in his tone.
"Oh not Only Nina— 1 "
"Yes, I know." He didn't seem to need any further explanation. "All right, run along with you. I am perfectly capable of forgetting things as well as remembering them." And with a not unkindly pat on her cheek, he let her go.
Alix smiled to herself as she went down in the lift. It was funny how Moerling extended his good-tempered but firm authority even to her. If she had been doing anything wrong, she didn't think she would have found it easy to look him in the eyes and deny it.
A cup of coffee, taken hastily in the almost deserted restaurant, comprised her breakfast, and then she went out into the hotel vestibule, just as Barry — hatless too and in a pale grey suit — came in by the swing doors.
"My dear, you are a model of punctuality," he said, taking her coat from her. "I did so hope you would be late, so that I could be sitting here with an expression of patient virtue on my face."
"No, you didn't," Alix told him with a smile. "You didn't want to waste one moment of this perfect morning — any more than I did."
"Well, perhaps that's true," he admitted as they went out to the car.
Once they had left the outskirts of London behind, they drove fast. The warm wind hummed past the little green car and the sun shone and the birds sang, and Alix sang too because she was so happy. Not very loudly, of course, but just to herself in a contented, childish way that delighted Barry.
"Sing out loud so that I can hear you," he said.
"I can't sing much more than that. I've only a tiny voice."
"None of the famous Varoni tone?"
"No." Alix shook her head. "I didn't inherit any of it. Too bad, wasn't it?"
"You little goose! One doesn't inherit from a sister," he reminded her with a laugh. "At least, not anything like a voice."
"No, of course not," Alix said, and her heart came right into her throat.
Goodness! That showed how much off her guard this delicious informality had put her!
"Does your father know we're coming?" she asked presently.
"Oh yes. I telephoned last night."
"And was he rather surprised?"
"What? — that I should visit him?"
"Well, no. That I should."
"Possibly, but it's one of his principles never to be completely surprised by anything, so it's difficult to tell."
"Oh. What is he like, Barry? Shall I like him?"
"I don't know. You're such a charitable little soul that you may. He thinks the landed gentry of England are the cream of civilization, and that he is the finest specimen of them. It follows, therefore, that he considers himself God's best effort to date."
Alix chuckled.
"But is there some justification for it? I mean, is he an admirable person?"
"Oh yes," Barry conceded with a smile that was not without affection. "He has all of what are usually referred to as 'the old-fashioned virtues'. Courage and absolute uprightness and a great regard for justice — as he sees it.
He's also the kind of man who would dress for dinner as the boat went down."
"I rather like that," Alix said reflectively.
"So do I. But I deplore the fact that he'd think very poor things of any man who went to his death in a lounge suit after seven o'clock in the evening."
Alix laughed aloud.
"You're quite absurd! What was your mother like?"
"I can hardly remember her. She died when I was eight."
"Oh, poor Barry! And you have no sisters?"
"No." He grinned at her. "No softening female influence at all. Only a younger brother, who is out East in the B.B.C."
"It's rather lonely for you."
"Oh, I rub along," he assured her. "And anyway, what about you? You lost both your parents when you were even younger, and yet you managed all right."
"That's true," Alix agreed, and was silent, wondering curiously what he would have thought if he could have known the truth about Varoni.
It was just after twelve o'clock when Barry said:
"We're not very far away now. All this is very much home to me."
She saw that, in spite of his liking for appearing to have few feelings, he had a great affection for the place. And when they drove along the winding, tree-bordered drive and came at last upon the house, she thought she understood why.
Built of mellow brick, with a regularly-proportioned, many-windowed front, it had that elegant yet homely appearance peculiar to very early eighteenth-century houses, and as Alix got out of the car and stood there, lost in admiration, she thought Barry's home was the most beautiful house she had ever seen.
"It's everything that a home ought to be," she said half to herself. And someone else besides Barry laughed in a pleased way at that.
Turning quickly, she saw that they were not alone. Unmistakably this was the much-discussed father who had come up to join them.
Not so tall as Barry and rather more stocky, he was so exactly the country squire of popular fancy that he was
almost too good to be true. Alix felt that if only he would tap a whip against his riding boot, a flock of villagers in smocks must surely come gambolling over the lawns, singing an opening chorus.
However, the illusion was dispelled as Barry made the introductions, and she found her hand enveloped in an unexpectedly warm grip.
"It isn't often that anything as young and pretty as you comes down to see me," the old man observed, looking at her with some pleasure.
"And it isn't often that I'm taken out to see anything as lovely as your house," Alix told him, with a shy smile.
"Well, well, it's very attractive," he agreed. "Pretty good example of Queen Anne. Perhaps even earlier. There's a distinct touch of William and Mary about that doorway."
Alix seriously inspected the William and Mary doorway.
"And round to the right here is a genuine sunken garden. Dutch influence again, you see." He began to lead the way, but Barry interposed firmly.
"Alix has had a very long drive, Father. She would probably like a rest before lunch."
The old man looked offended at once, and quite absurdly disappointed, so that Alix was irresistibly reminded of a large, cross child forbidden to show off its toys to the visitors.
"I'm not a bit tired. And I'd love to see the sunken gar
den," she said earnestly. "Please let's go now."
They went — Barry sauntering along beside them and answering his father's rather personal questions with good-tempered casualness.
The sunken garden was really beautiful, and Alix, who had learnt a good deal about gardening from her grandmother, was enthusiastic. Barry's father was intensely gratified, she saw, and very pleased that her questions and comments showed some knowledge.
"Quite right, quite right," he said approvingly, in answer to some remark of hers. "But how did you know? I thought you London girls scarcely knew the difference between a dandelion and a dahlia, and believed that roses were provided by nature with a bit of wire stuck up their middles."
"But I'm not a London girl," Alix explained with a
smile. "I lived in the country with my grandmother until a few weeks ago. Now I've come to London to live with my sister."
"Oh, I see. That explains it." But he didn't offer to say what "it" was.
"Alix's sister is Nina Varoni, the famous singer," Barry volunteered.
"Never heard of her," retorted the old man, with obvious pleasure in his own ignorance.
"No? Everybody else has," Barry assured him agreeably.
"Only people with nothing to do." This was accompanied by a transparently meaning glance at his son.
"Guilty," murmured Barry regretfully.
Alix rather anxiously drew their attention to a luxuriantly flowering shrub, and the conversation entered more peaceable channels.
After lunch, she and Barry went out on their own, to wander in the beech woods that bordered the estate.
By the time they returned to the house the afternoon light had softened to the first touch of evening, and tea was perforce a rather less leisurely meal than lunch.
"You must come down here again to see me," the old man told her, when they were saying good-bye. "Just when you like. Much better for you than being cooped up in London."
"I should love to," Alix said with a smile.
"Oh, I hope to bring her quite often," Barry declared. And she wondered happily just what he meant by that.
If possible, the drive home was even lovelier than the drive out there. The sun broke through the few evening clouds in shafts of mellow light that were like gigantic ribbons. The wind had dropped and the grass and leaves only stirred lazily before the faintest of breezes, while the sound of the birds grew sleepier as the shadows lengthened.
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