There Were Three Princes

by Joyce Dingwell

  "Perhaps. I suppose it could be Adele. All I know is I worry where I didn't before. Or at least" . . . a laugh . . . "I think of someone other than myself." He looked fondly across at Verity.

  "Then perish that thought, unless it's for your wife. I" .

  in a sudden inspiration . . . "have never been so — forward-looking in all my life."

  "What do you mean, Verity ?" When she did not answer, not knowing what to answer, wondering why she had made the rash statement, he said, "Is there someone, then? I mean is that why you're so — well, confident?"

  "Could be," she evaded with a deliberate show of coyness. "Like to tell?"

  "I couldn't."

  "I suppose not." A pause. "Could it be what Adele said recently?"

  "What was that?"

  "I was telling her where you were working. Prince's, isn't it? She said, 'Which one of the three Princes is she after?' Then she added, 'Any one of them would do.' I gathered," Robin smiled, "that money is no object there."

  "No object," Verity said faintly.

  "Then which ?" he laughed.

  "That would be telling," she came back. "Just leave it at that. Leave it at 'Once upon a time there were three princes.' Remember, Robin?"

  "I remember. You were always one for stories," he recalled boyishly. "You used to read them to me, you were a wonderful reader, Verity. Yes, I remember 'The Three Princes.' " He smiled. " 'Once upon a time there were three princes, a gracious prince, a charming prince —' "

  Verity finished, "And a prince who was in-between."

  "And which is it for you?" he persisted.

  "Again, that would be telling." Better this, she thought, than to admit that there was no prince, nobody at all to keep her in Australia, except...

  "Love — and the means, too," he commended, "what else can you ask? I'm always happy for Adele that as well as me she has expectations. I mean, it's a nice feeling for a girl, isn't it ?"

  "A nice feeling, darling," Verity assured him.

  They drank tea together, but Robin ate nothing. She noticed the thinness of his fingers, the slight tremble as he held the cup.

  When he left, he said, "You can't imagine how much easier I feel, Verity, I had no idea that you — I mean I thought you might just be staying on here for me."

  She laughed at that... and hoped he did not hear a hollow note.

  "But now that I know—" he went on.

  "Robin, you don't know. I mean" . . . with concern, for after all a lie like this could have an unfortunate result . . . "I don't know myself."

  "Verity, I'm not going to shout it out, I'm just going to repeat to myself for my own peace of mind : 'There were three princes.'"

  He was repeating it with amused satisfaction as he left her and went down to the car.

  Well, it seemed a harmless fabrication, and if it appeased him, it satisfied her. She waved to the car as it left the kerb.

  The next morning there was only Priscilla again in attendance at Woman's Castle, but Verity expected this would be the general rule, since as boss of the concern, for he was that even though he did not associate himself, Bart would need to be away frequently accruing more stock. She knew from the Chelsea shop how supplies must always be safeguarded a long way ahead.

  She had a cup of tea with Priscilla, then got herself up to date with the goods in hand as she carefully dusted them. There were some beautiful pieces and the dusting was more pleasure than task.

  Between the conning and the tidying, she sold a bed lamp and a tray, so felt she had earned her morning's salary.

  After lunch she looked hard at the displays, not wanting to change them if they had been newly done. Priscilla, coming down the corridor, told her that the second bedroom setting had not been altered for some time, so she decided to change that.

  But she voted against altering the purpose of the room, as she had altered the sun porch into a brown study. The study, she was pleased to see, was attracting much favourable attention. The only flaw was that it had not been entirely her inspiration. She would have added another colour and lost that brown impact.

  She felt a challenge now to do something that was not added to or taken away from, and she stood regarding the minor bedroom a long time. It was a pretty setting in its present form, aimed at the gay teenager. Verity knew that she could not improve on it, so she decided to tackle a different age group.

  She rummaged around the props, as it were, and inspiration came to her in the form of a very beautiful marcella quilt. From there on she unearthed more and more things that would be just right for the setting she had in mind — a Victorian bedroom for the older, more perceptive young woman, quiet, unassuming, in very good taste.

  The plain narrow bed fortunately applied itself to the chaste scene. She removed every bit of bric-a-brac, but she allowed

  small white linen mats under a brush and mirror set she also found in the big box. To her delight she unearthed an antiquated washbasin and jug, remembering as she looked appreciatively at the flowered china that there was an appropriate stand in the back room storage. She had noticed it yesterday and admired the dark unpolished oak. She also recalled that it was on rollers, which would make it easy to wheel in.

  Now she worked eagerly, with inspiration. She had always loved being urged on to an end she had in mind, but this time she found herself more anxious than she had ever been in Chelsea. For it had to be right. Just right. She pressed in a final thumb tack to secure something, then sat back on her heels to regard the finished scene, for as far as she was concerned it was finished. Yesterday she had felt somehow uncertain, and the feeling had been right, for the room had not been right, but now she looked and was confident. But would he ... would Bart Prince...

  "Perfect," the man in the doorway said so certainly that there was no disbelieving the sincerity. Aware of ridiculous tears of relief, for they were ridiculous — this person's opinion could not matter that much — Verity scrambled to her feet.

  "It's right?" she repeated.

  "I said so." Bart Prince was looking at her quizzically, and, flushing, she looked away.

  She hoped desperately that he would not query the anxiety she had so obviously betrayed. Whether he felt her sensitiveness or simply was not interested, he did not.

