“You were rather asking for it, weren’t you?”
Sarah felt an unwilling stab of admiration. She remembered her own fury with Lucilla; she remembered calling her a blighted little fool. She admired the calm of Mr. John Brown. She said frankly,
“Yes, I was—but I’d got to stop you.”
“And may I ask why?”
Sarah was not pleased. He ought to have responded to her frankness, instead of which there he was, all politely furious like a person in a play. She felt a most unregenerate desire to put out her tongue or throw a stone. Women have these savage impulses. Sarah controlled hers with regret.
She said “Petrol!” pitching the word at him as if it had been the stone which she had renounced.
Mr. Brown said “Oh—” and then more briskly, “Where’s your car?”
Sarah having indicated the whereabouts of The Bomb, he passed round the back of his own car and proceeded to detach the spare can from the running-board on the off side. There was no more talk until The Bomb was refuelled. Then Sarah said, “Thank you,” and Mr. Brown said, “I shouldn’t do it again if I were you—you might get killed.” After which he went back to his own car and waited for Sarah to drive away. As soon as The Bomb was out of sight he backed into the space in front of the ghostly pillars, turned his car, and also followed the road to town.
CHAPTER V
You can get a meal at The Lizard during most hours of the day or night, and you can call that meal anything you like. The waiters themselves stop alluding to breakfast at twelve-thirty or so, to lunch at half past three, and to dinner somewhere round about ten o’clock, but they have no objection to your calling your food by any name you fancy. As a natural consequence, nobody minds what you wear. There is a garage just round the corner.
Sarah tidied up at the garage, used the lipstick which she had denied herself in order to impress Aunt Marina, cocked her hat at a slightly more rakish angle, and proceeded to her rendezvous with Mr. Darnac.
The Lizard was neither full nor empty. As a matter of fact Sarah had never seen the Lizard really empty. Whenever you came, or whenever you went, there were always odd people having odd meals or odder drinks. Bertrand was neither eating nor drinking. He sat humped in his chair with all the appearance of a person who has just died of boredom. “Boredom and extreme bad temper,” thought Sarah delightedly.
She approached the table with a catlike tread, sank noiselessly into the second chair, and said in a clear, brisk voice,
“When’s the funeral, Ran?”
Mr. Darnac sat up with a jerk. His eyes opened. He ceased to resemble a corpse and became very obviously alive, exasperated, and French.
“But vois tu, Sarah, this is—what do you call it?—the top-lid. Have you, perhaps, any idea what time it is?”
“’M—it’s twenty-three minutes and a half past nine, and I’m simply starving. I hope you’ve got lots of money, because I’m going to be a very expensive guest. Just tell Henri to get me some of the thickest soup they’ve got, and then to keep right on bringing me things till I say no. Everything on the menu. Ran darling, how frightfully cross you are!”
Bertrand Darnac frowned until his very thin, mobile eyebrows looked as if they had been ruled across his forehead with a piece of charcoal. He was a tall, dark young man of three or four and twenty, and ordinarily of a pleasant and vivacious ugliness. He gave the order to Henri in the grand manner of serious offence and turned back to find Sarah smiling at him seductively. It amused her that Bertrand should be in a temper, but she had no notion of allowing him to stay in one. She was bubbling over with her adventure, and you really can’t bubble over to a person who is being all stiff and proud. She thought complacently about the lipstick and smiled her best.
“Where have you been?” said Mr. Darnac with offence.
“Where haven’t I been? Darling Ran, if I talk before I have something to eat, I shall swoon.”
The eybrows relaxed a little.
“You do not look at all as if you were going to swoon.”
“Under the rouge her face was of a ghastly pallor” murmured Sarah. “I’ve got a new lipstick. How do you like it?”
“It is good. Yes, just right. You must continue to use it.”
“Perhaps Aunt Marina won’t let me,” said Sarah. She greeted the arrival of the soup with a radiant smile. “Henri, you have saved my life. Now, Ran, I’m not going to say another word till this is all gone.”
