by Susan Barrie
Mrs. Bennett shook her head quite firmly.
“Oh, no,” she said. “They’re comfortable, of course, but nothing like this.”
“Then I suppose I ought to feel honoured,” Carole murmured, surveying the dainty breakfast-tray. She had forgotten the resolution she made before she closed her eyes the night before—it could have been the result of extraordinarily tranquil sleep, she realised afterwards—and she had no thought in her head this morning of seeing James as soon as he returned from his morning ride and explaining that she had to leave for Paris again almost immediately. Instead she remembered the luxurious bathroom that adjoined her bedroom and slid one foot out of bed.
“I think I’ll have a bath before I have my breakfast,” she said. “Or no ... I’ll have a cup of coffee—it smells heavenly!—and then I’ll have my bath.”
“Very well, miss,” the housekeeper answered imperturbably. “I’ll turn on the taps for you before I go downstairs.”
Carole was glad to hear the door close behind her, because she wanted to explore her room once more, and she wanted to go over to one of the wide windows and catch her first glimpse in bright morning sunlight of the grounds of Ferne Abbey. It had been far too dark the night before for her to see anything at all of them, and apart from an impression of being received and enclosed by trees she had received no other more informative impression.
She crossed the floor with bare, eager feet, feeling them sink into the white carpet as if it was a carpet of white moss. Mrs. Bennett had thrown up the window, and a gentle morning breeze was stirring the curtains. She leaned out to inhale the freshness of the morning, and below her was a wide terrace decorated by stone lions and some enormous stone vases that were filled with colourful growth. Beyond the terrace there were lawns, and the lawns melted in the distance into woodland ... a thick barrier of woods that seemed to shut out the outside world. It was impossible, from that particular angle of the house, to get any clear idea of what lay beyond the trees; but Carole remembered Marty had often talked of walking and picnicking on the moors, and she supposed that there were open stretches of moorland lying near to Ferne.
The drive was a ribbon that wound round the side of the centuries-old Abbey, away from the formal gardens, so she was not prepared for the moment when James and his sister came trotting blithely round a grey stone buttress, and passed below her window. Marty, in jodhpurs and a silk shirt open at the neck, looked up at her and waved. James, who was in the lead, had not apparently noticed her, and went on to the stables.
Carole finished her breakfast, and then dressed slowly. She was not in any hurry to come face to face with James and Marty again, but she did wish to continue her explorations. The Abbey was old and genuine, even allowing for a lot that had been done to it in the early nineteenth century, when its grounds had been extended so that it was far removed from the nearest village, and the old refectory of the monks had been turned into a magnificent banqueting-hall. The banqueting-hall was on the south side, and the dining-room in which James and Marty consumed a late breakfast was in the north-eastern corner, so it was a comparatively simple matter for Carole to avoid them and slip into the banqueting-hall without being seen by anyone once she was ready for her tour of inspection.
History had been her subject at school, and historical association was very important to her. As she stood beneath the splendid roof of the banqueting-hall she felt her breath catch in admiration. So much had been done to it, and yet so much had been left unspoiled. It was almost as easy to imagine monks filing in and taking their places at the long refectory table as it was to form a mental picture of the dinner parties that were sometimes given there.
One end of the hall was lighted by an enormous stained-glass window, and as she stood there in her pink linen dress—one of her own for once, because she was growing tired of wearing Marty’s—a flood of strong July sunshine poured through it and bathed her in a fantastic riot of colour. And not only her but the impressive furniture, the velvet hangings and crimson leather chair backs, the cold fire of silver on a far-away side table.
She went out into the sunshine, and crossed the terrace to begin an inspection of the grounds.
