by Susan Barrie
She heard herself laugh suddenly, a little unsteadily.
“I was beginning to wonder, Doctor, whether there really was a Stephanie to take charge of,” she confessed. “Or whether, perhaps, you had invited a need for someone to look after her.”
“Oh, no, there’s a Stephanie all right. And she can do with a few weeks’ running wild on the moors. But I don’t mind admitting,” his tone and his look suddenly intensely serious, “that if there hadn’t been a Stephanie I would have got you out of London somehow or other. It was my fault that you returned to it when you did, and therefore it was up to me to get you away from it again.” “But I had to return to London sooner or later,’' she protested. “After all, my work is there.”
“Is it?” He had slowed the car to a mere crawl, and suddenly she met his eyes. She felt as if her whole inner being gave a tremendous bound, and the color that rushed up into her face was the lovely, glowing color resulting from an extraordinary sensation of relief. “A part of your life, perhaps, but not your work! Not necessarily your work. ... ”
They drove under the arch of an old-world inn, and he said that this was the place where they would have their coffee.
“And, reverting to the subject of my wife,” he continued, as he helped her to alight, “my wife died over three years ago. I have no other wife—or wives.” He smiled slightly. “Not yet.”
It was quite dark when they arrived at Loring Court, and Dallas
was glad that she was able to make out the twisted Tudor chimneys, and the rosy red brick of the facade in the gentle grey dusk that was enveloping it like a mantle. The evening star shone brightly above one of the chimneys, and as they turned in at the gates and streaked up the drive she caught the shimmer of a still sheet of water as they flashed past the lake.
On their way across the moor she had been straining her eyes for a first sight of Loring. Now she felt that she had come home.
Mrs. Baxter, the housekeeper, welcomed them in the hall. She explained that Miss Stephanie was upstairs in the old schoolroom, that had been opened up for her. Edith, the young housemaid, was for the moment in charge of her.
“And my aunt caught her train all right this morning?” Dr. Loring asked.
“Oh, yes, sir. Foulkes drove her to the station, and saw her settled in her compartment. He said she was quite looking forward to the journey.”
“Isn’t Mrs. Loring here?” Dallas asked, suddenly realizing that the one person she had been looking forward to meeting was not there to receive her.
Martin Loring smiled down at her. His expression was a trifle odd, but it was also smiling.
“No, I’m afraid she isn’t,” he said. “She had an urgent appeal from an old friend to spend a couple of weeks with her in the South of France, and she’s gone off to join her. So I’m afraid tonight you’ll have to dine alone with me. Which will probably be rather dull for you! ”
C H A P T E R E I G H T
EDITH had put Stephanie to bed, so Dallas decided not to disturb her that night. She found that she and the child were in a wing of the house that was strange to her, and Dr. Loring had, apparently, resumed occupancy of his old quarters.
She changed into a fine wool dress for the evening, and went down to dinner when the gong sounded. Dr. Loring was in the hall when she crossed it on her way to the dining room, and he smiled swiftly at the sight of her.
“This is like old times,” he said. “I wonder whether you realize how often I’ve thought of that month you spent here? How often I wonder how you ever put up with me, and why I didn’t turn your hair grey at times! ”
“You were a very good patient, really,” she told him, wishing her pulses didn’t bound so uncontrollably whenever he appeared within a
few feet of her. “In fact, in many ways you were an exemplary patient.”
He opened the door of the library, and suggested they have a drink before dinner.
“I’ve asked Mrs. Baxter to keep it back for ten minutes,” he said. “She’s an amiable soul, and she didn’t really mind.”
The library, to Dallas’s bemused eyes, looked everything a room so named ought to be. She had tried to recall it often in the weeks that had intervened since that last stormy interview that had preceded her sudden return to London, but somehow it had never materialized satisfyingly for her benefit. The logs blazing on the wide hearth, the deep leather chairs, the books in their colorful bindings. . . . She had seen all those at intervals; but the atmosphere of the room so much favored by Martin Loring himself, the solid snugness of it, the smell of it—the smell of cigarette smoke and the occasional odd cigar the owner of Loring smoked when he was
feeling particularly relaxed, the slightly musty odor of ancient books, and even the leather of the chairs— these things had defeated her.
The only thing she remembered about the smell of the library at Loring was the heavy odor of a woman’s perfume hanging about it; and now that she knew it was the perfume used by the doctor’s sister-in-law she wouldn’t have minded at all if it had been hanging about it still.
The doctor pulled a chair nearer to the fire for her, and asked her what she would like to drink.
“Oh, nothing, really,” she said, and he shook his head at her and put a glass of sherry into her hand. “You ought to have a good stiff whisky after that journey, but I’ll let you off.”
He lifted his glass to her.
“To us! ” he said quietly. She looked surprised, and the color rushed revealingly into her cheeks. The fire was so hot she hoped he would attribute the sudden attractive flush to that. “And to you and Stephanie getting to know and like one another really well! She’s a bit of a minx sometimes, but I’m fond of her. I want you to be fond of her, too.”
“I’m sure I shall be fond of her,” Dallas returned. “I’m fond of all children.”
