Hotel Stardust

by Susan Barrie

  In the morning, although the weather was bright and fine again, without even a suspicion of mist, Eve wakened with the feeling that everything was not as it should be. She had dreamed strange, wild dreams which alarmed her even in her sleep, and the remembrance of them pursuing her into her early waking moments coincided with the opening of her door and the appearance of Chris with a tray of early morning tea.

  Eve sat up in bed and looked at her. Chris was smiling, or trying to smile, but somehow it was not natural. And in any case it was not Chris’s normal function to bring her early morning tea..

  “You look as if you've been up ages,” Eve said, regarding her friend. “And yet it isn’t seven o’clock yet. Couldn’t you sleep?”

  “I didn’t sleep very well,” Chris admitted, and poured her out a

  cup of tea and handed it to her. “Drink this,” she said.

  Eve obeyed her, but when she was half-way through the cup sudden suspicion assailed her.

  “There’s something wrong, isn’t there?” she asked. “Isn't there?”

  Her heart misgave her. “It’s not — not Aunt Rate?”

  “No, no. There’s nothing wrong with Miss Barton —or Mrs. Craig, I should say. There isn’t even a letter from her this morning, but then, of course, there hasn’t been time.” “Then what is it?” Eve insisted. “There is something?” “Yes; I’m afraid there is.” Chris sat down on the side of her bed. “There was a nasty accident last night. Mr. Pope was involved in it. He — his car came into collision with another car.”

  “Oh!” Eve exclaimed, and automatically clasped both hands above her heart. “But he’s all right?” she asked. “He

  — he wasn’t seriously hurt?”

  “No, he wasn’t seriously hurt,” Chris admitted. “Though I must say I can’t think how he managed to be so lucky. It was an appalling smash, and in that horrible fog last night. And so near to the edge of the cliff!” She shuddered, while Eve slid out of bed and began scrambling into her dressing-gown.

  “But somebody else was hurt — badly! That’s what you’re trying to tell me, isn’t it?” Eve asked. “And there’s no point in trying to spare my feelings, Chris. I’ve got to know. Was it one of our guests?”

  Chris hesitated. More than once she had suspected that Eve was in some curious way attracted to Commander Merlin. They were such striking opposites, the one so dark and the other so brilliantly fair. And although Eve had often professed dislike for the Commander, more recently it was a dislike which seemed to have evaporated. And last night, while he was drinking coffee in her room, Mr. Pope had told her what he had long suspected and had had confirmed only yesterday. Eve was more than attracted to the owner of the rival establishment along the coast. She was nursing something in her breast which, because she had red hair, and never felt or did anything by halves, was going to grow stronger even without any encouragement whatsoever, and would make of her life a daily torment if it was to remain the unsatisfied and unattainable hope which was all that it looked to be at present. And therefore Chris hesitated. She looked at Eve’s pale, blanched mask of a face and her wide betraying eyes, and for a moment she could not speak. She could only think: “Poor old Eve! Oh, why did it have to be like this? Why?”

  Then, at last, she said:

  “No; it isn’t one of our guests, Eve.”

  “Then, who ... ?” Eve hugged the dressing-gown round her, and felt herself go quite cold inside. “Who ... ” she asked again.

  She thought of all the people she knew in Treloan, and they were not very many; it was only a tiny place. She suddenly remembered Mrs. Neville Wilmott meeting them blithely on the steps of the terrace the previous evening and announcing that she was dining with Commander Merlin. Commander Merlin was home!

  She caught hold of the bed-post because she felt that she needed support.

  “I'm afraid it was Commander Merlin” Chris said gently. “He was on his way here for some reason which we don’t know yet, and — and his car had a head-on

  crash with Mr. Pope’s! He’s unconscious, of course-----------”

  “Then he’s not dead!” Eve’s utterly bloodless lips seemed to mouth the words.

