The Marriage Wheel

by Susan Barrie

  “I—er—yes, thank you,” Frederica replied, without realising exactly what it was she said. And then truthfulness supervened and she corrected any wrong impression she might have made. “I had some chocolate and apples ... I don’t always eat lunch,” she added hurriedly, “especially when I’m driving a car.”

  Lestrode’s hostess looked quite shocked. “Chocolate and apples?” she echoed. Then she glanced at the girl’s slim and diminutive figure. “Oh, I see,” she said, as if she suddenly understood, but was by no means certain that she ought to approve. “You young people nowadays ... you like to think of your figures!”

  Lestrode spoke up in a blunt and decisive manner. “If Wells devotes much more of her time to dwelling on her figure she’ll fade away,” he said. “And I’ll have to get myself another chauffeur!” He took his seat in the back of the car.

  “Home, Wells,” he said, and Lady Dillinger was left looking slightly bewildered on the drive, while Sir Adrian frankly frowned.

  Frederica negotiated the many bends in the drive smoothly and without incident, and waited for the storm to break in the back of the car.

  It did so when they were out on the main road again.

  “Chocolate and apples!” he scoffed furiously. “I suppose you consumed them at the local inn, or did you go farther afield to buy yourself lunch?”

  Frederica answered truthfully:

  “I didn’t ... buy myself lunch,” she amplified. “I didn’t really need any lunch, so I took my chocolate and apples to a nearby wood, and then I’m afraid I fell asleep afterwards.”

  “You—fell asleep?”

  She nodded over the wheel without answering.

  “In my time?”

  “It wasn’t exactly your time,” she defended herself. “You told me to join the servants in the servants’ hall, and if I’d done that I would simply have been joining in the gossip that went on there, and I don’t honestly think you could have complained about that. However,” she admitted, with a nervous swallow, “I was nearly a quarter of an hour late in picking you up, and for that I do apologise. I’m really very, very sorry!”

  There was absolute silence from the back of the car.

  She repeated: “I’m very sorry!”

  Her employer made a noise as if his teeth were clicking together.

  “I suppose, if you were capable of admitting the truth, you’d tell me straight out that you’re too genteel—or you think you are!—to join the servants in the servants’ hall,” he said coldly and contemptuously. “But far from getting mixed up with a gang of gossiping servants at Appleby Manor you would have been almost tenderly taken care of by Lady Dillinger’s butler, Garside, and his wife, who are the only two servants who run the place.”

  “I’m sorry,” Frederica mumbled, watching the speedometer crawling to ninety, and realising blissfully that they hardly seemed to be moving.

  “In future,” Lestrode informed her arctically, “you will obey my orders when you drive me to visit friends, or anywhere else if it comes to that, and if you ever again waste two good hours of what is legally my time sleeping in a wood on top of a spartan diet of apples and chocolate I’ll give you the sack straight away. When I’m being driven, either by a man or a woman, I like my chauffeur to be in the peak of condition, and that means that if an emergency arises you’ll be capable of coping with it. I doubt whether you would be capable of coping with an emergency this afternoon.”

  Frederica assured him, humbly, that she would.

  “I should have known better than to burden myself with you,” he said shortly. “If you had half the gentleness and pliability of your sister you might get somewhere, but as it is you are that annoying thing, an independent female ... and if there’s one thing I detest it’s an independent female! Fifty years ago you’d have been ganging up with suffragettes and tying yourself to railings in order to prove to the world that you’re no clinging vine! Nowadays, unhappily, there’s no need for you to seek to prove that. It’s standing out in prickles all over you, and a certain section of the community would say ‘Well done!’ But I do nothing of the kind!”

  “I’m sorry,” Frederica breathed again, more humbly than before.

  A few minutes later he told her to leave the main road they were pursuing back to Farthing Hall, and turn down a by-lane.