He stood leaning against the carved mantelshelf, and looked down at her. The wool dress she was wearing was the same soft green as her coat, and it suited her beautifully. It made her skin look very fair, and was a perfect foil for her hair. She looked incredibly slim—too slim, he thought—and her eyes as she gazed up at him were as transparent as moorland pools. He looked away from her quickly.
“You’re to take things easily at first,” he instru
“If you’re not a little liar, and you’re telling m
“You’re to take things easily at first,” he instructed her.
“Stephanie, although she looks gawky and overgrown, is tougher than you are at the moment, and you’re not to allow her to exhaust you.
I shall remain here for about a week before returning to London, and see you settled in, and then I shall probably come up here for the odd weekend occasionally. As you know, I’m tied to London, and it won’t be easy to get away . . . but Aunt Letty will be back in a fortnight, and you shouldn’t be too bored.”
“Bored?” She could have laughed at the idea. Here, in his home, with his child to take care of? “I can’t imagine being bored at Loring.” “Well, the spring’s on its way, and I know you enjoy walking your legs off in the country. But remember, everything in moderation at first. No ten-mile hikes, or anything of that sort ... for one thing, Stephanie couldn’t keep up with you. And be careful of the moor. It’s harmless enough when the sun shines, but it can be nasty in bad weather. Particularly misty weather.”
They went in to dinner, and he looked after her as if she was an honored guest, and not someone he was paying to look after his child. Mrs. Baxter had provided them with a delightful meal, and for the first time for weeks Dallas found she had an appetite, and was able to enjoy it. Afterwards they returned to the library and she poured coffee for the two of them, and he sat opposite her in a deep leather chair and talked to her of all sorts of things he had never mentioned to her before.
He asked her about her family, and her friends— was interested to hear that her father was a research chemist, and that her only sister was married to a country G.P. She had one young brother wh
o was also planning to be a doctor, and therefore medicine appeared to be part of her family background.
“But you shouldn’t have taken up nursing,” he told her, severely. “You need to have the stamina of a dozen ordinary females to stand up to the wear and tear of the wards. And you haven’t got the stamina.” “Then what should I have done?” she enquired, looking at him with a faint smile on her lips, and he selected a pipe from a rack beside the fireplace and knocked it out vigorously before answering the question.
“Personally, I think there’s only one thing you ought to do,” he replied, at last—”one thing for which you are obviously cut out—and I’ll tell you about that some other time. Not tonight.”
He smiled across the firelit space at her, astounded her by the depth and the tranquillity and the warmth of his grey eyes—so often, in the past, merely quizzical and humorous—and then suggested that it would be a good thing if she went to bed early.
“You’ve had quite a long day,” he remarked. “And in the morning you have to meet Stephanie! ” It was very early in the morning when Dallas met Stephanie. Someone pushed open the door of her room very cautiously just after it was light, and a dark head peered even more cautiously round it. Dallas, who was lying blinking her eyes in a ray of sunlight that had found its way between her partially drawn curtains, sat up in surprise as a pair of bare feet pattered across her carpet, and a slim, dressing-gowned form bounded on to her bed, hugging up in its arms a small chestnut-colored dachshund puppy.
“Good morning,” said the dressing-gowned form politely. “I know it’s a bit early to wake you, but I was curious to see what you looked like.”
Dallas blinked her eyes more rapidly.
“You must be Stephanie,” she said.
The dark head nodded.
“And this is Joe.” She held the puppy up so that it could be properly inspected. “I’ve only had him a few days. Daddy promised me a puppy for my last birthday, but it was awkward keeping him at school —for one thing, we’re not allowed to keep dogs or cats, only goldfish and guinea-pigs, and uninteresting things like that— so he waited until they sent me home, and Joe was in the kitchen with Mrs. Baxter when I got here.”
Dallas held out her arms for Joe, who nestled into them as if he appreciated the warmth and the rather more maternal feel of them after the somewhat uneasy hold of the pair of thin little arms covered in quilted rose-pink nylon that had been hanging on to him.
Dallas was amazed at the dazzling beauty of this child she was to take charge of for the next few
weeks. She had only seen her once before, when Matron had her by the hand and was leading her to her father’s room in Ardrath House, and she appeared to be practically concealed by a large round school hat and a rather clumsy school coat.
But now, in flowered pyjamas and the enchanting dressing gown, with her dark hair rumpled into elf locks, her pale skin flushed after a good night’s rest and her dark eyes brilliant with excitement and curiosity, as she wriggled restlessly on the edge of the bed, she was as delectable a small girl as anyone could wish to find. Dallas realized at once that she was the living image of the aunt whom she had mistaken for Mrs. Martin Loring, and therefore she must also be the living image of her mother. The only characteristic of her father that he appeared to have bestowed on her was his slightly impish smile, and a rounded chin that would be quite an excellent one as she grew older.
She performed a kind of somersault on the bed, and landed closer to Dallas. She regarded her with interest.
“You’re Nurse Drew, aren’t you?” she said. “Edith told me you were pretty. You’ve been here before, haven’t you? Edith said you were very fair, and I love fair hair myself. I wish I had it instead of dark hair. . . .” She tossed back her dark locks as if they were an offence. “Edith also told me that you had green eyes.” She peered into them. “They really are green, aren’t they?”
