by Susan Barrie
He had been right about the mist, and by the middle of the morning it had cleared sufficiently to permit them to enjoy wonderful panoramic views over the moor. It was gradually coming to life with all the slow, green charm of spring; and where a few weeks before there had been nothing but dead heather there were now active green shoots away at the base of the brownness, and snowdrops and aconites in sheltered hollows. Stephanie seized every opportunity when they stopped, on the pretext of allowing the dog a run, to hunt for these delicate proofs that winter—the hard, wild winter of the moor—was at an end; and by the time the car was headed for home she had quite a bunch of them in her lap, sharing the small amount of space with Joe, who nibbled at them contentedly whenever she wasn’t looking.
But, before that, they all three went for a walk on the moor, leaving the car where it was unlikely to prove a menace to any other cars using the moorland road; and as Stephanie refused to be constrained into maintaining a sedate pace Dallas found herself walking alone with her employer, while his daughter ran blithely ahead, and feeling his hand under her elbow every time there was a slight irregularity in the surface of the ground, or a bubbling spring watercourse burst across their path, and had to be negotiated by means of stepping-stones.
And, what with the exhilarating quality of the air at that altitude— and Martin explained that they were several hundred feet higher than Loring Court, which lay in a hollow—and the feel of those lean, firm fingers, transmitting their warmth through the thickness of her sleeve,
she gradually acquired such a color in her cheeks that it reminded him of a drift of apple blossom when he turned and looked at it.
“Already you’re looking better,” he told her. “Much, much better!” A whimsical note invaded his voice. “If you had consulted Dr. Loring, instead of Dr. Crawthorne, at least six weeks ago, I’d have had you on top of the world by now! It might have cost you something, but it would have been worth it.”
“What would it have cost me, Doctor?” she asked, daring to lift her green eyes to his face. There was a suspicion of a lively sparkle in them, and he smiled at her.
“Oh, anything from five guineas to five hundred guineas. My charges are not moderate, you know. But I’d have made a special reduction in your case.”
She shook her head.
“I couldn’t possibly have afforded it.”
“Then I’d have made another reduction.”
He felt her stumble slightly, and instantly his arm was round her, supporting her strongly.
“Wait until you get the bill for my present treatment,” he murmured close to her ear, “and see whether you can afford that! ”
She shot one surprised glance at his face, blushed vividly, and then looked away. Stephanie was far ahead of them, and there was no chance of her returning speedily to create a diversion, so she said hurriedly, picking on the first subject she could think of:
“You told me once that your people have lived at Loring Court for generations. Don’t you ever wish that you could live there all the time?”
“One day I may live there all the time,” he replied, suiting his long strides to her short ones. “But not until I’m old—old and senile,” grinning at her sideways, “and my patients refuse to trust my judgment any longer. Until then, I’m afraid I’m more or less tied to London. Do you like London?” he asked, abruptly.
“Oh, yes, of course. Everyone likes London.”
“Not everyone. And you told me once that you wanted to live in the country.”
“It was a dream.” she said, “and dreams are hardly ever practical.” “They can be amended sometimes,” he remarked, as if he was thinking the matter over. “For you a country life would be ideal, of course, but even a few months of the year in the country would be something. A few weeks, even. . . .” She could feel his eyes watching her. “What else do you dream about, Dallas?” he asked. “When you’re walking the wards in that prim little cap of yours? Do you hope to meet a millionaire one day and marry him?”
She shook her head.
“I don’t think I’d be the right sort of wife for a millionaire,” she replied.
“Why not?”
“Because, on the whole, I like simple things, and millionaires don’t, do they?”
“Not being a millionaire,” he returned, “I couldn’t answer that one. But, by simple things, I take it that you mean country walks, country clothes, dogs, children . . .?”
He was watching her even more closely, and she answered quietly:
“Something like that.”