  “The Dower House is about a hundred yards down on your left,” he told her. “It isn’t actually a dower house, but it’s called that. It might have been a rectory at some time or other. I bought it when I bought the Hall, and I’ve been wondering what to do with it. We’ll have a look at it, and you can give me your unbiased feminine opinion-on its possibilities.”

  Frederica could have retorted that she was not supposed to have strictly feminine opinions on anything, but she refrained. Instead she concentrated on negotiating the somewhat difficult track—for a car the size of the Daimler—which branched off the high road, and followed it as far as a pair of white gates which stood open on to a weed-grown drive.

  Here she brought the car to rest, as the brambles looked as if they might harm the Daimler, and they made the rest of the way up to the house on foot. As Humphrey Lestrode observed:

  “If anything comes down the lane you’ll have to move the car, but I doubt very much whether it will. It’s an infrequently used road.”

  Frederica’s first impression was that the place was far too isolated and closed in by trees to suit either her mother’s or her sister’s taste. But for herself she found it enchanting. The house had big windows on the ground floor that opened on to a sunny lawn, and there was even a sun-dial in the middle of the lawn which added to its attractiveness. A kitchen-garden and an orchard were badly overgrown, but with a little labour they could be highly productive once more.

  Inside the house there was peeling wallpaper and a smell of damp. But here again there were great possibilities ... beautifully proportioned rooms and at least two Adam fireplaces; a graceful, curving staircase, and light and airy bedrooms. The bathroom accommodation was a little inadequate, but there was a wonderful conservatory on the ground floor. Electra, who rather enjoyed looking after pot plants, might find it amusing pottering about there. But who would do the housework in a house of such size Frederica couldn’t think.

  “It’s a bit big,” she hazarded, as she stood admiring the flowing line of the staircase.

  “Not as big as the Hall,” her employer replied, frowning. “And Lucille manages to keep that looking fairly spick and span.”

  “Lucille works too hard,” Frederica commented rather sharply—far more sharply than she actually intended. “And in any case it isn’t properly furnished yet. When it is completely furnished you’ll have to get extra staff.”

  “I stand reproved for expecting too much of poor Lucille,” Humphrey Lestrode retaliated drily.

  Frederica surveyed him with cool, clear eyes. “She really does work very hard, you know,” she repeated. “It honestly isn’t quite fair to expect so much of one willing pair of hands.”

  “Some people work too hard, and others don’t work nearly hard enough,” Lestrode observed with a mocking edge to his voice, while he gazed back at her in open amusement. “Your sister is like the young lady in the nursery-rhyme who was born to sew a fine seam ... only I somehow doubt whether she could even do that with a great deal of efficiency. And you don’t see her settling down here?”

  “I never said so,” Frederica objected, with somewhat unreasoning resentment. “For one thing,” she added, “I shouldn’t think there’s any question of her settling down here. The house is vast if you’re thinking of making it over to my mother and Rosaleen, and would cost a small fortune to be made really habitable. Of course, once it was habitable it would be adorable.”

  “Ah!” Lestrode exclaimed.

  They were standing in the middle of the empty drawing-room, and the warm gold of afternoon was seeping gently through the windows and lying in molten splashes on the floor. There was a kind of desolation in t
he atmosphere, a gentle melancholy, but Frederica was hardly aware of it. She saw the room as it must once have been, with festoons of curtains at the graceful windows and a thick carpet on the floor—furniture gleaming with polish. She even saw it as it could be, after the expenditure of a great deal of money ... and she knew that if she had the choice she would prefer to live here rather than at the Hall, which for all its charms would never be as homelike as the Dower House could be.

  It was a house with possibilities ... wonderful possibilities. She shut her eyes and then opened them to see the motes dancing in the beams of sunlight, and like a bright spectrum the room came to life. She sighed without quite realising what she was doing.

  “I’d like to live here,” she said.

  “Ah!” Humphrey Lestrode exclaimed again.

  She turned and disappeared into the conservatory, and Lestrode followed her.

  “You know,” he confessed, “I’ve been bitten by a notion—I think I’d like to live here one of these days. But if I did that I’d have to find a tenant for the Hall, and that might be difficult ... or else I’d have to sell it.”

