“They’ll do nothing of the kind,” Stephen said between his teeth. “As I remember this room, it’s more like a stage-set than a bedroom, and I refuse to sleep in it.”
Penny recoiled. It wasn’t so much his words, but the biting emphasis he gave to them, and the feminine instinct deep inside her that warned her when she was treading on thin ice with Stephen.
This bedroom she was to occupy was the room he had once planned to share with Veronica, and that was all there was to it! Naturally he couldn’t bear the thought of sleeping in it alone!
“Very well,” she said, in a voice so quiet that even Waters paused to glance at her. “It doesn’t matter to me where I sleep, and if you’d rather I made this my room then I’ll do so.”
Waters departed discreetly, and Penny spoke more bluntly.
“I asked you just now whether this was the principal bedroom in the house,” she said to her husband. “By that I meant, is it the one Veronica meant to occupy?” There was a pause before he answered.
“If it has very deep built-in wardrobes, and the walls and paintwork, as well as the hangings, are all a sort of creamy-pink—I think Veronica called it ‘dawn glow’!—then it is.”
“And the bathroom is black and pink, and you were to have the dressing-room on the far side?”
“Yes.”
“Then why don’t we choose two entirely different rooms for ourselves?” she suggested. ‘Then this could be a kind of guest suite.”
He moved nearer to her—she was a bare yard away, and the sound of her voice told him where she was—and suddenly his voice was anxious.
“Penny, please don’t misunderstand...!”
“There’s nothing to misunderstand,” she said coldly, clearly. “It’s all too easy to understand!” She darted to the door of the bathroom that connected with the dressing-room and called after Waters. “Waters, you’ve left your master’s dressing-gown and his slippers behind. We’ll sleep in these two rooms tonight, but tomorrow we’ll probably be making a change!”
But the next day Aunt Heloise and Veronica arrived in good time for lunch, and Penny realized that she had no alternative but to ask them to stay. In order, however, that Veronica should have no reasonable excuse that could take her inside the Pink Room, Penny removed all her own things from the room immediately after she received the news over the telephone that they were arriving, and when the blue car drove up, the lovely kidney-shaped dressing-table that stood in a petticoat of pale rose velvet, and had a lovely Florentine mirror standing on it, was denuded of her lonely schoolgirl brushes and hand-mirror, and her solitary flagon of perfume, and she was established in a little room over the porch, that had no door connecting with any other room.
Aunt Heloise was all welcoming smiles and affectionate kisses, but Veronica seemed a little aloof. Penny was not surprised, since she was visiting at a house where she had expected to be mistress.
Waters served an excellent lunch, and afterwards Penny poured out coffee in the drawing-room. Veronica picked up one of the pieces of porcelain and sighed as she traced its delicate shape with her fingers.
“Do you remember, Stephen,” she said, softly, “that I wanted Sevres, and you insisted on Minton? You had your way, and I must admit the Minton is very, very lovely!”
Stephen said nothing, and she went and sat beside him in the lap of a huge Chesterfield.
“How are the eyes?” she asked. “When do you see Robert Bolton?”
“The appointment has been put off for another month,” he told her. “But I’m not hopeful, so it doesn’t matter.”
Her fingers fluttered above his sleeve, and then came to rest lightly on the back of his hand.
“You should be hopeful,” she said, with meaning. “And I firmly believe you will see again!”
“Dr. Veronica!” he said, with dry sarcasm.
Her breath seemed to catch.
“You can call it intuition, if you like,” she said, “but I know you will see again!”
Watching them, Penny saw Stephen flinch as her cousin’s hand once more alighted on his. But whether he was flinching because he had no belief in her intuitive powers, or because he simply couldn’t bear her touch, Penny could only guess.
A few days later Veronica came along and had lunch with them again, and this time announced that she had a special reason for her visit. She and her mother had been discussing Penny, and they were concerned because she wasn’t getting about enough, or having enough variety in her daily life.