She was delighted by the rose-garden, charmed by the lake, lost her way in the carefully cultivated wilderness that was dotted with little eighteenth-century temples and arbours that at this season of the year were smothered with roses and clematis and honeysuckle, and then found that she was trespassing in a carefully tended kitchen garden that was contained within high walls and seemed to cover an area almost as vast as the lake. A gardener put her on the right track for the house again, and this time she managed to take in the stables—where Marty’s little thoroughbred chestnut mare and James’s tall roan were being rubbed down after their morning exercise—before she came upon an extension to the house that she discovered to be the chapel; and not merely a disused family chapel but the original chapel of the monks.
It was well preserved, and there was some proof that it had been used in recent times by the modern embroidery of the altar-cloth, and the excellent condition of the brass candlesticks and lectern. Somebody came here faithfully and cleaned the brasses, and they also kept the place swept and dusted, and the narrow, lancet-like windows clean.
As in the banqueting-hall, the sunlight managed to find its way through these far narrower windows, and the dimness of the chapel was lightened by the pale beams of gold that streamed across it and the mouldering pews, with hundreds and thousands of motes dancing in it and creating an illusion of continuous movement in that silent, tucked-away place.
Carole, after admiring the beauties of the altar-cloth, and the somewhat primitive stone font that stood just inside the entrance and very obviously had not been used for years, moved to read one or two of the memorial tablets that were let into the walls. Pentallons had been dying here for centuries, and more than one of them seemed to have given his life in either the Napoleonic wars, or the Crimean war, or one or other of the Great Wars. There was a James Pentallon who must have been the present James’s grandfather who had perished in India, and another who had died more recently, and was obviously his father. And there was also a small plaque to his mother, Jennifer Rosemary Pentallon.
Carole stood silently in front of the plaque and thought that it, too, had received regular attention from the brass-cleaner. She said the name over to herself without moving her lips, Jennifer Rosemary Pentallon.
It was a charming name, and if she had looked anything like Marty she must have been charming altogether. Perhaps it was she who had had those vividly blue eyes that had been passed on to James and Marty, and perhaps it was she who had had their arrogance and their profound self-assurance that was not as displeasing as it could have been because of a softer side to their natures.
The golden beam of sunlight poured over Carole as she stood there in her ordinary pale pink cotton dress that she had made herself two summers ago, but which still fitted her slight shape as if it had grown attached to it. The gold in her hair turned to mauve as the beam penetrated a section of one of the most colourful corners of the stained-glass window behind her, and the pink dress was transmuted to amber. Her legs and feet were green, as if she was standing knee-deep in lush meadows.
She was thinking: ‘I wonder why James’s father decided to marry again after his wife died, and what did that other woman he nearly married, and for whom he fitted out the White Suite, have that blinded him to the memory of Jennifer Rosemary only a few years after her death?’ And she was dwelling rather sadly on the frailty and vulnerability of human beings when a slight noise behind her caused her to wheel round as if she had been caught off guard and was thoroughly startled.
It was not perhaps surprising, for apart from that single path of radiance the chapel was dim and a trifle eerie. Carole’s greenish-grey eyes looked enormous as she looked down the sword of light at the man. who stood there just inside the doorway, watching her. At first the light was too bright for her to recognise him, and then
he stepped forward and spoke reassuringly.
“It’s me ... not one of the Abbey ghosts! You needn’t look as if you’ve actually seen a ghost, Carole. I’m flesh and blood!”
He moved nearer to her, and she put down the hand that she had raised to shield her eyes and let out a tiny sigh of relief. “For one moment you did startle me,” she admitted.
“I know. I’ve never seen you look so big-eyed and alarmed before.”
He stood in front of her, near the plaqueon the wall to the memory of his mother, and as she moved as if to rid herself of the limelight he called out and spoke reassuringly.
“No, don’t move, Carole! You’re all the colours of the rainbow, but you look enchanting, somehow. Like a guardian angel with glorious mauve hair and a wonderful golden mask of a face! It’s a pity your feet are green!”
She stepped aside hastily, and he laughed.
“That was unfair of you,” he said, and there was a genuine tinge of regret in his voice ... although there was also amusement. “It isn’t often I have the opportunity of admiring a half dryad, half angel, knee-deep in green pastures, who looks at me with eyes as clear as light ... down the length of a rainbow.”
