Hotel Stardust

by Susan Barrie

  Eve was looking round for Annette and expecting her to make her appearance at any moment. She looked in a slightly puzzled fashion at Roger Merlin, and he answered the look with one of his faintly one-sided smiles.

  “Are you expecting Miss Le Frere to join us? She doesn’t share every moment of my waking life, you know!” He crushed out the stub of his cigarette in an ash-tray, and offered her his case before lighting another. “At the moment she’s in London, indulging in an orgy of shopping. Annette is hoping I’m going to let her fly with me to Switzerland on Friday, but I’ve told her I’m going to be far too busy to be bothered with her.”

  “Oh!” Eve exclaimed, and watched the tea-trolley being propelled in her direction. “Then you won’t be here much longer?”

  “Not for a little time, no. The length of my absence rather depends on the state of things when I arrive there and how vitally my presence is needed. When you start running hotels you say goodbye to a lot of freedom, as you've probably already discovered. And this hotel is one I’ve taken over quite recently, and which was not doing too well under the old ownership. But since it’s belonged to me I gather that things are improving. Or, at any rate, I hope so.”

  “And is that the result of your personal genius?” she inquired, as she poised the sugar-tongs over his cup. “You really have a flair for this sort of thing, haven’t you?”

  “Have I? If so, I only discovered it when necessity was driving me, and when my first love, the Navy, no longer wanted anything to do with me.”

  She wondered whether she dared ask him whether he really had been rather badly injured during the war years, and whether the after-effects had necessitated his giving up the Service, but decided that the question was somehow too personal at this stage of their acquaintanceship, and while his eyes were resting upon her with a look in them which did not actually discompose her, but which bewildered her a little. Neither mocking, nor teasing, nor in any sense of the word provocative, it had an ingredient which betrayed the fact that for some reason he found it pleasant to look at her, and that he was indulging the opportunity so long as it lasted. And yet, why? Why did he like to sit and study her like that, and to be charming and friendly and considerate to her, when only a very few nights ago. . . .

  She brought herself up short as that thought intruded, and kept her eyes lowered in case he should, by accident, be able to read her thoughts. And although she knew that it would be more polite, and possibly a little more in keeping, with the uniqueness of their situation alone together up there above all the flourishing workings of his hotel, to merely make a pretence of enjoying the dainty tea on the trolley, she suddenly discovered that she was hungry after her light lunch, and did full justice to the feather-light scones, and the Cornish cream, and jam, and delectable-looking pastries placed temptingly before her.

  When she had completely satisfied her appetite and refilled his cup—the only use he apparently had for afternoon-tea was the beverage itself, taken together with a cigarette—she sat beak in her chair, and a tiny sigh escaped her.

  “Thank you very much,” she said. “I really enjoyed that.”

  “I rather gathered that you did,” he told her, a twinkle in his eyes.

  A faint blush invaded her cheeks.

  “It’s such a change for me to be waited on. At Treloan we’re rather inclined to run round in circles, getting in one another’s way. But in time, no doubt, we shall be better organized.”

  “No one can run before they can walk,” he replied to that, a trifle enigmatically. “But you’ve an excellent cook in Miss Carpenter. You’d be wise to hang on to her.” “Oh, we shall—or, at least, I shall. I don’t know that Aunt Kate will always be with me.”

  “But I thought she was the life and soul of the party, as it were? The prime organizer of all that you are doing? Don’t tell me her enthusiasm is beginning to weaken at this early stage, because I don’t think I can believe that. Miss Barton is made of sterner stuff.”

  “Yes, I know,” Eve agreed with him. “But her life up till now has been so very different, and it's not easy to acclimatize oneself to the kind of hectic existence we lead at present after being more or less set in quite different ways. I sometimes think that it’s a little bit too much for Aunt Kate, and I know that Dr. Craig thinks so, too.” “So Dr. Craig keeps an eye on her, does he?” with a glint of a smile. “Well, well! The gay old dog! And he a hardened bachelor! It just shows that even hardened bachelors weaken sometimes, doesn't it.”