  “No, of course he’s not dead!” But Chris could give her no greater consolation than that. “The full extent of his injuries we don’t know yet, but it was a ghastly smash!” She caught Eve by the arm, partly to steady her and partly because she wished to impart some of her own quiet strength and composure, and to stop Eve looking like death itself. “Listen, my dear, we’re short-handed here, and although there’s a nurse on her way from Falmouth she hasn’t arrived yet, and I’ve had to leave one of the maids sitting with him. He doesn’t know anyone, of course, but he must be watched, constantly! Dr. Gresham left explicit instructions. Will you take over now while I see about the breakfasts, or would you prefer to have some breakfast yourself first?”

  “I couldn’t eat any breakfast,” Eve answered, her whole being revolted by the thought of food, and she reached for her clothes and began to drag them on mechanically.

  “I didn’t really think you’d want any,” Chris told her composedly. “But, all the same, you’d better have some coffee. I’ll send some along to you.”

  “Where is he?” Eve asked, Wishing she could stop this dreadful shaking which interfered with her hurried attempt to don her clothes, and at the same time aware that she was speaking like an automaton. “Which room did you put him in?”

  “Miss Barton’s old room,” Chris answered. “It’s one of the pleasantest and the largest, and the bed was already made up.”

  “Yes, yes!” Eve said, cutting her short. She dragged a comb through her hair, but ignored her make-up aids. “Then I’d better not waste any time. The maid might not know what to do if he should suddenly regain consciousness.”

  But as she walked along the endless miles of corridors, as they seemed to her this morning, on her way to Miss

  Barton’s old room, with Chris watching her from the end of one of the corridors, she wondered how she was ever going to summon up the strength to enter that quiet room where he was lying, and where perhaps he would look so utterly different.

  She couldn't visualize Roger Merlin, whom she had last seen tall, virile, smiling, full of a kind of purposeful strength, standing at the gate of the cottage after he had brought her home following the one really enchanting evening they had spent together, lying without even a movement, or probabably any sign to show that he was still breathing, in one of the great four-poster beds of Treloan in the house which he had once longed to possess himself. She couldn’t — she couldn’t!

  But when she opened the door of the room it all seemed so still and calm and ordinary that for a single instant her fears evaporated. The sunlight was shining down on the balcony outside the window — the wide, pleasant balcony, overlooking the sea, with its adjustable, comfortable chairs, and its little table to support a tray of refreshments. The sea itself was wind-ruffled, but as blue as aquamarine, and the strong light from it was reflected on the ceiling, with its graceful garlands, and its bunches of fruit and flowers after the favorite pattern of the Adam brothers. And the bed, with its highly polished, graceful columns supporting the curtains of rather faded brocade, of a dull rose color, the bed caught her eye immediately and it’s immaculate, lavender-scented linen sheets and the pillow-cases encasing the fine, fat pillows looked almost startlingly white.

  The girl from the village who was keeping watch there rose up with a frightened look on her face, which was followed by a quick look of relief when she realized that Eve had come to take her place. She put her finger to her lips.

  “He hasn’t stirred,” she whispered when Eve stood beside her. She obviously had the fear that the slightest noise would precipitate a crisis. “It’s downright uncanny watching him lie there, never making even the slightest movement.”

  Eve waved her away without uttering a word. She heard the click of the door as the girl crept thankfully away, and then she hers
elf approached the bed and stood looking down on the dark head swathed in bandages, and felt a rush of wholehearted thankfulness because otherwise he looked so little different. He was not even as pale as she had imagined he would look, but that was probably his tan —reinforced by several weeks spent recently in Switzerland. And the scar, of course, was still there, running from one corner of his mouth upwards to a corner of his dark eyebrow. Eve felt she would like to put out a fiinger and trace the line of it, very, very gently.

  One of his hands lay outside on the sheet. That, too, was brown, and it was well formed, with sensitive finger-tips and square, well-kept nails. His wrist-watch, apparently unaffected by the crash, still encircled his wrist, and ticked away softly in the silent room.

  Eve knelt down beside the bed. There was no one to see her, and she laid her cheek for a moment against the limp hand, hearing the thunder of her own heart as she did so.

