by Susan Barrie
Several hours later Fraulein Neiger sat dealing with the morning’s post. She had half promised to spend the weekend at the house of an admirer, and his parents were somewhat critical. Not that she encouraged the attentions of that particular admirer with any seriousness. When you lived with the essence of masculine perfection for several hours each day, it was a little difficult to feel interested in any lesser man.
Suddenly Dr. Andreas made his appearance.
“Good morning, Liesel,” he greeted her. “Do you know anything about getting married?”
“Getting—married?” Liesel was so astonished that she was quite unable to conceal the fact.
“Yes.” The doctor took a seat on the edge of her desk and swung a leg carelessly. “Without any delay, I mean. A civil ceremony, of course. The lady in question is English, and that might occasion some delay. Will you find out? Get onto the appropriate people and let me know what you can get out of them.”
“Yes, doctor.”
She wondered whether perhaps she had made a mistake. It might be for a friend that he wished the inquiries made.
“You ... you aren’t thinking of getting married yourself, are you, doctor?” she asked after swallowing hard.
“Yes, Liesel, I am.” His smile at her was gay and challenging. “Does that stagger you? You’ve probably thought of me as crawling toward middle age without any of the softening influences of a feminine presence near me, but I’ve changed my mind about preferring a bachelor existence and very soon I hope I shall have a wife! You’ve already met Mrs. Yorke. You’ll remember I brought her here the other afternoon.”
Liesel could not believe her ears.
“You’re going to marry ... Mrs. Yorke, doctor?”
“Yes, Liesel.”
He turned over some of the letters on the desk. “Anything interesting?”
“Nothing,” Fraulein Neiger replied in a stiff, unnatural voice. “Fraulein Spiro telephoned and said that she would be calling to see you at eleven. She asked me to let you know that she would not take up more than a few minutes, but she does particularly wish to see you.”
“Does she?” He folded a letter he had glanced at and put it back in its envelope. “Well, you’ll have to explain to Fraulein Spiro that I can’t see her, because I shan’t be here at eleven o’clock. I’ve got to go out this morning, Liesel, and you must make as many excuses for me as you can. Say that I’ve had an urgent summons, if you like.”
“But what about Madame Vannier?” Liesel inquired. “She is due at a quarter past eleven, and if you are not here—”
“If I’m not here I can’t possibly see her, Liesel,” Dr. Andreas pointed out to her patiently, “and you can prevent her from coming by simply getting on the telephone to her right away.” Madame Vannier was the wife of a wealthy jeweler, with nothing particularly serious affecting her at the moment. “I must go, Liesel. I shall be back before one o’clock, and I hope you’ll have good news for me.”
At a quarter to eleven Olga Spiro arrived. Liesel had not attempted to put her off, for the excellent reason that she knew Fraulein Spiro had a right to be one of the first people to be informed of the rather shattering piece of news.
But Fraulein Spiro was as taken aback, when she first heard the news, as Liesel had been. Only since she had been trained not to display emotion of any sort if it could possibly be avoided, it was a little difficult to judge what her immediate reaction was.
Olga Spiro might have been somewhere between thirty and thirty-five. She was immensely chic, but she was not a beauty. The thing she lacked was color, and what little she had seemed to leave her once she had heard Liesel’s news.
“Tell me, Liesel,” Olga said after a rather long moment of silence, “have you met this Mrs.—Yorke, is that her name?”
Liesel admitted that she had. “The doctor brought her here for tea one afternoon.”
“And is she—would you say that she is unusually attractive?”
“Well, no,” Liesel answered, rather more slowly. “She is not unattractive—she is dark, and petite, and perhaps also rather pretty. I would say that she is very English,” she ended.
“And young.”
“Yes—quite young.”
“Barbara was dark and petite,” Olga murmured, as if to herself, “but she was much more than pretty. It is extraordinary!” she exclaimed. Then she seemed to recover her poise. “As Dr. Andreas is marrying at last, Fraulein Neiger, it is up to us to give a proper welcome to his wife, and I hope you will let him know how delighted I was to hear the news today.”
“Certainly, Fraulein Spiro,” Liesel answered.
“I’ll go now,” said Olga, “and you needn’t bother to leave your work to let me out.”
Once back in her own flat she told her maid that she did not wish to be disturbed by callers, but she would answer the telephone if it rang. And it did ring, about six o’clock that night.
“Olga,” Lucien said, “I know you’re thinking the worst of me, but all this is very sudden. I got back from Vienna only yesterday—”
“And today,” Olga interrupted him brightly, “I learn that you are engaged to be married to a charming Englishwoman! It was a surprise, Lucien, but all your friends will be made very happy by this news— you have lived alone too long!”
Lucien was silent for several seconds, and then she heard him say in a voice that gave away as little as her own, “There are worse things than living alone, Olga—but there are some things that do seem to be more or less inevitable! Caro and I met in an airliner. I believe you will like her. How soon would you care to meet her?”
“How soon would you care for me to meet her?”
“I think you will be good for her, so the sooner the better. Why not lunch with us both tomorrow?”