Mr. Darnac permitted himself a slight snigger.
“If you can keep from talking, my dear, that will be a—how do you say?—knock-out.”
Sarah made a face and then went on eating. If Ran thought he was going to draw her, he wasn’t. She finished the last drop, laid down her spoon, and looked up to find that he was doing exactly the same thing. They both laughed.
“Enfin, Sarah,” said Bertrand Darnac, “you are too bad! I have been here since half past seven, and first I think ‘She will be late, because girls are always late, but she will not be more than half an hour late, because she likes her dinner.’ Oh yes, you do, my dear. That is one reason why I ask you to dine. Those girls who say no to everything—what a bore that is!” He made a quick grimace. “And when I am hungry and could eat everything on the menu! But the girl, she says no to this, and no to that, and no to the other, and then how can I eat my dinner? I must go to bed hungry.”
“Well, you needn’t to-night. I’m not saying no to anything, and if this is an omelette, I’m going to have my fair half of it. What sort of omelette is it, Henri?”
It was a shrimp omelette, and Henri gave her a good deal more than her fair share of the shrimps.
“And now,” she said when he had gone again—“now, my child, you can congratulate me.”
“On what?”
Sarah ate a shrimp with crisp enjoyment.
“I’ve got the job—and a rise. And I’m going to buy The Bomb, so you’d better get busy about a new car, because I shall want her at once. In fact I think I’d better just keep her. They want me to go down next week, and she’ll be useful to run about in meanwhile.”
Bertrand Darnac grinned.
“And what do I run about in—meanwhile? Mon Dieu, Sarah, you have the cheek!”
“’M—” said Sarah. “Ran darling, you’re letting your omelette get cold.”
“Never mind about my omelette—I am talking about my Bomb. MY Bomb, Sarah!”
Sarah shook her head.
“No, darling—mine. I’m buying her here and now.”
“Oh, you are buying her? And what do you pay me, my dear?”
“A fiver?” said Sarah casually. “I say, Ran, if you’re really not going to eat that omelette, I could do with a spot more.”
“There is nothing doing—I am going to eat it myself. There is also nothing doing about the fiver.”
“Now look here, Ran, you won’t get more than that for her anywhere, but I’ll go to six pounds if you’re really hard up.”
Mr. Darnac’s mouth was full of omelette. His eyes twinkled impishly and he shook his head.
Sarah leaned back with a frown.
“Seven?”
Mr. Darnac shook his head again.
“Eight?”
“C’est ridicule!”
“Talk English! That’s what you’re here for, isn’t it? Eight pounds, and that’s my last word.”
Bertrand smiled amiably at her across his empty plate.
“You are very amusing.”
“All right,” said Sarah. She leaned towards him, her eyes wide and candid under dark arched brows. “All right then, ten—and that really is my limit. Nobody will give you more than that. You know that perfectly well. Ten—and we do a show to celebrate it.”
“Oh, a show.… And who pays?”
“I do—out of the ten pounds,” said Sarah happily.
Henri approached with a casserole.
It was at this moment that Mr. John Brown entered the room. Having followed The Bomb to the garage, he
had been obliged to wait outside until Sarah emerged. If he had not done this, he would not have been able to keep track of her further movements. When she did emerge, he let her get a little way ahead and then followed at a crawl. From the corner he was able, with a good deal of relief, to see her go into the Lizard. He then had to turn his car, go back to the garage, and park.
He entered the Lizard, crossed the floor whilst Sarah was helping herself to poulet aux champignons, and sat down at the next table. On the dark road he had been merely a shadow. In the lighted room he appeared as a man of rather more than average height with a quiet, easy way of moving and the look of having spent a good deal of his time out of doors. The brown was very deeply tanned into a skin which might once have been fair. His eyes looked light in contrast, though they were really of quite a deep grey. His hair was brown, with a touch of grey at the temples. His age might have been anything between thirty-five and forty-five. His clothes, though unobtrusive, had an air that was not quite English.