  Several moments later she looked up. He had not moved, but there was a kind of quivering movement of one of his eyelids, and while she literally held her breath his long eyelids lifted — they had always struck her as almost feminine eyelashes, the only feminine thing about him — and she caught the gleam of his blue eyes watching her.

  “Hello,” he said, in quite an ordinary tone of voice, that was not even particularly weak. “Hello. . . The blue eyes smiled. “I've been away up in the clouds dreaming about that bright hair of yours. There's such a lot of it, and I like the way it curls. It's wonderful hair, Eve!”

  His voice died away, and his eyelids drooped again over his eyes. He gave a kind of sigh, and then seemed to be sleeping. Eve could tell that he was sleeping, because his chest was rising and falling rhythmically. She experienced an almost agonized sensation of relief. He was sleeping and he had called her Eve!

  C H A P T E R T W E N T Y - T H R E E

  BUT for the next week she had small cause for rejoicing, because his life still hung by quite a slender thread, and he required almost constant watching. The nurse arrived — immaculate and efficient — and took her place beside him in the day-time, and at night she was relieved by another nurse, just as efficient, who carried out the same duty through the long night watches.

  But there were moments when Eve was allowed to stand for a few moments beside the bed, and even to sit there while the nurse enjoyed a cup of tea or went away for her lunch. On these occasions Eve kept a book in her lap, but her eyes remained glued to the now very familiar face on the pillow. Sometimes she thought that he knew she was there, and that when his eyes opened and stared at her wilth that bright, hard stare which was so very different to the completely rational, and extraordinarily gentle, look he had given her when he first recovered consciousness, he was studying her and assessing points about her which had escaped him before. But that was only her own impression. The nurse would have said he was not even aware she was in the room.

  One thing she had found out from Mrs. Neville Wilmott. On the night of the accident the widow had dined with him at the Stark Point, as the result of an invitation he had issued to her. And it might have been that the shock of such a catastrophe as that which had overtaken her host of that evening had in some way sobered, and no doubt alarmed, Mrs. Wilmott. In any case, she suddenly became extraordinarily truthful, and to Eve she confessed that she had been a little surprised when Roger had asked her to dine with him so soon after his return from Switzerland, because, for one thing, he was not the type who was free with such invitations to feminine friends, however charming he knew how to be to them on occasion. He was the kind of man who preferred lady friends to be treated to a form of politeness which included provoking them a little with his smiles, and his humor, and his sometimes quite old-fashioned courtesy, but permitted them no glimpses at all of his inner life, gave them no opportunity to overstep the bounds of ordinary common friendliness.

  To quote Mrs. Neville Wilmott, she had made up her mind long ago, even when they were together in Hong- Kong, that he was cut out for a bachelor, and had since become quite case-hardened.

  But on the night of his return from Switzerland he had wanted to know what had been going on in Treloan during his absence, and when she had referred to the wedding, meaning Miss Barton’s and Dr. Craig’s wedding, she had received the impression that for some reason he had received a shock, until she made it clear to him that she was referring to Miss Barton, and not Miss Barton’s niece. Then he had relaxed so suddenly that she had observed, to her astonishment, that the hand which was holding his cigarette was actually shaking a little. And then when, because it had afforded her some secret satisfaction, she had told him that so far as Eve and Martin Pope were concerned she was sure that the mistress of Treloan had handed Martin his conge in the garden that very afternoon, and that he had looked very downcast as a result, she had been much more surprised at the effect of her words. For whereas she had merely been meaning to entertain him, from that moment he had appeared like a man who had heard all at once some extra-ordinarily good news which he had never expected to hear, and as soon as he decently could had shaken her off with as much politeness as he could muster and announced that he had some pressing business outside the hotel that evening, and rushed off and got out his car.

