Hotel Stardust

by Susan Barrie

  “Then I’m very glad it was rough last night!”

  Eve gazed at her in astonishment.

  “But you’ve just been saying that those poor things upstairs “

  “I know, darling, but be your age! It’s an hotel we want to get started here, isn’t it? And it’s not always easy to get an hotel started just when you want to — without a lot of expensive advertising, that is. But this affair of last night has been a positive godsend to us. It's given us our start!” “How you think of things!” Eve murmured, slicing the bread for the toast. “But I don’t wish to make capital out of other people’s misfortunes.”

  Chris studied her a little pityingly.

  “Listen!” She said. “A wealthy yacht owner gets shipwrecked on your very doorstep, he and a whole bevy of his friends, and it’s to you they turn for shelter! Your house is large, commodious, beautifully flourished, completely equipped to deal with such an emergency.”

  “Save for the fact that our staff is limited and we’re not really at all ready to cope with even the odd week-end quest! Why, you yourself only arrived yesterday, and you haven’t had a chance to see the place in daylight!”

  “Never mind that,” Chris side-tracked this undoubted truth. “The point is that we’ve got a lot of people together under this roof in one fell swoop, as it were, and it’s up to us to make the most of such an opportunity. Why, it’s almost certain never to happen again! You might spend weeks advertising. . . . And now, here you have Mr. Martin Pope — almost certainly a man of substance, or he wouldn’t even beginto own a yacht, let alone fill it with guests. . .”

  “They looked terribly bedraggled when I first caught sight of them last night, and there was little indication of even Mr. Pope's affluence,” Eve interrupted, watching her aunt come bustling into the kitchen in a blue wool housecoat, and join them, looking interested, at the table.

  “As to that, my dear,” she said, addressing her niece, “the flame-colored evening-gown belonging to Mrs. Neville Wilmott which I, personally, undertook to dry for her, cost almost certainly as much as I’ve ever been able to spend on clothes in a year, or pretty nearly! And it’s got a Paris label which will make your mouth water!”

  “Well, there you are, you see!” Chris cried triumphantly. “And if any of their things are rescued from the yacht, they’ll probably make your mouth water, too.”

  “We’d better wait and see,” Eve decided.

  “All the same, I agree with Chris,” Aunt Kate stated firmly, watching the new cook add chopped chives and a sprinkling of chopped onion to her omelet mixture before lowering it carefully into the sizzling butter in the frying- pan. “Treloan Manor is opening up as an hotel, or, at any rate, as a guest-house, and it would be foolish to let these people find accommodation elsewhere when we can accommodate them comfortably ourselves. Why, they might even decide to stay for quite a time, if we look after them really well.”

  “They might,” Eve agreed.

  “By the way,” Chris said, “what happened to you last night when you disappeared, Eve? I had a horrible thought that you'd gone over the cliff until I saw you reappear with that Merlin man. It was the Merlin man, wasn't it? He looks tough. I don't think I’d like to be on the wrong side of him for long!”

  “No; I don’t think I would, either,” Aunt Kate supported her. “There’s something about that man — I don’t know quite what it is, but Mr. Pope was singing his praises last night to such an extent that I felt I ought to revise my opinion of him. Apparently his disregard for life and limb

  — his own! — in an emergency like last night is quite spectacular.”

  But Eve could not help remembering that hour spent on the back seat of his car, and she did not know whether she wanted to be on the right or the wrong side of Roger Merlin. She was only more or less certain of the fact that under no circumstances could she ever possibly like him.

  Later that morning, while her guests were still enjoying the deep sleep of exhaustion upstairs, she went out into the garden to see whether there were any flowers she could gather for the vases. The vases were needed for the drawing room and the luncheon table, but at first it was not easy to find just what she wanted.