“Are they?” Dallas smiled at her.
Stephanie nodded.
“As green as glass . . . little bits of green glass, like the bits in my kaleidoscope. You know,” she confessed, settling back against the pillows, “I like Edith. She tells me a lot of things . . . all about her boyfriends, and the one she might marry one day when he gets a better job. Edith thinks it’s important that a boy friend should have a good job.”
“Oh, really?” Dallas murmured, as if this piece of information absorbed her.
“Yes.” Stephanie nodded her head vigorously. “Otherwise he won’t be able to keep her in the style to which she’s been accustomed. You see, Edith’s father—he’s the village carpenter—lets her have all the money she earns to spend on clothes, and that sort of thing; and if, when she’s married, she can’t still spend all her money on clothes it won’t be much fun, will it?”
Dallas sat up very straight in the bed, and decided that this was the stage at which she ought to intervene, and state bluntly that listening to housemaid’s gossip was not the sort of thing a well-brought up little girl ever did. Certainly not a well-brought- up little girl of eight. But the puppy had burrowed to the foot of the bed, she had rather more than a suspicion that he was not yet house-trained and was inclined to forget himself at any moment, and it was obvious that Stephanie, after being banished to boarding-school very early in her young life, enjoyed nothing more than an audience to whom she could unburden herself when she felt tempted to do so. She went on making further revelations about Edith, the cook and Mrs. Baxter—whom she didn’t seem to have taken to very much—her school mistress and her headmistress, whom she detested, until Dallas jumped out of bed and said briskly that she thought Joe ought to be banished to the bathroom until they could take him out into the garden.
Stephanie performed another lighthearted somersault on the bed, and then landed upright on her pink feet on the carpet.
“Yes, he’s not awfully clean yet,” she agreed. “Mrs. Baxter was so cross with him yesterday for dirtying the floor of the kitchen that she said I’d have to get rid of him if he isn’t trained soon.”
“Then we’ll have to start straight away, won’t we?” Dallas said, scooping up the warm scrap of satin-smooth dachshund and handing it over to its owner. “Have you got a basket for it yet?”
“No, not yet.”
“Then you’ll have to ask Daddy to get you one. Perhaps he’ll drive you into Oldthorpe this morning and you can choose one between you.”
But Martin Loring had other plans for the three of them when they joined him in the dining room for breakfast. It was a new experience for Dallas to breakfast with him, for when she was at Loring Court before he had always had his breakfast in his own room. But now he was waiting for them in the dining room, and although it was a misty morning outside, the dining room itself looked bright with the silver dishes gleaming on the sideboard, the table covered with a gay cloth and colorful china, and a bowl of flowers set in the middle of it.
Stephanie entered with Joe trotting along behind her on a long lead. Dallas brought up the rear, looking as if she had had a very restful night, and wearing a pale primrose jumper and a tweed skirt.
“So you two have got to know one another! ” Loring exclaimed, turning from the window through which he had been surveying the weather. His eyes seemed to brighten at sight of them ... in fact, they brightened considerably, but Dallas understood perfectly that it was his daughter who aroused his paternal pride and made him glad to see her.
He went forward and ruffled her hair, but he didn’t kiss her, and she didn’t seem to expect any display of affection. She had already struck Dallas as an extremely practical child, and she wondered whether it was because she had lost her mother so early, and her father was almost always preoccupied.
“It’s not much of a morning,” the doctor remarked, as he saw them settled at the table. “But I thought I might take the two of you for a drive, if you’d care for it?” He was looking at Dallas as he spoke. “Nurse Drew has seen very little of the country round here,” he explained to t
he child, “save odd bits of it she covered on afternoon walks. But the moors are magnificent when they’re not covered by mist . . . and I don’t think this’ll develop into a genuine mist.” He glanced out of the window again.
Later, perhaps, but not this morning.”
Stephanie attacked her egg with enthusiasm.
“Goody!” she exclaimed. “And can we go into Oldthorpe and buy a basket for Joe? Nurse Drew says he’ll have to have one, and that he’ll have to be trained.”
“He certainly will,” Martin agreed, rescuing the fringes of a Persian rug from the puppy’s teeth, and lifting him and setting him on his own lap. “But Oldthorpe’s a little out of our way if we want to see the beauties of the moor, so we’ll go there tomorrow and buy the basket.”
Dallas could have sighed with pure pleasure and contentment when she found herself back in the cream car, seated once more beside her employer, while Stephanie occupied the back seat with Joe on his long lead beside her. She had offered to occupy the back seat herself, feeling certain the child would prefer to sit beside her father, but somewhat to her surprise Martin had disapproved of the idea immediately.
“No, you stay where you are,” he said to Stephanie. “I don’t want a puppy crawling all over me and causing another accident.” But he softened the explanation with a smile at the eight-year-old, and then turned the same smile on Dallas. She felt as if her heart expanded and grew inside her, and when he lightly laid a hand on her knee and asked her whether she wanted a rug, it not merely expanded but bumped up and down as if it was something loose on the end of a string.