“That will be lovely,” she declared smoothly.
“I will call for you about one o’clock.”
CHAPTER SIX
Caro and Lucien had a long weekend in the mountains. He could not spare the time for a proper honeymoon, so the weekend was a compromise. They had been married quite early in the morning, without fuss of any kind, and afterward in the cream car they had slid away from Oberlaken and made for the mountains.
Caro enjoyed every moment of the drive. They stopped for lunch at a little hotel overlooking a wide flower-filled valley, which in the wintertime, Lucien told her, was so filled with snow that she wouldn’t recognize it. Just now it was full of the lazy music of cowbells, the chirping of crickets, and the scent of blossom blown on the wind.
By evening they arrived at their hotel, picturesque with flower-draped balconies and a smiling hostess wearing thick woollen stockings waiting to receive them at the head of a flight of wooden steps. She obviously knew Lucien well. She welcomed Caro with a flood of Swiss German.
It had been a perfect day, almost like high summer, and the sugarloaf peaks were flushed with rose, like pink icing on a birthday cake. Below the snow line the dark woods looked darker by contrast with that display of color, and the whole of the valley dropped away purple with evening mist.
Lucien drew her onto the balcony outside their room. She looked bewitched, and her voice sounded bemused when she said, “It’s wonderful up here!”
“So you like it?” he said.
“Of course.”
He drew her to him, and as she lifted her face to his he looked deep into her eyes.
“Such pretty eyes,” he said, touching them gently with a careful finger, “rather like gray velvet, and with a light in them even more attractive than the light on the snows up there. I’m very pleased to know they belong to me.” And he bent and kissed them, then kissed the tip of her small nose, her smooth cheeks, the tiny warm hollow at the base of her throat, and last of all her lips.
The following afternoon Caro watched him as he lay in the depths of a little pine wood very near their hotel. She could discover no fault in the appearance of her husband as he lay there, relaxed as she had never seen him in Oberlaken.
She herself wore a flowered dirndl skirt, a white blouse and sandals, and she sat digging her hands into the pine needles and only discovered suddenly that they could prick sharply and draw blood. Lucien rolled over onto his elbows and looked at her.
“A casualty?” he inquired. “You ought to have more sense than to play with pine needles. When are you going to start growing up, Caro?”
She smiled at him. “I’m already very much grown up.”
“I don’t believe it. Someone made a mistake on your birth certificate.”
“And is Beverley also nothing more solid than a mistake?” she inquired dryly.
His dark eyes went strangely inscrutable for a moment, and then a quizzical gleam lighted them.
“You know,” he told her, “I’m quite anxious to meet this daughter of yours.”
Her expression grew grave, and just a touch wistful as she gazed back at him.
“Beverley is very lovely—really lovely! I’ve always been terribly proud of her.”
“And you married her off nicely to a young man of reasonable substance and first-class family connections, is that it?”
“David is the only son of a baronet,” she confirmed, “and will one day inherit his father’s title.”
And Beverley will be Lady Something-or-other? Well, that will be very nice,” Lucien agreed. “And I certainly look forward to meeting them both. Has it struck you,” he remarked after a long moment of silence, “that she might present you with your first grandchild at almost the same time that you present her with a sister or brother?”
“Oh, don’t!” Caro exclaimed, and blushed vividly.
He laughed with faintly wicked amusement, and studied her blush appreciatively.
“You are so easy to tease,” he informed her, “and you color so delightfully that it’s not easy to resist the temptation. But all the same, it isn’t a possibility that one can rule out altogether, is it?”
Then, as he saw how embarrassed her eyes were, he took pity on her and lifted her hands and kissed them tenderly, turning them over so that his lips were embedded in the soft palms. Then he drew her into his arms and kissed her hot face, also.
“Tell me,” he said softly, “what were you thinking about just now while I was lying staring up at the sky?”
“I was wondering how soon you are going to regret marrying me in this somewhat impulsive fashion.”
But she softened the words by putting up a hand and running it gently over a crisp wave in his hair.
“That’s a nice thought for a bride of less than forty-eight hours,” he remarked. “How soon are you going to regret marrying me?”
“Never,” she assured him softly.
“Liebling!” he murmured, and held her very close. “Then why should it occur to you that regrets might one day be possible for me?”
She sighed suddenly. “Oh, I don’t know ... Only, you know so little of me. We don’t even speak the same language—at least, you speak mine without any effort at all, but I can’t even manage a word of yours.”
“Then it’s high time you started to learn. I’ll get someone to instruct you.”
“And I might upset your daily life. You’ve been accustomed to living like a bachelor for so long—and I don’t know any of your friends...”
“You know Olga.”
“Oh, yes—Fraulein Spiro!” She was not at all sure how she had been impressed by Fraulein Spiro when she met her for the first time at the luncheon Lucien had arranged two days before they were married. At first Caro had thought her plain, but halfway through the lunch she had decided that she was far from plain, and that her eyes were quite wonderful and her clothes breathtaking.
Olga had reached a hand across the table and touched hers lightly.