  “Does it?” she asked, with an appearance of innocence, although she was wondering whether he would describe himself as a “hardened bachelor.” But as he was many years younger than Dr. Craig the appellation would scarcely apply. And, in any case, there was Annette.

  “So you think you’re likely to lose your aunt, do you?” he said. “If not some more worthy cause, at least to Dr. Craig!”

  “Oh no!” she tried to correct the impression swiftly. “I merely said that I thought my aunt was finding it rather a strain. But, in any case, she’s been wonderful, helping me as she has, and I know she wants to get back to her cottage in Surrey, where her heart is and where most of her friends are. Cornwall is a strange land to her, but to me it’s beginning to be home.” She broke off. “Perhaps that’s because I’ve never had a proper home of my own since my parents died.”

  “And when did your parents die?”

  “They were both killed in an accident when I was sixteen.”

  “I see,” he said, and stared hard at the top of the occasional table on which was the ash-tray in which he was grinding out the end of yet another cigarette. “We neither of us have been very fortunate where our parents were concerned, have we? Mine also perished simultaneously during an unwise visit to London in the middle of the blitz. But as they were at their wits’ end to know what to do about this house, it may have been a merciful way out.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry!” she exclaimed, with sudden .warm sympathy. For at least she could feel for him, being able to recall very clearly to mind what it had meant to her when her own parents were so abruptly snatched away from her.

  He looked at his watch suddenly.

  “Don’t think I'm hurrying you,” he said, “but I'm going to drive you home, and that being so I think we ought to start. I’ll see that your car is delivered safely to you at Treloan.”

  “Oh, but there’s no need for you to waste your time driving me home,” she told him at once, rising and standing beside him. “Really, my car may look deplorable, but it runs smoothly enough, and I’m fresh as a daisy now that I’ve had the tea. Honestly, Commander Merlin, I’d much rather you didn’t.” “Would you?” He was looking directly at her, and confusing her by the odd intensity of his gaze.

  “I’m afraid that didn’t sound very polite,” she stammered. “What I meant was that I don’t want to take up your time, especially when I’ve the means of getting myself home.”

  “Then you can forget that means,” he answered her curtly, and rang the bell again for his servant, who appeared almost immediately. “I’m going out again, Hargreaves,” he said. “If any messages come in for me, make a note of them. I don’t suppose I shall be long.” “Very well, sir,” Hargreaves responded, and looked at Eve with respectful curiosity. It wasn’t like his master to entertain lady friends to tea in his private flat, and he noted that this one had striking hair—red hair. Red and black! he said to himself. That should be a good mixture!

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  ALTHOUGH she was only mildly surprised when her niece did not return in time for tea; Aunt Kate grew definitely astonished when the dinner hour arrived and still she had not put in an appearance. Chris started dishing up the evening meal in the kitchen, but the only suggestion she could offer was that Eve had been delayed for some reason or other, such as a burst tyre or some other disaster to the car.

  “So long as she and the car haven’t gone over the cliff!” Aunt Kate exclaimed, feeling, however, a little anxious. And then the tele
phone rang in the hall.

  “Hello?” said Aunt Kate, speaking eagerly into the mouthpiece. “Is that you, Eve? Oh, thank goodness it is! I was beginning to be quite concerned about you.’

  “I’m sorry.” Eve’s voice sounded rather faint, and it was not quite her natural voice. “I meant to be back in good time, but I

  may be a little late. Not terribly late, but-” “You mean you

  won’t be home to dinner?”

  “Yes—no; I mean no, I won’t. I hope you’ll be able to manage ...?”

  “Of course we’ll be able to manage!” But as she replaced the receiver Miss Barton’s grizzled eyebrows were bent together a little, and there was a puzzled look in her eyes. “Now, what in the world does that mean?” she asked herself. “She can't be alone, or she’d never stay out all this time; but who—who is she with? And why didn’t she say?”