“Oh, I know it’s quite natural that she should want to be here with you, Stephen,” once more sitting beside him on the settee, and speaking with husky warmth in her voice. “But you mustn’t be selfish and let her make a martyr of herself.” She laughed throatily. “It’s a bad thing to be a martyr, and Penny’s too young, anyway. She’s also very pretty, or would be if she sometimes paid a visit to a hairdresser, and had a few new clothes. Poor Penny, I’ve never seen you looking quite so shabby!”
Penny flushed instantly—there was such unflattering sympathy in her cousin’s voice; but Stephen’s brows crinkled above his dark glasses.
“Are you shabby, Penny?” he asked, as if it had never occurred to him that she needed replenishments to her wardrobe. A bride of nearly six months, she had never had a trousseau, and most of the clothes she had taken to Trevose Cottage after her marriage had been passed on to her by Veronica.
“I ... not really,” she replied, knowing she was not being strictly truthful. “Some of my things are a bit worn, perhaps.”
“Worn?” Veronica laughed unkindly. “That dress you’re wearing is one I grew tired of at least eighteen months ago. You really will have to do something about her, Stephen.”
Stephen’s face grew dark, as if a flush had risen up behind his tanned skin.
“Why didn’t you tell me, Penny?” he demanded. She could tell by the tone of his voice that he was genuinely annoyed, not merely irritated. “I can’t have my wife going about in her cousin’s cast-off dresses! Besides, it isn’t necessary ... it’s utterly ridiculous! You know very well that you can have as many clothes as you want if you ask for them.”
“But she wouldn’t like to ask for them, darling,” Veronica said soothingly—and the “darling” slipped out so naturally that even Penny didn’t notice it immediately. “She’s a shy little thing, and quite undemanding, and I don’t suppose it ever occurred to you to wonder what she was wearing.”
“On the contrary,” Stephen said quickly, “I always think of Penny wearing green.”
Veronica glanced at him.
“Why green?”
“That fellow Ardmore painted her in a green dress, and—” He was about to add “And the day we were married she wore green”; but he stopped, and then substituted, “And it suits her.”
Veronica turned to Penny with the air of one who was mildly interested.
“I must say I’m dying to see the portrait your artist landlord painted of you. Is it a very good likeness?”
“I believe he thought so himself,” Penny answered cautiously.
“How unfortunate Stephen can’t see it!” The words sounded just a little cruel. “But I’m not surprised if it’s a good effort, because I have seen some of that man’s work. He’s probably ‘going far’, as they say. Did you become very friendly while he was painting the picture?”
Penny glanced at Stephen, and saw that his mouth was grim.
“I was present at all the sittings,” he said curtly.
“Spoil-sport!” Veronica touched his arm playfully. “No wonder Penny looks slightly haunted these days, as if she can’t do a thing on her own initiative, in case she offends you. You must remember, Stephen, that she is young, and do give her a little rope, I beg of you! That young man, Ardmore, must have admired her enormously to offer to paint her. He didn’t offer to paint me!”
Penny said swiftly that that was probably because he knew he couldn’t do her justice, but Veronica smiled at her and shook her head.<
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“It was because he liked the look of you! You’re probably his type ... little golden-headed girl to offset a tall golden-headed man! Perfectly natural!”
Stephen reached clumsily for a cigarette box, and upset its contents all over the floor. When Penny knelt quickly to pick up the cigarettes she heard him swearing softly, but with a curious kind of viciousness.
“Here,” Penny said, in the gentle tone of a mother soothing a hurt child, and put a cigarette between his fingers. Then she hastened to strike a match before he could start fumbling for his lighter, and held it to the tip of the cigarette when he had carried it up to his lips.
He thanked her in a voice that was as taut as a violin string.
“Sorry to be like a bull in a china shop,” he said. “Maybe I’ll grow out of it one day.”