“You and I must be friends,” she had declared. “You will feel a little strange here at first, being quite unused to us and our ways, but in time the strangeness will pass, and I hope that you and I will become very good friends.”
“I hope so, too,” Caro had answered, forcing her lips into a warm and responsive smile.
But she was not sure even now whether she liked Olga Spiro, and she wondered whether the day would ever dawn when they would be really close friends.
“Olga is the very person to help you with your language problem,” Lucien declared suddenly with enthusiasm. “I will ask her to get to work on you without delay as soon as we are back.”
“How long have you known Fraulein Spiro?” Caro asked, not echoing his enthusiasm.
“Oh, a long time—for a year or two even before my first marriage.”
“Then she knew your ... your first wife?”
“Yes. Barbara and Olga were quite good friends.”
“Your first wife was English, like me, wasn’t she?”
“Yes. How did you know?”
“I didn’t know—I just had a feeling, somehow.”
He stood up rather abruptly.
“Don’t worry,” he said as he held out a hand to her. “You’ll soon know all my friends and acquaintances, recognize most of my patients by sight if nothing else, and be perfectly familiar with my daily routine. And if sometimes I haven’t as much time to devote to you as I’d like don’t think it’s because I don’t want to! As soon as I can make time we’ll have a lengthier honeymoon than this—we’ll slip away to Paris, or somewhere like that for a week or a fortnight. How would you like that?”
“Very much,” she answered, but as she looked around her she thought, this is really all I want. This is lovely, and at least I have got him to myself up here!
It was as if she felt a shadow falling across her—a shadow that warned her that in the crowded places he could never be so completely hers. But up here in the mountains there was no one with whom she had to share him. No one who was alive...
When they returned to Oberlaken Lucien’s housekeeper, with a welcoming smile on her face, greeted them. Caro was sorry that until she had done something about mastering the language of that part of the world they could have little actual speech, for Frau Bauer spoke no English. But the housekeeper did really welcome her.
The cool gray-and-mauve lounge was full of flowers, exquisitely arranged. As she looked at them Caro realized at once that here was the handiwork of Olga Spiro. Upstairs she had her first moment of embarrassment when Frau Bauer led the way into the large main bedroom that had once been Dr. Andreas’s alone, but in which she would now sleep, also. The housekeeper tried to make her understand that the beds had been rearranged, the single one from his dressing room brought in and set up side by side with the one that was already there, while the dressing room now contained a kind of low divan bed that the doctor could still use if he wished.
As Lucien had gone at once to Fraulein Neiger’s office, Caro and the housekeeper had no one to act as interpreter, but without very much difficulty Caro gathered what was being explained to her. She looked around the large bedroom and decided that it was more luxurious—much more luxurious than anything she had ever known before in her life. The carpet and the walls were a light oatmeal color, and the bed coverlets and the curtains were a very dark rose brocade. On the dressing table was a vase of deep pink roses that Caro recognized as part of Fraulein Spiro’s welcoming touch.
In the adjoining dressing room the same color scheme prevailed, and the same air of luxury. On Lucien’s dressing table his brushes were set forth, and there was also a photograph in a large silver frame. Caro felt her eyes drawn to it at once, and something inside her seemed to become cold and still as she gazed into the pictured eyes. They were the loveliest eyes she had ever seen in her life, very wide open and candid and appealing, and the rest of the face was sheer perfection. It was framed in a lovely cloud of dark hair that curled softly on bare and shapely shoulders. At the bottom of the photograph, scrawled diagonally across a corner in round and rather childish feminine handwriting, were the words, “To Lucien from Ba.”
The housekeeper was looking unmistakably uncomfo
rtable. She repeated the same sentence several times, and at last Caro gathered the gist of it.
“Fraulein Spiro instructed me to leave the photograph where it was.”
“Oh, that’s perfectly all right,” Caro exclaimed, smiling reassuringly at the housekeeper. She realized that Fraulein Spiro might not have liked to take it upon herself to put away the photograph since Lucien himself had not done so. On the other hand—
She was turning to reenter the bedroom when Lucien came in quickly. All in a moment he caught sight of the photograph, saw the obvious embarrassment of the housekeeper, the faint look of constraint on his wife’s face, and strode to the dressing table.
“Oh!” he said. He slipped the photograph quickly into a drawer and then turned an inscrutable and unfamiliar face on Caro. “Everything all right?” he asked.
“Perfectly all right,” she assured him.
Caro walked up to her own dressing table and started to admire the roses in the vase.
“They’re lovely, aren’t they? It was most kind of Fraulein Spiro to put herself to so much trouble, and she seems to have filled the house with flowers. These deep pink roses are favorites of mine.”
Lucien came up behind her.
“I’m sorry about the oversight, Caro. I should have put that photograph away before I left.”
“Oh, that’s quite all right,” she answered, staring out of the window at the chestnut trees. “She was very ... beautiful, wasn’t she?”
“Very,” he agreed.
“You don’t have to put it away if you don’t want to,” she found herself saying with curious stiltedness after a silence of nearly a minute.
He turned around and looked at her.
“Don’t be silly,” he said, and then he walked into his dressing room.