  She had retired to the cottage, and was sitting in her favorite attitude with her feet up, relaxing with a book, while Sarah occupied her basket, when she heard the car stop outside the gate and footsteps came quickly up the path. Eve appeared in the doorway of the sitting-room, still wearing the blue and white linen dress she had set out in that morning, with the narrow white belt and the white sandals that went with it, and some deep blue periwinkle flowers fastened carelessly to the front of the dress.

  She looked as if candles had been lighted in her eyes, but she glanced a little uncertainly at Aunt Kate.

  “I'm sorry—I really am sorry that I left you and Chris to cope with everything this evening,” she apologized at once.

  “Don't be silly!” Aunt Kate returned rather shortly. “But where have you been, and what have you been doing? And why couldn't you tell me on the telephone?”

  “As a matter of fact, I nearly did—tell you, I mean. But I thought it would be such a surprise to you that it would be better if I waited until I got home. I’ve been having dinner with Commander Merlin,” she added.

  “Oh!” Aunt Kate exclaimed. “And why should I have been so completely astonished at that?”

  “I don't know,” Eve admitted, taking her usual chair and staring ahead of her with a somewhat bemused expression on her face. “Except that I don’t make a habit of meeting him, and you might have thought it a little strange.”

  “After living in this world for over fifty-five years I find nothing, or practically nothing, really strange,’ Aunt Kate told her, drawing the little table which supported the coffee- tray closer to her chair, and pouring her niece out a cup. “And so long as you enjoyed yourself, I don’t mind in the least. But where did you have dinner, and was it a particularly nice one? And what were you doing with yourself all the hours before you had dinner? You took Dr. Craig and Mr. Pope in to catch the ten o’clock train this morning!”

  Eve gave her an account of her day, including tea at the Stark Point Hotel, and the unexpected drive afterwards through some entirely new Cornish scenery, and the well- served and admirably cooked dinner at a little fishing inn much farther along the coast. It had been an inn even nicer than The Smuggler—although, no doubt, Tom Geake would disagree with her—and had recently figured in a new British film dealing with the old days of wrecking, when the Cornish coast was a wild place indeed, and a lawless and a frightening place as well, if the details of the film were in every way correct. Eve made up her mind that as soon as the film was released she would be one of the first to go and see it, if it were at all possible, if only for the reason that it would enable her to live over again the unexpected pleasure of this wholly delightful evening.

  “Well, at least I can tell that you did enjoy yourself,” Aunt Kate said. “You have that look about you. And when are you going to see Commander Merlin again ? Is this sort of thing likely to be repeated ?”

  Eve's expression went suddenly almost blank, as if the candles that had been lighting her eyes had been abruptly extinguished, and she felt as if she had been rather ruthlessly dropped from an exalted position high amongst the clouds, and come down to earth with an unpleasant thud.

  “As a matter of fact, Commander Merlin is leaving this country on Friday. He's not sure how long he’ll be away.”

  “I see,” Aunt Kate remarked, and Eve was quite sure she did not see at all.

  Eve stared at her coffee-cup and tried not to remember that last moment at the gate, only a few minutes ago, when Roger Merlin had climbed back into his car, and she had watched him drive away into the night. Her heart had been singing, ridiculously of course, because the evening behind her had been something she had never expected to enjoy with him, and his parting close clasp of her hand had left her fingers tingling. Tingling so much that she had rubbed them gently, as she stood there at the gate.

