Dorothy Quentin - The Inn by the Lake

by The Inn by the Lake (lit)

  Aunt Bella had secret hopes that it might become a permanent home for her beloved Jonathan, but she was too tactful to press the matter. Meanwhile she and Bessie bottled the fruit from the small orchard and set it in neat, shining rows in the larder.

  "It will give you something to fall back on, when you have an odd week-end here," she told Jonathan when he teased her about it.

  The only bitter taste in Nicki's rediscovered happiness and freedom was that Jonathan never made love to her; he was just as he had been at the albergo: friendly, loving, teasing, but never sentimental. And yet instinctively Nicki knew that he had rushed through the decorations of Vine Cottage to please her. Everything had been done to give her joy, except the one thing she wanted most. She had spoken to Jonathan himself and her grandmother so frankly about the Stannisford money that it never occur-red to her that she was the heiress to a vast estate.

  During the first week of Pietro's holiday she slept at Osterley House, dutifully visiting her grandmother in the mornings and evenings, trying to tell the old lady of their doings down at Cobbler's Bay without hurting her feelings. But each day when Parkinson drove her down to the bus stop she felt like a prisoner released. All the week she looked forward passionately to seeing Jonathan again, though she had to hide her feelings from everyone.

  But their second week-end was ruined for Nicki when Jonathan broke the news that he had to fly to America to attend a very special conference on nerve surgery.

  "But—but your work—the hospital?" Nicki faltered, stammering in the sudden pain of her disappointment. Four week-ends was so little to ask of life, and she was going to lose two of them.

  "The hospital wants me to go," he answered cheerfully, "and I wouldn't miss this for anything. Addison and McDiad are going to be there—this branch is very closely allied to my work, Nicki. I'm sorry to miss the rest of Pietro's holiday, but it can't be helped."

  And me . . . what about me ... ? her sore heart demanded, but there was no answer to the question. She did not know that his cheerfulness disguised relief, because these hours with her at Cobbler's Bay were becoming dangerously precious to Jonathan.

  Perhaps Nigel was right, she thought sadly. Perhaps he was the sort of man who would never love again, would never be able to trust a woman again, or perhaps he was still in love with the woman who had run away from him to marry an American. Perhaps—and her sore heart jolted rebelliously at the thought—he would even see her while he was in the United States. Perhaps that was why he was so cheerful about going.

  CHAPTER NINE

  WHEN JONATHON got back from America Nicole had gone. His aunt and uncle were obviously disturbed about the whole thing, as well as Helen's sudden death.

  "I came as soon as I could, after getting your cable," Jonathan said, lighting his pipe. "Now let's hear exactly what did happen."

  Stephen Grant cleared his throat. Then, remembering that it was only Jonathan, he spoke in his normal voice. "Helen died suddenly last week, as I cabled you. Just didn't wake up from her afternoon nap, the way Dr. Cranford hoped it would happen—"

  "A nice way to die, since we all have to go through the unpleasant business," Aunt Bella contributed dryly. "I hope I go in my sleep, dear."

  "I hope you won't have to think about dying for years yet, Bella," her husband replied brusquely, forgetting that he, Bella and Helen were all of the same generation. It was upsetting enough seeing all one's old friends going, without this further anxiety about Nicole.

  "Was Nicki—frightened?" Jonathan asked quietly.

  "No—no, I don't think so. They sent for Dr. Cranford, of course, at once. Coles and Mrs. Moore are both sensible women, not given to hysterics. Nicole was down at the cottage, and a little later Parkinson went down with the car to fetch her home."

  Home, thought Jonathan, with quick compassion—that dreary Victorian barracks with a lot of antagonistic servants, and an old lady lying dead in it. Poor Nicki! But somehow, after all she had been through as a child in France, he did not think she would have run away from death.

  "Were none of her loving relatives available to break the news to her?" he demanded ironically.

  "No, thank God. Poor old Helen died in peace."

  Bella said gently, "I saw her afterwards. She looked wonderfully young and happy, Jon."

  He nodded. He was familiar with death. He knew how it could erase the marks of an unhappy life from tired features. His pity was all for the living. "Nicole . . .?" he reminded his uncle, who seemed heavy with thought.

  "Nicole behaved very well. Dr. Cranford was very kind to the child, naturally. She stayed for the funeral, and Joyce and her family came to Osterley House, and Bella brought Pietro back here so that they could be close together." Stephen sighed suddenly. "I'm afraid it was the will that sent her away. She just packed up everything, saying she would take Pietro back to Lugano, and would not leave me any forwarding address. She said she would get in touch through the bank, later."

  Jonathan could imagine it all. The dreary sadness up at the big house on the hill, the crocodile tears of Joyce and her family. Nicki running away from it all, if only for a little while, escaping to the people she knew and loved best in the world . . . and he had been away when she most needed a friend here in England.