  Even then the fog was creeping out to the Stark Point, and he had advised Martin Pope that it was a risky thing to take out a car in such weather. But Roger had taken out his own, and Mrs. Neville Wilmott was probably the only person who had watched him go forth into that chancy and perilous white mist. And when she heard of the accident it weighed upon her because she had done nothing to stop him.

  And yet what could she have done to stop him? She, who had no influence with him whatsoever!

  But sitting in the silent bedroom beside the high four- poster bed on which the man who meant more than her life to her was fighting for the chance to continue his own life, Eve hugged the thought to her bosom that he had been on his way to see her when he had run into Martin Pope. Her own denials where Martin was concerned—perhaps not as convincing as they might have been because she had always had the fear that he was mocking her — had carried little weight. But when Mrs. Neville Wilmott, after meeting them both when she was setting out for her evening at the Stark Point, had presented him with her opinion — then he had reacted immediately! He had rushed and got out his car and, fog or no fog, had set out for Treloan. Only to have his purpose interfered with once more by Martin, who had come within an ace of losing his own life, and went about since the accident as if oppressed by a burden, because, but for him . . . !

  But for him and his attempts to put things right for Eve things might have been right for her. And now! . . .

  “When all this is over, and I know the way things are going with — him,” he said to her once, heavily, when they met in the garden, “I think I'll remove myself from this corner of the world, and perhaps I'll remove a blight from your life. I haven't done very much for you, have I? And yet I wanted to do so much!”

  “You've been wonderful!” she assured him, her voice shaking a little because she liked him so much, and seeing him so depressed and abject hurt her keenly. “It wasn't your fault that the accident took place. You might have been badly hurt yourself.”

  “But that wouldn't have mattered so much: he’d escaped,” he said, without the faintest note of bitterness or self-pity in his voice. “For, after all, I've had my life, and he's only still quite young. And you're young, too!” “Sometimes,” Eve admitted, “sometimes, lately, I don’t feel so young!”

  But when she received a note from Aunt Kate informing her that she and Dr. Craig were cutting short their honeymoon and coming home to be with her, she felt a little better. With Aunt Kate beside her she would lose something, at least, of this frightened feeling of utter desolation and dread of what might lie ahead. Aunt Kate was such a bulwark to lean against, and she would give her courage.

  But courage came to her before Aunt Kate returned from Italy; courage and a slow, bewildered feeling of having a life
-line thrown to her when she was in imminent danger of drowning and coming up for the third time. And although she was too shaken by her experiences to realize fully that the worst of them were over, it was something to have the keenest part of the anxiety behind her, at least. For Roger began slowly to improve. He ceased fighting for his life, and took a more tenacious hold on the life he had already won. He began to realize he was inside Treloan.

  One afternoon when Eve was sitting beside him, a book lying neglected in her lap while she stared for a moment out of the window, she was startled by the sound of his voice addressing her from the pillows:

  “Are you supposed to be reading or are you merely daydreaming?” he asked.

  Eve made such a convulsive movement that the book slid from her lap, and she turned to him with her eyes like haunted and unbelieving pools of infinitely soft grevness.

  “Oh!” she exclaimed. “Oh! You're better?”

  “Well, you might call it that,” he said, with a little wry twist to his lips, “but there have been moments in my life when I have felt better still! Considerably better, shall we say, and rather more in one piece?”

  “Oh, but — you know what I mean.” The color that had simply flown into her cheeks receded from them, leaving her pale and tremulous. She wanted to go down on her knees beside the bed and reach out her arms and gather him into them. She wanted at least to touch him, to be sure he was alive, and actually talking to her, after days and days of sinister silence which had kept her wakeful through so many nights when the dawn light had seemed so far off, and the nurse had sat here beside his bed. And now as he lay and watched her from his nest of pillows and saw something suddenly glittering on the edge of one of her eyelids begin to-spill over and run down her cheeks, the expression in his brilliant blue eyes made her heart turn a somersault. A wild, violent somersault, for there was no misreading that expression.

  “Why, you’re crying!” he said simply, and put out his finger and gently touched the cheek down which the teardrop rolled like a crystal ball.