His voice held an odd quality. He regarded her thoughtfully ... thoughtfully and with a kind of absorption. She turned her back on him because she thought he was mocking her, but he put out both hands and turned her round to face him again, and he looked long and earnestly into her eyes.
“They really are as clear as light, Carole,” he told her, at last—and as if he was quite sure she would be interested herself. “And it may be because you’ve got those fascinating, gold-tipped eyelashes that they remind me of pools surrounded by reeds that keep peeping at their reflections in the water. Every time you flutter your eyelashes the effect is quite shattering ... You’ll really have to believe me!”
“Thanks, Mr. Pentallon,” she returned, “but I’m not used to flattery.”
“Mr. Pentallon?” he echoed. “Tut, tut! But why is this? Have you got tired of the name James after reading all those memorials on the walls?” He picked up her hand and examined it. “And you’re not wearing my ring! Didn’t we agree that you would continue to wear it?”
“No!” She snatched away her hand and hid it behind her back. “And that’s one of the things I want to talk to you about, Mr.—James. I know you’ve brought me here for a holiday, but I don’t think I want to stay!”
“Oh!” They were walking side by side down the narrow aisle, but just before they reached the stout oak door he paused abruptly. “You don’t like it here? You’ve decided that you don’t like Ferne Abbey?”
“Of course not. I think it’s a wonderful place, and if it belonged to me I don’t think I could ever go away and leave it ... In fact, I know I wouldn’t.”
He sighed with relief.
“Well, that’s something. For a moment I was afraid that the dimness of this derelict chapel had depressed you unbearably.” He held open the door for her to precede him out into the sunshine, but she looked backwards over her shoulder into the dimness he had commented on, and she denied the allegation almost fiercely.
“It’s a beautiful old chapel, and it isn’t in the least derelict. Somebody worked that altar-cloth only recently—”
“An old aunt of mine. You’ll meet her one day.”
She shook her head.
“I don’t think that’s very likely. And somebody cleans the brasses—”
“My orders. We’re not pagans, you know, and my mother and father were married in this chapel. They were peculiarly devoted to one another ... I say ‘peculiarly’ because, after her death, instead of reconciling himself to doing without her, he planned to marry someone else. But he died before he could do so.”
“Do you think he would have been happy if he’d married the other woman?” Carole asked, as they walked side by side along the path away from the chapel.
James shrugged.
“I would have said it was impossible, but one never knows. I’m not married myself—” he grinned a little one-sidedly—“but it’s possible the state induces a kind of disinclination to live alone again, and in any case we all react differently to different sets of circumstances, don’t we? My father mourned my mother’s passing so genuinely that everyone thought he was in danger of blowing his brains out, or something of the sort. But within a short time he was fitting out the White Suite, which you occupied last night, for a very unsuitable lady—looked at from the family viewpoint—whom he would have put in my mother’s place but for the fact that he never got the opportunity.”
Carole stared thoughtfully at the gravel of the pathway.
“Perhaps it was sheer loneliness that drove him to it,” she observed. She could have added that she had often been lonely herself ... It did strange things to human beings.
“Perhaps,” he agreed. He glanced sideways at her, a little quizzically. “However, I was not to have a stepmother, and you were to occupy the White Suite last night. I wonder how you liked sleeping there? Did you sleep well?”
“Very well.”
Despite herself, and for no reason at all, she blushed a little.
James took her by the arm and led her away across the lawn in the direction of the ornamental lake.
“There’s something I want to say to you, Carole,” he told her, rather more abruptly. “I want to put an end to all this nonsense about you wearing my ring—or not wearing my ring, according to the mood you happen to be in at the moment!—and the deception we’re putting over on the servants and other people. I don’t mind confessing that I’m more concerned about deceiving the servants than I am a great many of my so-called friends. I’ve known the servants all my life, but a good many of my friends will have forgotten all about me by this time next year, so I don’t bother about them.”