  The garden was more or less a wilderness, but it was an attractive wilderness, especially in the warm sunshine of an early spring morning. The mad havoc of the night before had laid low many plants and bushes, and a tree had been uprooted and lay across one of the lower lawns, nearer the cliff walk. But there was a soothing murmur of birdsong in the drowsy calm of the morning, and the scent of the opening azaleas was wafted on the breeze. Eve gathered some sprays of creamy pink and white, and a burnished yellow, like the heart of a china rose, and also a few branches of rhododendrons which, like the azaleas, were coming into flower far earlier than they would have done in the bleaker, south-eastern counties. Then, drawn by the murmur of the sea, she drifted along the cliff walk to the open cliff top itself, and from thence to her favorite point of vantage on the very edge of the cliff.

  It was a good thing, she thought, as she looked down, that she was not affected in any way by heights, or by the siren lure of that surging voice of the sea far below her. She loved watching the sea; in storm or in calm, it fascinated her, and she was awed by its immensity, but it had no terrors of any sort for her. She could have gone down to the edge of the beach the night before and done her best for the survivors of Mr. Pope’s yacht as they stepped ashore after hours of uncertainty and terror afloat, and had no fears at all for her own safety. She was a strong swimmer and she loved swimming, and she loved playing about on the edge of the surf when the sun was shining, as it was this morning, and the feel of the warm, sparkling water was a caress in itself.

  But, most of all, she liked to contemplate it from a height, like an eagle contemplating the world from its eyrie. She liked to watch the slow surge of the incoming breakers, the play of light and shadow in the water, the fleeting shadows of swooping gulls.

  This morning there was a kind of shimmer over everything, and it dazzled her eyes a little, so that when she heard footsteps on the path behind her and turned to discover who it was who had followed her, she did not immediately recognize Martin Pope.

  For one thing, the owner of the Rose of Sharonwas no longer in the least bedraggled -or careworn after hours of anxiety and fears for the safety of his guests. He looked as if he had enjoyed an almost perfect night (which, as a matter of fact, he had, in one of Treloan Manor’s most comfortable and spacious bedrooms) and his well-pressed flannel trousers and dark blue blazer, with the badge of a famous yacht club emblazoned on the pocket, suited his spare frame and healthy, bronzed appearance admirably. Even the patches of white at his temples were not so noticeable in the sunshine, and he had excellent, hard white teeth which flashed as he smiled a morning greeting.

  Eve was wearing a pale-colored sweater and a skirt of dark green corduroy velvet, and the exquisite sprays of azalea were hugged up in her arms and lightly caressing her cheek. Her hair, more gold than red in the soft light of morning, streamed out behind her, and a curl as tempting as any that was ever formed to wave above a wide smooth brow dipped down into her eyes. She brushed it away impatiently as she recognized Mr. Pope.

  “Good morning, Mr. Pope. You are up early!”

  “Forgive me for disagreeing with you,” he said, as he consulted his watch, “but I seem to have slept the clock round! This is a disgracefully late hour for me to make my first appearance of the day, but there must be something about your beds which induces sleep. I’ve never been so loath to leave a bed in my life.”

  He was eyeing her with admiration, the slender grace of her figure, the heedless manner in which she stood there on the very edge of the cliff, overhanging those sharp-toothed, amethyst and emerald colored rocks on which he had so nearly come to grief the night before.

  He shielded his eyes from the glare and looked down at them. The sea seeped quietly in amongst them, and the low murmur of it reached their ears. There was a
tiny, sheltered cove, where the smooth sand looked very white and inviting, and across which the shadow of the cliff fell _ deep and blue, like indigo, which would cease to exist at high tide.

  “It all looks very attractive in the daylight,” he observed. Then he looked at her again, keenly. “You don’t suffer from vertigo?” he remarked.

  “No.” She smiled. “And neither, apparently, do you, since you can stand here quite calmly beside me!”

  “How do you know I haven't any inward qualms?”

  “I’m quite sure you haven't,” she told him. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be keen on yachting, and at this season of the year. You’re used to the sea.”