“Then you’ll have to marry a man whose interests lie in the country,” he said. He was still holding her arm, and his fingers felt as if they were bruising it. “We’ll have to find you an earnest countryman, Dallas, whom you can marry.”
Her heart was beating unevenly under her tweed coat, and she experienced a sudden sensation of impatience, and her pleasure in the morning walk became dimmed.
“When I marry,” she told him, pausing unconsciously to give emphasis to her words, “I shall marry for one reason—and one reason only.”
“Oh,” he said softly, “and what is that?” “Because I’m in love.
And because the man I’m in love with is in love with me. And because I want to marry!”
Her green eyes challenged him to deride such a simple statement as that; but all he did was release her arm for a moment, slide his hand down and encompass and squeeze her hand, and say even more softly than before:
“Good. That’s what I was hoping you would say, Dallas! Love in a palace or love in a cottage . .. it doesn’t matter so long as there’s no doubt about the quality of the love! And now we’d better call that brat of mine back and turn for home. It’s turning a little chilly up here, and you mustn’t catch cold.”
By evening Loring Court was shrouded in mist, but when Dallas parted her curtains and looked out into the night she experienced a queer little pleasurable thrill because the handful of people inside the warm, comfortable house were isolated from the rest of the world. Downstairs Martin was waiting for her to join him in the library before the dinner
gong sounded; in the next room Stephanie was already asleep with Joe curled up under her eiderdown. The solemn ticking of the grandfather clock in the hall seemed to emphasize the quiet, the peace, and the comforting security of the house.
It didn’t matter that the gardens were invisible, that out there on the moor a pedestrian would almost certainly lose his or her way, and quite possibly never find it again. Certainly not until the mist lifted, or someone set out to attempt a rescue.
Dallas shivered for an instant. She would hate to be lost on the moor. But after walking on it with Martin—at one period casually linking her fingers with his—and watching Stephanie racing happily ahead of them, she couldn’t think of it as sinister. She could only think of it as a place of happy memories . . . memories worth cherishing.
CHAPTER NINE
THE next day, when the mist hardly lifted, they stayed confined to the house; but the day after that was brilliantly fine, and they drove in to Oldthorpe to buy a basket for Joe.
By this time Dallas thought she understood Stephanie reasonably well. She was not a particularly affectionate child, but she had some engaging ways, and she was easy enough to handle. She had been accustomed to discipline for the last two years, and she accepted it that Dallas had the right to discipline her. Not that Dallas experienced even the smallest urge to be tough with her. She wanted the two of them to be friends, and she also had a large amount of sympathy for a small girl who knew so little of the type of home life she herself had known when she was young.
Aunt Letty had a number of friends in the vicinity of Loring Court, but when she was away few of them thought of calling at the house. Dr. Loring was so often away—much more often away than at the house—that he was almost a stranger to fellow residents in and around the village of Loring, and apart from putting in an appearance at church sometimes, and asking one or two of th
em to dinner, he had little contact with his neighbors.
Dallas found this sense of isolation—the same sense of isolation she had experienced on the night that she looked out at the mist—by no means depressing. Certainly not while Dr. Loring himself was in the house, and he remained there for a little longer than a week after he had seen how well she and his daughter were likely to get on together.
Spring was underlying its arrival with every day that passed, and they spent a lot of time out of doors, walking and driving in the neighborhood. They spent a lot of time in the garden, too, watching the transformation that was taking place amongst the plant life. The
one or two uncertain days were spent indoors, and Stephanie amused herself in the schoolroom, or with Faith in the kitchen . . . when Edith was not under the eagle eye of Mrs. Baxter, who didn’t take kindly to having her kitchen invaded by outsiders.
Dallas planned, as soon as they were alone, and it was possible to get down to some sort of organized routine, to so arrange matters that Stephanie spent several hours daily in the schoolroom, attending to her school books, and the rest of the time would be occupied with diversions that would prevent her becoming dull and bored. She didn’t think listening to Edith’s accounts of her various love affairs a good thing for an eight-year-old, and she agreed with Mrs. Baxter that she could be a nuisance in the kitchen. So, before Martin Loring left and went back to London, she planned to ask his permission to buy certain books and games and other items of that sort with which to while away the hours when they were alone together.