He caught Henri’s eye as Bertrand Darnac helped himself, and presently he gave an order, picking up the printed menu and indicating what he wished with a finger that looked very brown against the white card. He sat a little behind Sarah, and to her right. Without appearing to watch her he could observe her profile—the arch of her brow, the bright changing colour that glowed on her cheek, and even the effect of the new lipstick which emphasized the curve of her mouth. He could also see Mr. Bertrand Darnac, and he could hear nearly everything they said. Sarah was talking with animation about her interview with Aunt Marina and Uncle Geoffrey. The names reached Mr. John Brown perfectly distinctly as he gave his order to Henri.
Presently, when Henri was gone, he was able to listen undisturbed … “A nice pussy-woolly old thing,” Sarah was saying. “I’m frightfully good at old ladies. It’s one of my assets. They love me passionately because I let them talk all the time and just say yes or no with early Victorian respectfulness about once in five minutes or so.”
“Is Uncle Geoffrey also going to love you passionately?” said Bertrand impudently.
Sarah nodded.
“Darling Ran, when I said you could congratulate me, I didn’t just mean the job—I meant Uncle Geoffrey. I came, I saw, I conquered—you know, just like that. He went down like a ninepin, and if I want to be Mrs. Geoffrey Hildred, I can. So there we are!”
Bertrand frowned a little.
“That is what you say quick work.”
“I might do worse,” said Sarah calmly. “Much, much worse.”
“An old man!”
“That’s just what he isn’t, my child. He’s not old at all—a nice mellow fifty or so, and awfully good-looking—fairish grey hair, bright blue eyes, nice ruddy complexion, very hale and hearty, rather like the squire in a musical comedy, only he’s not a squire, he’s a solicitor with a London practice. There’s money in it, my child. It’s frightfully comic, because he looks as if he’d lived in the country for generations.”
Bertrand frowned a little more.
“You will have to—how do you say?—watch the step, my dear. These old boys, they are dangerous. He may make love to you, but when it comes to marriage—” He shrugged his shoulders.
Sarah gazed at him earnestly.
“Advice to the young girl who is about to enter the wicked world for the first time! ‘Ma fille, it is your father who speaks. He has been there and he knows.’” Her tongue shot out and back again. Mr. Brown saw it in profile, a nice, bright red, pointed tongue. “Ran darling, here’s a new idiom for you—‘Go home and boil your head!’ Your Sarah wasn’t born yesterday.”
Bertrand shrugged again.
“Well, I have warned you.” He broke suddenly into a grin. “He will have his work cut out, that one. Do you know, when I first met you I thought to myself, ‘My Aunt Constance, she has been jolly well had!’”
“Thanks, Ran darling.”
“I saw you there—what shall I say?—gouvernante to my Cousin Eleanor, and I thought, ‘Oh la la, she is a lively one that Miss Sarah! There will be some fun for you, Bertrand my boy!’ And if anyone had told me that I should know you—how long is it—six months?—that I should take you to the dinner, to the dance, to the theatre, to the night-club, that we should walk ourselves in the woods, that we should drive by day and by night in our little Bomb, and at the end of it I should not have so much as one kiss to remember—ma foi! I should have told him, ‘Sir, you are a dam liar!’”
Sarah looked at him reprovingly.
“Well, that just shows you. It’s a very good lesson for you, my child. Respectability’s my strong suit. If I hadn’t a most beautiful blameless character, how do you suppose I’d ever get a job?”
Bertrand groaned.
“Respectable!” he said. “Mon Dieu, Sarah—what a word! Are you a concierge, or the mother of a family, that you should be respectable?”
Sarah put out her tongue again.
“Respectable I am, and respectable I stay.”
He threw up his hands.
“With those eyes, and those lips, and that colour!”
Sarah turned her head and gazed appreciatively at her own reflection in the mirror behind Mr. Brown. She did not see him at all. She only saw her own bright eyes and heightened bloom. She turned back to Bertrand with a pleased smile.
“Nice—aren’t they?” she said, and then arrested Henri as he passed. “Biscuits, cheese, and butter—lots of butter. And white coffee for me, and black for Mr. Darnac.”