  “Not so used to it as that fellow Merlin, your neighbor. As a matter of fact, I’ve been having a kind of health cruise

  — doctor’s orders!” Smiling at her and surprising her a little because he looked so brown and fit. “And last night we were driven off our course by the gale which sprang up. We were heading for Falmouth and some necessary repairs, after a leisurely cruise off the southern coast of France, when disaster hit us.”

  “I’m so sorry,” she said with real sympathy. “Is there any news yet of our yacht?”

  “Oh yes — and good news, too. Instead of being driven on the rocks she was driven out to sea, and some local coastguard fellows got aboard her and brought her in this morning. We've already had some essential items of wearing apparel brought up to us,” indicating the smart blue blazer and the well-pressed flannel trousers.

  “Oh, I am glad!” But Eve's heart sank. This would put an end to all Aunt Kate's and Chris Carpenter’s fond hopes of getting Treloan Manor started as an hotel. In a short while now the unexpected visitors of the night before would probably all have departed back to the yacht.

  C H A P T E R E I G H T

  “IN that case, I suppose you — I suppose you'll soon be returning to the yacht?” Eve said rather flatly, after a moment of silence.

  “Well, hardly.” He continued to smile at her as if her downcast expression amused him a little. “As I said, the Rose was needing repairs before last night, and her experiences in the last twenty-four hours have rendered a complete overhaul absolutely necessary. I’m afraid it will be the dry-dock for her for some little while. And for us —for Mrs. Wilmott and her daughter, Dr. Craig, my son Laurence (whom, by the way, I’m not sure you've been properly introduced to yet) and myself — an hotel! Unless we make up our minds to return to London almost immediately.”

  “But what about your — your health?” she asked, feeling her pulses beating a little faster as if with excitement, and stealing a glance up at him. “Ought you to return to London yet?”

  “Not for any reason apart from business reasons, In fact, quite frankly I'm loathing the idea of returning to it at all, after the glorious freedom of the past few weeks. But I can’t go on neglecting things for ever, or become a permanent lotus-eater — much as I approve of lotus-eating!”

  “I haven't had very much opportunity to try it,” she confessed, sounding a trifle wistful, for a little shadow had fallen across her heart with the thought that, if they failed in their experiment to make Treloan pay for itself, soon, all too soon, she, too, would have to return to the workaday world and forget the Cornish cliffs and the sunshine.

  They had started to walk back to the house, and he placed her carefully on the inside of the path, keeping the dangerous cliff edge on his own left hand.

  “Your aunt, Miss Barton, has been showing me over your house,” he told her. “It’s a delightful place! I understand you have plans for it?”

  Eve felt herself flushing a little. Had Aunt Kate been letting her tongue run away with her?

  “Well, er — yes,” she admitted. “We have. But whether or not they’re really practical plans, I don’t know.”

  Martin Pope was studying her sideways, and there was a faintly whimsical expression on his face.

  “Oh, don’t worry about Miss Barton,” he said. “She’s full of enthusiasm, and I don't marvel at it. A perfect gem of a period house, a glorious situation, and almost every inducement for the holidaymaker! I don't see how you can possibly fail.”

  “Oh, don’t you?” She sounded relieved, but there was doubt in her tone as well. “You’re not being merely kind, because you’re feeling rather grateful? I know Aunt Kate does talk a little unwisely at times, and she might have led you to believe ...”

  “Not at all,” he interrupted her. “On the contrary, your aunt has talked a lot of sound common sense, and I’m sure she’s quite a shrewd business woman. As a matter of fact, after being shown over the place, and if I'd been given the least idea that you wanted to sell, I’d have offered to buy the place myself.”

  “To run as an hotel?” she asked quickly, looking up at him keenly. “Well, perhaps not for that reason.” He paused, looking at her with a curiously gentle smile on his pleasantly featured face. “You see, I happen to be rather more favorably circumstanced, possibly, than you are yourself, and I don’t have to bother about such things as — well, making money! I made all the money I’m ever likely to need years ago, and it still goes on accumulating. Money is like that, you know; it doubles itself when you’re not particularly anxious for it to do so! No,” still regarding her, “I would like this house to live in, and to enjoy the beauty of it.”