Veronica slid a hand inside his arm, and squeezed it. “Of course you will, darling...” It was the second “darling” that had slipped out, only this one was really husky. “And if you don’t we’ll put up with you. I’ll put up with you!”
Just before she announced regretfully that she really had to leave them she returned to the subject of Penny and the shopping orgy she proposed to indulge in on her behalf if Stephen would foot the bill.
“Leave everything to me,” she said. “I know how to dress Penny, and I know where to take her to get the best value for money. Of course you can’t have a wife looking so shabby that when people start calling they’ll lift their eyebrows.”
“I sincerely hope they will not start calling,” Stephen said, with the emphasis of one who meant what he said. “But you can do your best for Penny, if you will, and I’ll write you a cheque whenever you want one. And let her have the full treatment—hairdresser, beauty parlour, whatever she wants—but don’t let them ruin her hair.”
Veronica’s slim eyebrows went up.
“They can only improve it,” she said, “by shaping and styling.”
“So long as they don’t try to improve the colour,” Stephen said. “Penny’s hair is sunshine yellow, and I’d like it to remain sunshine yellow!”
CHAPTER XIII
During the next two weeks scarcely a day was allowed to pass without either a visit, or a telephone call, from Aunt Heloise or Veronica.
If it was Aunt Heloise she wanted to know whether the cook she had engaged was proving satisfactory, whether the spare covers had arrived for the deep arm chairs in the drawing-room, or whether the man who had promised to build an arbour in the garden, in which Stephen could sit during hot days in the summer, had started work yet. If it was Veronica she had some breathless piece of intelligence to pass on to Penny, such as the discovery of a wonderful little shop off Bond Street where you really could walk out in a suit straight off the peg and feel that you were entirely presentable, or a woman who would give you a facial with no more than half an hour’s warning.
She persuaded Penny to drive herself up to town and meet her for what she called “a preliminary run around the shops.” Penny hated the thought of leaving Stephen alone for the better part of a day, but when he heard that Veronica had telephoned and arranged a meeting point he insisted that Penny stick to the arrangement. He supplied her with a large wad of notes such as she had never held in her hand before and more or less ordered her to be as extravagant as she pleased, and buy herself whatever she fancied.
“Veronica’s right,” he said, as if he had been thinking the matter over and had come to a clear-cut decision. “You’ve been turning yourself into a kind of prop for me to lean on, and it’s got to stop! You’re young, and you’re not a nurse ... and, even if you were, you’d be entitled to your free time.” He spoke very deliberately. “You’re a wife, and you’re not a wife, and altogether I think you’ve had rather a raw deal.”
She protested at once.
“Stephen, you know very well that I’m perfectly happy...”
“Are you?”
She floundered, glad at least that he couldn’t see her face.
“As happy as a good many women ever are. Probably happier.”
“A negative state of happiness, my dear,” he said dryly. “I feel almost tempted to wish you a little unhappiness if you think that’s the best life can offer.” She winced. There were times when she hugged so much unhappiness to herself that she wondered whether a lifetime of it would crush her. Whether she had anything at all to look forward to.
“Don’t you think,” she said, trying to control the tendency on the part of her voice to tremble, “that I am often unhappy when I think ... when I think what has happened to you...?”
He said harshly:
“My eyes, you mean?”
“Of course.”
“Then don’t be unhappy, Penny,” he said tersely. “Not on account of my eyes!”
She swallowed.
“I keep hoping that ... when you see the specialist...”
His hands tightened on the arms of his chair.
“Stop thinking about specialists, Penny, and go off and enjoy yourself for once. Buy yourself some expensive perfume, some wispy underwear, a ravishing evening gown. Have you ever possessed a ravishing evening gown in your life, Sunshine?”
She told him, “No.”
“Then buy one. Tell them to send the bills to me, and remember there’s no limit to what you can spend. I’m not a poor man, and that, considering my present inability to earn my own living and support a wife on my earnings, is something I suppose I ought to be thankful for.”