  “Why should you sell it?” Frederica demanded, fingering the withered remains of a palm in a brass pot.

  “For no particular reason, except, as I say, that I’ve been attacked by a whim. And I’m the sort of person who occasionally yields to whims.”

  It seemed to Frederica that she could actually smell the scent of cigar smoke as the gentlemen returned to the drawing-room after dinner, and the ladies were grouped around the piano. Of course, there ought to be a piano. She returned to the drawing-room to decide exactly where it should stand.

  Ah, yes ... Her eyes narrowed again. Over there, by the big window ... and in winter-time, velvet curtains. Velvet curtains would be an absolute necessity where firelight leapt on smooth white panelled walls.

  Her employer came close to her and stood beside her.

  “Ghosts?” he enquired, with a tiny smile on his lips as he studied the way the hair bent inwards on the delicate nape of her neck. “Are you seeing them as well as me?”

  She turned to him eagerly.

  “Do you see them, Mr. Lestrode?” Her eyes were gleaming with excitement, and her lips were softly parted. “The men and the women who have lived their lives and come and gone in this house that is now so very lonely and neglected? One has a feeling of happiness here—of quiet contentment! It could be an enchanting house. And upstairs there are such a lot of rooms that are not too vast it would be adorable for children! Did you notice that old rocking-chair in the night-nursery? It must have been there for ages!”

  “It has.”

  “You mean it was there when you bought the place?”

  “Long before I even saw the place ... and I only saw it after I’d decided to buy the Hall.” There was an extraordinary—quite an unusual—expression in his eyes as he surveyed her. “So you’re fond of children, are you?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “Up to a point, yes, but I don’t go about dreaming of them, or visualising nurseries full of them, as apparently you do.” It could have been by accident that his hand alighted on her shoulder. “One day you’re going to be a great little home-maker, Fred.” She stiffened.

  “It was agreed that you’d call me Wells.”

  “Young ladies called Wells don’t strike me as ideal home-makers. However, if you’d prefer it, Wells ... we’ll decide that we’ve seen enough of this place for one day and go home!”

  She felt as if she had come down to earth with a thud.

  “I’m glad you brought me here,” she said stiffly, “but I don’t think you can do much with it.”

  “And you certainly don’t see the fair Rosaleen enacting the part of hostess here? Peeping in and out of the nurseries and receiving the gentlemen in the drawing-room after dinner?”

  She shook her head obstinately.

  “No.”

  “A pity,” Lestrode murmured almost lazily, as he followed her from the room, “because I do. I think she’d fit in here even better than she’d fit in at the Hall, and I’m going to bring her over some time and see what she herself thinks. As for your mother, I agree this place is not exactly her cup of tea—but then she’s so young and attractive she’ll probably marry again one day, when she’s got you two girls off her hands, and it would be presumptuous to make plans for her. But Rosaleen is a different matter.”

  Frederica glanced at him quickly to discover whether or not he was being serious, and for the life of her she was unable to make up her mind. He was frowning a little, as if he was actually doing mental calculations, but the tiny smile was still clinging about his handsome masculine mouth. It was a somewhat baffling smile.

  She felt a sudden, really quite extraordinary sensation like dismay ... and then she hurried out of the house ahead of him. He closed the door and pocketed the key, and they walked down the drive side by side to the open pair of dilapidated white-painted gates.

  The brightness of the afternoon had passed, and it actually appeared to be threatening rain. As they passed beneath the spreading leaves of the trees they heard light drops of rain drumming against them.

  Lestrode entered the car silently, and Frederica slid behind the wheel. The man’s voice directed curtly from behind her.

  “Second on the left, and then right, and we’ll be back on the main road. And after that home,” he said in a clipped and rather distant voice.

  “Yes, sir,” Frederica answered.

  CHAPTER SIX

  It was the very next day that near-disaster overtook Frederica, and she felt afterwards that her employer’s attitude towards her was in no wise improved, and that the danger of her being given the sack at any moment had drawn appreciably nearer.