  “That's what I would like to do, too, even though it is a bit large, but I'm afraid that just isn’t possible.” She laughed rather shakily. “Hence our hotel scheme!”

  “Which, believe me, is a good one. Are you ready for guests yet?” She clenched her hands involuntarily, wondering what Aunt Kate had told him.

  He laughed.

  “Oh yes, your aunt has assured me that you are! And, furthermore, I’ve already told her that I and my party would like to be your first guests — for a week or so, at least!” His eyes roved over the peacefulness and the quiet loveliness of the garden, backed by the dignified white Georgian residence. “After such an experience as last night, this seems a particularly halcyon spot in which to recover our breath, shall we say?”

  Eve did not know how to thank him. She felt sure he was merely agreeing to stay out of a kind of quixotic desire to repay her hospitality and ready assistance of the night before. He was, despite a certain indication of steeliness in his upright frame, grave grey eyes and quiet voice, an essentially kindly man. A human man. She felt so certain of that that her thoughts almost shone in her own grey eyes as she looked up at him.

  “Mr. Pope, I — I’m not even sure we can make you comfortable!” He laughed in a particularly pleasant manner, and took her arm. “My dear young lady, you’ve already made me most comfortable,

  and that cook of yours is a wizard! Even Mrs. Wilmott would like to stay, and she is sometimes a little difficult to please.”

  “And Dr. Craig?”

  “Dr. Craig has been enjoying himself at my expense for several weeks now, and he’s quite happy to go on doing so. He’s the old villain who takes an interest in my health, and ordered me to rest.”

  “I see,” Eve said.

  “And as for my son, well, we’ll probably only see him for a few more days, as he’s by the way of working very hard to get his degree, and it’s back to Oxford for him. But I don’t mind telling you he’s charmed by this place.”

  “I think you're all suffering from overwhelming gratitude because you’re not at the bottom of the sea!”

  Once again Martin Pope laughed and gave her arm a little squeeze.

  “Nonsense, Miss Petherick! I don’t think you quite realize all that Treloan has to offer.”

  And as he was looking down at her face as he spoke and it was as creamily pink as the azaleas in her arms, he probably knew what he was talking about!

  After that there was simply no holding Miss Barton. She determined to give up her own room to Mrs. Wilmott for as long as she cared to occupy it, and as Mrs. Wilmott was quick to realize that it was one of the most sun-filled and pleasantly situated bedroo
ms in the whole house, that might be for any length of time, and certainly until she took her departure.

  Mrs. Neville Wilmott, as she always called herself, was a fashionable window of uncertain age and by no means uncertain looks. She was dark, arresting, and a little mysterious. That is to say, she had mysterious and shadowy eyes, and as she used a great deal of eye-shadow, the mysteriousness was emphasized. Her lipstick was always a bright vermilion, for she still had a skin like the petals of a peculiarly flawless white rose, and could stand the sharpness of the contrast. She wore diamond drops in her ears, which drew attention to the excellence of their shape, and her manner was languid and a little distant, particularly after the shock of her experiences aboard Martin Pope's yacht. For a day or so after Treloan Manor had provided her with sanctuary she remained determinedly shut away in her room, professing an exhaustion which was no doubt partly real, although she was able to do justice to Chris Carpenter's daintily served meals (which in her case were extra-daintily served up on a tray) and read the books and magazines with which Miss Barton kept her plentifully supplied, while appreciating the amenities of Miss Barton’s room.

  Miss Barton’s room had a balcony outside the windows which looked right out to sea, and it was provided with chaise-lounges and little wicker tables. It also had its own private bathroom, beautifully equipped, with a shower, and the furnishings were quite expensive — sufficiently expensive for Mrs. Neville Wilmott. She was even inclined to feel that it had decided advantages over the small stateroom she had occupied on the Rose of Sharon.