  "No message for me?" he asked, too casually.

  Stephen shook his head. "She seemed to be running away from something."

  Aunt Bella looked up from her knitting. "She left a parcel for you, Jon. It's up in your study."

  It meant nothing to him then. It was probably some-thing of his she had borrowed from Vine Cottage. Uncle Steve was saying heavily, "I couldn't stop her, of course. She is over twenty-one, and in the unusual circumstances quite her own mistress."

  "She is probably running away from the responsibility of too much money," Jonathan contributed grimly.

  "But she isn't—she doesn't inherit," Stephen argued worriedly, "though I think the will is unjust. I wanted her to contest it; there is a legal prejudice against these family feud wills nowadays, we might have upset it easily."

  Jonathan raised his head. "Tell me about the will," he said, in an odd, stifled voice.

  Steve shrugged. "Helen said she was only carrying out Henry's wishes, and that Nicole herself did not want a fortune. Still, how can a girl of that age decide what she wants?"

  "Nicole is very wise, for any age," Jonathan said almost to himself, and Bella smiled into her knitting. "Tell me the terms of the will, Uncle Steve. They're not confidential any more, surely."

  "Of course not. I read it to them all, after the funeral." He coughed with embarrassment, remembering the occasion, and Jonathan could imagine it. Joyce, with her hard, eager eyes, Paul fiddling with something, Nigel waiting to hear his fate, and Nicki—

  "Nicole didn't want to come, but I insisted." Stephen smiled suddenly. "She said she knew all about the will, her grandmother had shown her the draft." He went on in his quiet, dry voice to tell Jonathan about the terms. One half of Helen's whole estate went to Nigel; several thousand pounds to various servants; the residue to Nicole if she married Nigel. If she did not wish to marry her cousin she inherited five thousand pounds only, the rest went to medical research.

  There was a small silence in the comfortable room. Bella's knitting needles clicked busily until she said, "I still think that was an iniquitous will, Steve. You should have refused to draw it up."

  Her husband sighed. "Helen said she would put it in the hands of another firm if I refused."

  Jonathan got up restlessly, prowling about the room. At last he got out the question, "Is she going to marry Nigel?" And it seemed to him as if the whole universe was waiting for the answer.

  Stephen Grant frowned. "I don't know. I can't understand them at all. Nicole laughed when I asked her, and told me to ask Nigel. Nigel said there had never been any question of marriage between them. Of course, he has plenty without, now—but Nicole would be in a very different position if she married her cousin."

&n
bsp; Aunt Bella made a noise like a small snort. "A beastly and horrible position, Steve. He's not good enough for her."

  Jonathan left the room suddenly and strode along the passage to his study, looking for the parcel Nicki had left for him. It might contain some sort of clue to the abominable puzzle.

  It was there on his desk, a big, flat package. Before he had undone the string Jonathan knew what it was. The painting of the albergo, which Nicki had said she wanted to add some finishing touches to before he had it. Staring at it, he felt it might mean everything—or nothing. It might merely mean that she was never coming back—

  He picked up the light case he had not yet unpacked and put his head round the door of the living room. He grinned at his uncle and aunt as they looked round to him. "I'm going to Lugano. The hospital doesn't expect me for five days; I can do it if I fly. 'Bye."

  Stephen Grant looked more perplexed than ever, but Bella's expression as she knitted was suddenly like a young girl's, full of sweet mischief.

  Lugano looked very much as it had done four months ago, except that the leaves of the chestnut trees were turning colour already, and there was no Nicki greeting him casually at the debarcadero centrale. . . . The noonday sun glazed the surface of the lake to spun glass, and the imperturbable mountains looked down on the traveller as if to reassure him that the tumult of his heart was unnecessary. This time he hired one of the small motor-boats to take him to Gandria, and ordered the boatman to wait. Now that Francesca was installed as Emilio's bride he did not know whether he would be welcome to stay or not.

  There was no sign of life on the front steps. The green shutters of the inn were closed against the noonday heat. Jonathan ran up the worn old stone steps lightly as a boy, but his heart was full of doubts. Nicki might have left already . . . might have started on the troubadour, wandering life she had always planned for herself. The untidy garden was quiet, too, and deserted. Only the neat rows of vines were heavy with grapes. Emilio would probably be having his usual picnic lunch between trips somewhere on the shores of the lake, the children might be back at school. ... He walked quietly into the familiar kitchen, and old Lucia looked up from her rocking-chair and screamed softly as if she had seen a ghost.

  "Dio mio! Jonathan!"