They helped themselves, and then Bertrand said,
“And what becomes of me when you have gone to make the eyes at your old country squire?”
“I don’t make eyes,” said Miss Trent with dignity. “I don’t have to. And I suppose you’ll go back to the Manifolds, carry on with your job of learning how to speak English, and finish up by marrying Eleanor according to plan.”
He shook his head.
“No, I shall never do that,” he said seriously.
“And what will the families say if you don’t?”
He made a lively grimace.
“They will not like it, but they will, as you say, lump it, my dear. Without any joking at all, that is what they will have to do. It is very embêtant for everyone that the property must come to me and the money to Eleanor. If we liked each other, it would be all very nice and easy—so my little mother thinks. She is still in her heart a good deal English, though, as you know, she has really never lived here. She writes to her brother and suggests that I should come over on a long visit and learn the English and make friends with ma belle cousine.”
“I was there when the letter came,” said Sarah, laughing. “Major Manifold was most awfully cross. He hates visitors, and he hates the idea of anyone marrying Eleanor. He’d like her to be just a little girl always. But Lady Constance was pleased.”
Bertrand nodded.
“Well, that is how it is—I do not like Eleanor, and Eleanor does not like me. When I hold her hand it is as if I held a piece of cold fish. How can one embrace a large, pale, cold fish? I ask you, my dear!”
Sarah said, “Nonsense!”
“No, it is the truth. And besides I do not think it is eugenic for cousins to marry. I have written to maman about that. I am very strong for the eugenics.”
“You wouldn’t have thought about them if you’d liked Eleanor. And she’s not in the least like a fish.”
“For me she is. And vois tu, Sarah, I do not ask the impossibilities. It is necessary that I should marry a girl who has money—that is understood. I do not demand that I should be love waith her passionately, as for example I could so very easily be in love with you.”
“The kind compliment is noted!”
Betrand frowned at her levity.
“I do not demand that—I have said so to maman. I ask only that she should not remind me of cold fish.” Quite suddenly his gravity broke up into a grin. “Why should I not marry your Lucilla Hildred?” he said.
CHAPTER VI
Sarah Trent arrived at the Red House in the middle of a fine October afternoon. She drove herself in The Bomb, with her luggage crammed to the roof behind her. Having studied a map commandeered from the reluctant Mr. Darnac, she had discovered a new and much shorter way to the house. When she came down to interview Miss Marina, she must have driven in circles round the village of Holme instead of coming through it. She had no idea that the entrance to the Red House was only a stone’s throw from the last cottage in the village street.
The house itself stood high, and the drive sloped sharply. She looked with dislike at the banks on either side of it. They were thickly overgrown with trees and shrubs. Dark drives appeared to be the fashion in the neighbourhood of Holme.
The house was a square building in the Georgian style, the red brick which had originally given it its name being almost entirely covered by Virginia creeper, which flamed in every shade from scarlet to deep maroon. Coming on it suddenly at the turn of the drive, it was almost as if the house was on fire.
The Bomb was allotted a stable, and Sarah a room next to Lucilla’s. It was a pleasant room, if a little too pink for Sarah’s taste. As she gazed at it, she felt as if she had known Mrs. Raimond all her life. She knew just what type of woman has a rose-coloured carpet on the floor, a wall-paper with pink and mauve sweet peas profusely interlaced, and pink and white striped curtains at the windows. There was a pink wash-basin with hot and cold water laid on, a rose-coloured shade over the electric light, pink candles on the dressing-table, a pink pin-cushion, and a bright pink eiderdown.
“Golly!” said Sarah.
It appeared that Miss Marina was resting, and Miss Lucilla was down on the tennis-court. Sarah proceeded to the tennis-court by way of a lawn, a rose-garden, and a flight of steps.
Lucilla was playing tennis with a young man, and Uncle Geoffrey was watching them. In the sunlight she thought him even better looking than she had done before, and most undeniably pleased to see her. He said,
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