“I feel sure that the majority of your friends will not forget you so easily,” Carole responded—feeling reasonably certain that rich people (and particularly a rich bachelor!) would find it next-door to impossible to shake off large numbers of his acquaintances even if he wished—and wondering, with a slight sensation of shock, what was coming next.
James glanced at her with a cynical expression altering the shape of his mouth, and continued.
“Thank you for the love you imagine is felt for me in circles where it doesn’t exist, Carole, my innocent. But I do assure you I don’t depend on other people’s devotion. I don’t even look for their approval... And that’s one advantage of having a lot of money, I’ll grant you that! But to get on with what I wished to make clear to you. I want to put an end to this mock engagement of ours, and turn it into something more permanent. I want you to marry me, Carole ... I mean, I really want you to marry me.”
“What!” Carole stood absolutely still in the middle of the emerald green sweep of lawn and stared at him. Once again he smiled in that one-sided fashion of his. “Doesn’t the idea appeal to you?” he asked. “Or does it, perhaps, actively repel you?”
“Of course not.” But she simply could not believe her ears. That he should ask her to marry him when he was in love with another woman—and she strongly suspected that he was very much in love with Chantal St. Clair, although for some reason he didn’t wish to make her Mrs. James Pentallon—was quite beyond her understanding. It was unbelievable—fantastic. “But you know very well you’re just talking nonsense.”
“I’m not.”
“Then it’s your idea of a joke.”
“It most certainly is not!”
She turned her enormous, greenish-grey eyes up to his face—in the broad morning sunlight they were actually more grey than green, but they were as clear as they had struck him in the chapel.
“Then why should you wish to marry me? You don’t even like me particularly, except as Marty’s friend!”
Somewhat whimsically he replied, but with a question.
“How much do you like me?”
Carole was not prepared for this, and she flu
shed wildly. She flushed as she had never flushed in the whole of her life before, burningly, painfully, the colour spreading like a wave over the whole of her face and neck. If she had been completely indifferent to him—as she was when this extraordinary acquaintance of theirs began—she could have answered him at once, and without embarrassment. But now she was so vulnerable, and he had put the one question to her he had no right to put, that her mouth dried up with a mixture of embarrassment and resentment because this was unfairness carried to extremes, and she could find no words at all with which to answer him.
“Well?”
He did not omit to notice the flush—as a matter of fact, it could not possibly have escaped his attention—and the expression of his eyes altered. It became extremely interested, while at the same time the little smile of amusement remained clinging to his lips.
“You don’t want to tell me? You prefer to keep it a secret? But I can tell you that I think you have some extremely fascinating qualities. For one thing, a girl in your position might be excused if she showed a disposition to jump at the idea of marriage with a rich man. But you, apparently, are not willing to jump! ... And you could have taken base advantage of Marty and myself when we roped you in on this engagement deception. You could have insisted on some solid recompense, such as a really substantial cheque. Chantal, for instance, would have done that very thing, probably insisting on an agreement being drawn up,” with great dryness, “and a deposit paid into her bank before she even consented to be seen about with me.”
Carole forgot her temporary embarrassment in a surge of fresh indignation because he linked her with a woman he plainly held in low repute—despite the fact that he was in love with her! And from whom he had sought protection in a somewhat weak manner, when a man with real strength of will and the capacity to withstand blandishments and the more vulnerable side of his own nature would have needed no such protection.
At the same time, she had to admit that he had run a sort of risk. It was true she was Marty’s schoolgirl friend, but she could have had ideas similar to those of Madame St. Clair, and trapped him into a more permanent type of engagement once his ring was on her finger and she had been officially presented to his friends as his fiancée. She looked down at the finger that had on several occasions been weighted down with his ring and she wondered whether he had ever been aware of the danger—one in exchange for another!—and how he would have reacted if he had suddenly made the discovery that he had to cope with her as well as Chantal.