She waited until a couple of days before he left, and went down to him in the library after lunch one day. She had allowed a decent interval between lunch and tea to give him an opportunity to have a nap if he wanted one, but he was still lying somnolently in his chair, blinking uncertainly at his surroundings, when she entered in response to his sleepy, “Come in,” following her polite tap at the door.
He looked at her with the same sleepy eyes, and observed: “There’s no need to knock, you know, Dallas. I won’t bite your head off for disturbing me. I promise you that.”
“I thought perhaps you were busy,” Dallas replied, unwilling to let him think she knew very well he had been doing something he probably never did in London—during weekdays, at least. For lack of opportunity, for one thing.
He grinned at her in a white-toothed manner, and waved her to the opposite chair.
“I've been blatantly sleeping my head off since lunch,” he admitted. “Something I like doing occasionally. And at Loring I find it very restful . . . nowadays, anyway. Where’s the infant?” “She’s gone to the village with Mrs. Baxter. Something to do with changing library books.” “Oh, yes, there’s a van comes to the village about once a fortnight, I believe. By the way, if you’re short of reading material, there’s plenty here in the library, you know.” “Thank you,” she returned. “I’ll remember that. But what I wanted to ask you about was this list of things I’d like to get for Stephanie.” She showed him the list, and explained her plans for the slowly lengthening spring days, and he agreed that she could get whatever she wanted in Oldthorpe, and send the bills to him. Or
if she failed to get what she wanted in Oldthorpe, then she must let him know, and he would get them in London. “Just telephone my secretary. She’s a good girl, and she’ll get in touch with some likely firms who'll be certain to have what you want.”
He didn’t say, “Telephone me, and I’ll get in touch with some likely firms.” It was a small point, but it didn’t pass her by.
“And while we’re on the subject of bills,” he remarked, “we mustn’t forget to raise the question of your salary. I’d like to give you a cheque for a couple of months in advance before I leave. Is that all right?”
She looked at him as if he had startled her.
“Do you think I’ll be here a couple of months?” “I hope so. I sincerely hope you’ll be here longer than that. I’d like to think that you’d remain here all summer.”
“That,” she agreed, fingering the pleat in the front of her skirt, “would be very nice. If Stephanie doesn’t grow tired of having me as a constant companion.”
He frowned.
“It doesn’t very much matter whether Stephanie grows tired of you as a constant companion or not.
But I don’t think she will. At the moment she seems to be very much attracted to you.”
“She’s only a child, and children have whims. However, I shall do my best to keep on the best of terms with her. And, naturally, I shall watch her carefully from the health point of view. At the moment she seems to me reasonably fit, but she is, of course, growing rather fast. I’ve discovered that she doesn’t sleep very well, either, and that’s bad for a child. I’ll watch that, too.”
“And watch your own health, at the same time,” he advised. “Get out into the fresh air, both of you, as much as you can, and if you’re worried at any time, let me know.”
“Would you like me to write you reports occasionally about Stephanie’s progress?” she asked, watching him under her lashes to see how he reacted to this suggestion.
“No.” He settled his head comfortably against his cushions, and regarded her under his own thick eyelashes with a queer smile in his deep grey eyes. “That would be too much like asking you to perform a periodical penance, so I won’t do that. If you want me, telephone me.”
“You, or your secretary?” she couldn’t resist asking, and his smile became a little more enigmatic.
“My secretary’s the safest person to get in touch with, because she never fails to remind me of anything that’s important. Unless,
of course, you wanted me in the evenings. However, I’m not always at home, so the wise thing would be to ring in the daytime.”