  And, in the starshine, her cheeks had been flushed — they had cooled down a little by the time she entered the house — and her eyes had glowed because never once, during the evening, had the man who had so often antagonized her done anything that did not altogether meet with her approval. Indeed, for once they had behaved like completely normal human beings who knew that they liked one another (the fact that, where she was concerned, the word “like” was a poor one to describe the kind of feeling she had long been nursing in her breast for the owner of Treloan’s successful rival, the Stark Point Hotel, had nothing whatever to do with it) and he had put himself out to be as entertaining and charming to her as possible. Even more charming than while they were having tea, for by that time she, too, had thawed so much that it took little to make her realize that there was no longer any undercurrent of ill- feeling between them, and their thoughts, outlook, ambitions, and secret dreams were not so very dissimilar. Their mutual enthusiasm for the old and the venerable, for instance, once discussed, had been more than enough to draw them together, and she could quite understand his passion for the mellowed loveliness of Treloan and the many pieces of choice and antique furniture it contained. If she had understood him better during the early days of their meeting, or if he, perhaps, had expressed himself with a little more regard for her feelings, she might even have yielded the place up to him, and then there would never have been any antagonism between them at all — or would there?

  She wondered as she looked at him in the light of the swinging oil lamp in the tiny inn dining-room, where they had had dinner alone together. His eyes were so blue they were exactly the color of the sea when the wind ruffled it and clouds went flying overhead across a summer sky — and although she knew that they could sometimes appear as hard as blue glass, tonight she had discovered that they could smile quite gently when they wanted to do so, and on one occasion she had surprised a hint of something like tenderness in them when she had confessed to losing a certain amount of weight since taking up the task of running an hotel, and he had noticed that the flowerlike perfection of her hands was marred a little by signs of recent domestic toil.

  “It’s one thing to live in an hotel,” he told her. “But it’s another thing to try to keep its wheels running smoothly.” “Especially when you’re handicapped by lack of funds,” Eve agreed.

  “With or without funds, I’m not sure it’s the right job in life for you.”

  In her heart she was not sure, either. She was not really cut out to be a successful business woman, or so he was secretly afraid sometimes. There were other things she hankered after — and they were more simple things; but she had a feeling that they would be far more satisfying. A home — and a husband — and

  children! . . .

  But to a genuine career-woman those would not be important.

  “I haven't made up my mind what my right job in life is yet.” she confessed.

  “Haven’t you?” He stared at her rather hard. “Well, I wouldn’t trouble my head about it for the moment if I were you.” he advised her. “Just go on as you are.”

  Her heart sank a little.

  If she just went on as she was, one of these days he would have married Annette, or someone very like Annette, and then how would she bear living
in the same corner of the world, on the same stretch of coast, with him and his wife, and seeing him perhaps often?

  But long before the evening had a chance to be spoiled she resisted the temptation to look ahead into the future, and by the time she suddenly realized that it was growing late, and Aunt Kate would be wondering more and more what was the reason why she had not returned to Treloan earlier, she had so thoroughly enjoyed it that her enjoyment was plainly given away by her face.

  “Thank you,” she said when they said good night, “it's been a lovely evening!”

  “We’ve both played truant,” he answered. “But I think, on the whole, it was worth it!”

  But now Aunt Kate had suddenly picked the bubble — brought her down to earth with her commonplace question as to when she intended to see Commander Merlin again. For Commander Merlin had not even mentioned seeing her again. Although he was travelling up to London the following day, and flying to Zurich on the day following that, he had taken no impressive farewell of her, and given her no indication of the date when he intended to be back in England. Looked at now, in the living-room of the cottage, with the warm glow of simple contentment fading from her rapidly, and the evening already nothing more than a memory she would have to hug to her bosom often if she was to get any sort of satisfaction out of the days ahead, the obvious fact that the man who had entertained her, and charmed away the last remnants of her mistrust of him, had no particular desire to see her again, stared her in the face. And it was a fact there seemed to be no gainsaying, otherwise— well, otherwise he would have told her, at least, when she might

  look to see him again. Even if it was months ahead.

  Aunt Kate seemed to be fussing unnecessarily over collecting the coffee-cups, and when she had carried them and the tray into the little kitchen, she came back and stood looking down at Eve. with rather a peculiar expression on her face.

  “Are you very tired to-night?” she asked. “Or do you feel like a little talk?”