  He crossed the kitchen to take her hands, smiling as he pushed her back into the chair. Francesca came running to see what the commotion was about, and exclaimed and smiled when she saw who it was. "Jonathan—benvenuto!"

  "Nicki ... ?" he asked tentatively, when he had greeted her.

  Francesca smiled broadly, shrugged, opened her hands in a helpless gesture, and fired a broadside of questions at old Lucia. Then at last she turned to Jonathan and explained in halting English, "Always she is out. Lucia say she gone today to the grave of her mother, the cemetery of Morcoté."

  "Thanks." He had turned and gone round the garden way back to the steps before the women had finished explaining to him how to get to Morcoté. He knew, Nicole had taken him there. He knew exactly where the graves were in the hillside cemetery, the graves of Evelyn and Maria Fionetti.

  The boatman raised eyebrows at the new direction, shrugged, and set his engine going. It was a hot time of the day to be cruising from one end of the lake to the other, and his boat had no cover, but this Inglesi would probably repay him for his discomfort and his trouble. They were all mad, anyway.

  "There are more than four hundred steps to climb, signore," he warned cheerfully as he drew alongside the jetty at Morcoté.

  "I know. Wait for me, please." Jonathan threw him a twenty-franc note, more than twice his fare, and the man grinned.

  "Si, si, signore!"

  The four hundred steps took a lot of climbing, but Jonathan was in better condition than he had been in May. He took them steadily, in blocks, resting now and then to get his breath, and at last he came out past the old stone church and the many marble statues of angels and cherubs who guarded the dead in this peaceful place. At this hour there were no other visitors, and he found Nicole kneeling between her graves in the deep shadow of an ancient cypress tree, putting fresh flowers in the vases.

  He came to her quietly over the soft turf, but because he did not want to startle her he coughed, once, and she looked up instantly. Her lips formed his name, but no sound issued from them. It seemed to Nicki, here in this peaceful garden of rest, that a miracle had come to pass for her. She had hoped Jonathan would write to her, but that he would come, so soon, like this, she had not even dreamed.

  Kneeling there with the flowers strewn about her on the grass, a spray of roses in her hand, she looked to him like one of the younger angels poised among the graves. It did not seem an odd place for them to have met again. They smiled, as if they had met after a long, long time of separation; and because she was so impeded with her flowers and vases he dropped to his knees in front of her, and kissed her forehead.

  "Thank God you're still here," he said prosaically. "I thought you might have started on your travels."

  Nicki smiled again. She could find no words for him, unless she betrayed all she was feeling. She only said, childishly, "You climbed four hundred steps to find me?"

  "Yes." As she seemed stunned he took the roses from her and put them in one of the vases. "Nicki, I came to ask you something. Do you want to marry Nigel?"

  She shook her head emphatically. "No."

  "Not even for a hundred thousand pounds, Nicki? It's a hell of a lot of money."

  "Not even for a million!" she chuckled suddenly. "Five thousand pounds is enough to do a lot of travelling, Jonathan."

  "Yes. . . . Which is it to be, Nicki—a wandering foot or a heart at rest?"

  She did not answer for a moment. She finished arranging her flowers and placed them gently on the graves to right and to left. Then, softly, not looking at him, she whispered, "There is only one place my heart can be at rest, Jonathan. ... I have tried to tell you so many times."

  "Nicki—my very dear, dearest little wild goose, will you marry me?" he asked steadily.

  It seemed as if all the sleeping dead on this steep hillside above the azure lake were listening for a girl's answer. Jonathan added shyly, "It's an odd place to propose, my darling, but I can't wait any longer. Do you still want to wander round the world, or will you come and stay with me, always—"

  "At Vine Cottage?" she whispered, and her eyes were shining like the lake far below them. Like the azure canopy of sky above their heads.

  "At Vine Cottage, except when I have to go away, then you'll have to come with me." He added, putting a hand to tilt her face towards him, "I've loved you a long time, Nicki, but I thought you were going to be horribly rich—"

  "Oh, Jonathan! I have loved you always, I think—and I'm horribly rich. I have five thousand pounds, and Vine Cottage, and you."

  The kiss they exchanged was very gentle, very reverent, not unbefitting to the place where they knelt. Their passion would come later. As they got up at last, Nicki said softly, "I think this is a wonderful place to plight our troth—for who will be more pleased about us than my mother and Tia Maria?" And before they began the long, slow descent of the steps they left a loving glance with the two women who slept side by side.

  When Nicki saw the hired boat she chuckled. "Such extravagance! I was going to go home with Emilio, his next trip. Shall we tell them at the albergo, Jonathan, or not?"

  "Of course we'll tell them," he boasted boyishly. "We'll tell the whole world! And tomorrow, my darling, we'll be flying—home."

  THE END

 

 

 
harethis-inline-share-buttons">share