“Very well,” she said, a little primly. “I will.” She sat staring into the fire, while white ash fell from the glowing logs on to the stone hearth, and outside a thin wind got up and moaned eerily round the house. Dallas felt depressed by the sound, and she hoped Mrs. Baxter would bring Stephanie home from the village fairly soon. The child was well wrapped up, but perhaps she oughtn’t to have let her accompany her when it was hardly an ideal day. . .
“Anything on your mind, Nurse?” Loring enquired, a little whimsically, and she had to bite her lip, and bite it fairly hard, to keep back the sudden
protest she felt tempted to make because sometimes he treated her as if she was a very close member of his family, and on other occasions he emphasized the fact that she was not by remembering the title to which she was entitled. And she found that she had to say something about it.
“Why do you call me Dallas sometimes, Doctor,” she asked, a little breathlessly, “and on other occasions Nurse?”
He smiled. It was a lazy, almost an indolent smile, and it made her wish she had had the sense to keep silent about his manner of addressing her.
“Shall we say that there are occasions that I like to reserve for Dallas, and other occasions when it seems more appropriate to refer to you as Nurse?” he replied. “In other words, occasions when I think of you as Dallas, and other occasions when I think of you as Nurse! ”
A car swept past the windows and drew up in front of the porch, and instantly his expression changed, and he exclaimed impatiently:
“I wonder who this is?”
They weren’t left long in doubt. Edith, the housemaid, appeared, and announced that Mrs. Temple-Stewart, a reasonably near neighbor, had called, and wanted to see him; and with her was Mrs. Loring.
“Mrs. Loring?” he echoed, knitting his brows. “Mrs. Roger Loring,” Edith enlightened him quickly.
“Oh, yes,” he said, sat up and tossed the end of his cigarette into the fire, and told her to admit the two ladies, and also to bring in tea.
Dallas waited until Edith had disappeared, and then she stood up quickly and offered to withdraw to the schoolroom.
“I can give Stephanie tea up there,” she said. “And, in any case, you’d proba
bly prefer it.”
He cocked a slightly amused, slightly reproving eyebrow at
her.
“My dear Nurse, who’s going to pour out tea?” he returned. “Don’t be silly! Sit down again. Joanna Loring isn’t going to eat you!” His eyes met hers directly. “And she’s quite a nice person, really. You’ll like her when you get to know her.”
Dallas doubted it, but she had no time to do very much doubting, or even to battle with a sensation like being caught like a rat in a trap, for Mrs. Temple-Stewart came bustling in, and Mrs. Temple- Stewart was the sort of person who carried everything before her once she appeared on the scene. Dallas had met her once before, in the days when she had been nursing the doctor, and she knew that she had a friendly air which was possibly deceptive, and she knew that she owned a very large and attractive white Georgian house on the fringe of the village. She was a widow, smartly dressed, in her late fifties, and Aunt Letty admitted that she found her exhausting. Martin Loring was accustomed to dealing with women of all ages, effusive and otherwise, and even if he found them exhausting he had the same manner of coping with them.
He was consistently charming to them all.
“Why, Mrs. Temple-Stewart!” he exclaimed, as if he had been living for the moment when he would see her again; and while she offered him a lengthy explanation of the reason why she hadn’t been to see him before this Joanna Loring strolled in and greeted Dallas with a look of unmistakable surprise.
“What, you again! ” she exclaimed. She was wearing scarlet slacks and an off-white duffle coat with a hood that was lined with scarlet, and if anything she was more beautiful than when Dallas saw her before. She was just back from a winter sports holiday in Switzerland, and she had collected a wonderful golden tan. Her eyes were magnificent, her hair was so dark there appeared to be shades of violet and indigo mixed up with it.
Her slim eyebrows ascended.
“Don’t tell me poor old Martin is suffering again? I understood he was one hundred per cent fit, and looking it! ”
Martin came over and enabled her to judge for herself. She peeped at him under fantastically long eyelashes that were heavy with mascara, and slowly her scarlet lips parted over her flawless little even white teeth.