Just before she started off he called out to her urgently:
“And be careful how you drive! Perhaps you ought to take Waters.”
But she declined to do anything of the kind.
“Aunt Heloise always said I’m a very good driver, and you need Waters. I wouldn’t dream of taking him away from you.”
He sighed. She was perfectly right ... Waters was now his right hand, and she was his left. A very important left!
When she reached London Penny garaged the car, and then met Veronica at the appointed rendezvous. Veronica didn’t waste time asking for her news, but said she had made an appointment for her to have her hair done, and if there was time afterwards she could have a facial treatment and a manicure. After lunch she proposed to rush Penny round to the establishment off Bond Street where the woman she knew who was having such a big success with clothes you just tried on and walked out in had promised to do her best for her.
“You’re more or less stock size,” Veronica said, eyeing her with crinkled brows while she drank a hurried coffee. “That is to say, you’re slim, and about as tall as I am” (Veronica was about five feet in her slender stockinged feet). “Another day we’ll buy all your etceteras, but we must get a few important things fixed up today.”
Penny couldn’t think why it was so important that certain items had to be purchased that day, but she did agree that a vast improvement had been wrought in her appearance when she emerged from the beauty parlour at about ten minutes to one o’clock. Her hair had been cut and shampooed—although she had stood out against its being permanently waved, for it had a natural kink of its own—and swung softly against her face, and while she was under the dryer her nails had received a delicate pearly lustre. Here again she had stood out against persuasive voices, and had resisted coloured nail varnish. Only her face had received the full treatment, without any timorous objections being either raised by her, or listened to by the pink-coated assistants who worked over her, and when she looked at herself in the mirror afterwards she gave a little gasp, because she couldn’t believe it was herself.
Her wide-eyed pallor had gone, and she had the glow of a warm peach delicately toned down with face powder. Her slim brows had been emphasized, and her lashes darkened, her white eye-lids bore a trace of eye-shadow, and her mouth was like a scarlet lacquer flower. The assistants beamed at her, as if she was something they had created with their own hands, and when she paid her bill she was persuaded to invest in a whole series of cosmetics that would ena
ble her to keep up the transformation, and she was sprayed gratuitously with a flower perfume before she was sent out into the world to meet her cousin.
Veronica opened her mouth when she saw her, and then decided to say little or nothing about the improvement that had been wrought. Instead, she hurriedly consulted the menu that had been put before her, and announced that they would have to waste absolutely no time at all if they were to make the best use of the afternoon.
Penny remembered that afternoon for a long time afterwards. She tried on dress after dress, suit after suit, top-coat after top-coat, and was eventually given to understand that she had acquired two day dresses, one evening dress, one cocktail outfit, one very smart suit that would also do for party occasions, and a dress and coat in dark green velvet that was trimmed with leopard, and had a rakish little leopard-skin cap that went with it.
“The bill for the whole lot can be sent to Stephen,” Veronica said with the utmost complacence, while Penny stood looking slightly horrified by the thought of such wanton expenditure. “And don’t forget there are still a lot of things you badly need, and will have to have, but these will do for one day. And I suggest you leave that drab tweed coat, and the dress you’re wearing, to be packed up and sent to you at Old Timbers with the other things. They don’t do very much for your new hair-do, or your new face.”
Although it seemed to her quite pointless to change into anything as smart as the green velvet at that late hour of the day, when she had a lonely drive home ahead of her, Penny somewhat unwillingly allowed herself to be pressed into doing so, and then she and Veronica climbed into a taxi, and Veronica suddenly remembered a purchase that had to be made at a well-known London store.
Penny followed her into the haberdashery department, and watched her match a piece of fine woollen material with a lovely suede belt that would look enchanting about her slender middle. And then they made for the restaurant and ordered tea, but before it arrived Veronica suddenly glanced at her watch and uttered a cry.
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