  Following upon the incident she was quite certain that it was only the indisputable fact that her mother and sister would be affected if she had to pack her bags and depart from Farthing Hall that prevented the situation getting out of hand.

  She was driving Lestrode along a secondary road en route for a nearby town when the car swerved violently, there was a loud explosion, she had some difficulty in keeping the car firmly adhered to the surface over which it was travelling, but succeeded nevertheless, and then realised that they had sustained a puncture. At first her relief was so great that they had not overturned, or at the very least skidded into the bank, that she sat gasping with it when they came to a standstill, but Lestrode was anything but thankful.

  He barked furiously from close beside her ear. “And just because I’m in a hurry, too! I suppose you know how to change a wheel?”

  “Yes, I—I can manage,” she said, scrambling out from her driving-seat. And she added, “I think!”

  Lestrode also alighted, but all he did was inspect the marks that had been caused by the skid on the slightly damp surface of the road.

  “Well, at least you managed to hold her,” he said. “We can be thankful you weren’t attempting one of your ambitious bursts of speeding!”

  Frederica glared at him resentfully. She hardly ever attempted any bursts of speeding—certainly not when she was driving her employer, who appeared to be unnerved by the thought of speed while she was in charge of one of his cars—and she knew that she drove both moderately and well while he was a passenger. And she did think he might help her to jack up the wheel instead of prowling like an agitated tiger.

  She was down on her knees in the road when he withdrew his cigarette-case from his pocket and lighted a cigarette. He was frowning at the scenery and taking no notice of her, and she thought with rather unreasonable indignation considering she was paid to do the job that if it had been Rosaleen to whom this misfortune had occurred he would undoubtedly—whether he paid her or not—have lent a hand and prevented her smashing her nails in the process of doing a mechanic’s job.

  But as it was he said nothing, only smoked impatiently and occasionally glanced at his watch. The minutes passed, and she seemed to be making little or no progr
ess. She had the greatest possible difficulty unscrewing the cap of the wheel, and perhaps because she was nervous everything she attempted defied her to make a simple and neat job of it. She perspired freely, and her face felt hot and was probably scarlet, she thought, long before she had the first wheel off. She was off-loading the second one into the road and praying that no other traffic would come along and someone who might be interested witness her struggling while her employer lounged at the side of the road, and appeared quite unaware of her efforts, when a car did approach them from the direction of Farthing Hall, and, as if galvanised into action, Humphrey Lestrode cast his half-smoked cigarette into the hedge and swore very distinctly as he approached her.

  “Get up off your knees and stop laddering those stockings while I take over,” he ordered. He surveyed her almost venomously while he grabbed the wheel from her. “There’s a smut on your nose and another great smear of grease on your cheek. Get rid of them,” he added to his instructions in a furious undertone while the approaching car looked as if it intended to slow when it drew near to them, and the driver already had his head out of the window as if about to make some enquiry before deciding they were in no serious difficulty and proceeding on his way.

  Frederica added to the decoration on her cheek by attempting to wipe it off with an oily rag before the other car drew level.

  “I can manage!” she insisted stubbornly.

  “Get into the car!”

  “But it’s my job!”

  “Get—into the car,” he repeated between his teeth, bent to his task, and the interested sightseer went on his way under the firm impression that the lady passenger had been simply offering her help, and the man in charge of the big, sleek Daimler had firmly and rightly rejected it.

  Frederica had several minutes in which to repair the ravages to her complexion, and by the time her employer put his head in at her window and announced curtly that they were ready to proceed once more her still very flushed cheeks were smooth and powdered, and she had even managed to remove the marks of the road from her grey silk skirt. She looked trim but vulnerable, extremely feminine and very much afraid that the end of the world was near at hand. Lestrode, opening his mouth to say something further and very much to the point, closed it again as if it was a steel trap, and climbed into the back of the car, slamming the door behind him.