  Together they left the setting.

  "Tomorrow, Verity," Bart said, "the Castle will be closed." "A holiday?" As a newchum she had not yet sorted out Australian festivals.

  "The very opposite — we'll be working very hard."

  "Stocktaking?"

  "Stock gathering. I've had an offer from Lilith Vale, a small valley town on the other side of the Blue Mountains. I'm hoping to pick up quite a few treasures. Early colonials settled there on land grants."

  "Can it be done in a day?"

  "The distance there and back, yes, but not the examination of what offers. No, I'll take the van, and we'll stay overnight."

  She opened her mouth to say something, then shut it. What she wanted to know was whom he meant by "we".

  Deliberately, or so she thought, he misconstrued her unasked question.

  "It has to be the van and a camp, there are no hotels at the Vale."

  Now she moistened her lips. "There's no need to close shop. I can handle the business."

  "Up at Lilith Vale?"

  "You mean I —"

  "I mean you come, too. Don't tell me" . . . impatiently . "you never left that Chelsea concern."

  "Oh, no, I used to go buying with —" She had gone buying with Mr. Felix, but Mr. Felix had been plump, fatherly, and — well, Mr. Felix. They had also stayed in hotels. Mrs. Felix, too, had been with them.

  He was looking at her quizzically again, but not sparing her this time as he had before.

  "I do believe," he drawled, "you're that rare thing, a conventional female. I do believe, too, you don't want to come on that account." Before she could blurt something, though what it would have been she did not know, he said, "Be of good heart, Miss Grundy, Priscilla comes
, too, of course."

  "That's unfair," she said of his Miss Grundy, and to her surprise he agreed with her. She had noticed before that for all his positiveness, suddenly and completely he could capitulate.

  "It was just your uncertain little face," he grinned. "By rights a wreck like I am should take a bow, I suppose. But then" . . . hard and clipped again . . . "that subject is taboo. I must try to remember."

  She did not comment . . . but she did wonder who had gone along with Priscilla on previous occasions. To her horror she heard herself asking : "Did you have an attendant here before me, Mr. Bart?" and heard at once his amused laugh.

  "No. But Priscilla is entirely different. For that's what you're really asking, isn't it?"

  She felt her cheeks burning. She could think of nothing to say.

  "The van will call for you promptly at eight. Priscilla has your address. Please be ready." He turned and left her. Presently she heard him in the office, laughing with Priscilla. She wondered whether he was repeating her clumsy question and if they were both amused by it. It sounded as though they were exchanging something funny. Not feeling funny herself, feeling priggish and rather schoolgirlish, Verity was glad to see a customer enter the Castle, and she went forward at once.

  The afternoon proved quite busy, for which she was very grateful, yet for all her absorption between her discussing and wrapping something kept coming back to her. It was Bart Prince's confident : "Priscilla is entirely different." She had known it, of course. Mrs. Prince had said it. The man's eyes as he had looked at Priscilla had said it. And now he himself had said it. Priscilla is entirely different. Suddenly and bleakly it came to Verity that at the age of twenty-seven, absorbed with Robin as she had always been, she had never been "entirely different" to a man. Any man.

  Promptly at eight the next morning, as Bart Prince had said,

  the van pulled up at the Balmain terrace. It looked a roomy vehicle, and when Priscilla moved up closer to Bart and Verity got in, she found there was ample space.

  As it was the peak hour for morning traffic, little was said as Bart ably threaded his way in and out of cars. Verity decided that if it had been in a motor accident the man had sustained his injuries, then certainly his driving skill and nerve had not been impaired.

  Because of Sydney's sprawl it was some time before they were free of the city. It must have rained through the night, for the paddocks on either side of the Western Highway were still wet. After they had passed Penrith and climbed up, there was a tantalising smell of woodsmoke from the mountain cottages mixed up with the tang of drying mountain earth.

  Now the air was apple crisp, and it kept it up even after they descended from Mount Victoria, then proceeded along an offshoot ribbon of road. The minor track was narrow and bumpy but offering beauty at every turn, with the scallops of looming blue mountains between the leafy twigs of the bordering trees and the splashing streams.

  A twist in the winding way and there was Lilith Vale : one old post-office hung with pink briar roses and no longer in use, one old courthouse, window-deep in encroaching sunflowers, and no longer in use, one old house, by the look of it barely in use, and that was it. "And after today, nothing in use," Bart said.

  "What we don't take will be left to the possums," he told the girls. "Once Lilith Vale was on the main road to Lithgow, but many years ago, as you can see."

  It had been a lovely old house, strictly in the early sprawling colonial style, plenty of space to stretch out, to breathe. Even now in its shabbiness there persisted that air of inbred pride.

  Bart found a key in a prearranged place and they went in, Priscilla at once busy on her notebook, the other two just gazing around them.

  The rooms were rather low-ceilinged for their period, and the walls were panelled in dark rough wood. Because of the house's age the floor was buckled here and there and plaster had come down in several spots to lay on the planks like snow. The windows, as was usual in that era, were rather meagre, yet still extremely attractive, letting in sufficiently suffused primrose light to enhance the furniture that Bart had come about.

  It was good furniture — simple, uncluttered and upon occasion quite lovely. There was a little cedar, a lot of mahogany and some warm old oak.

  Bart called Priscilla and she made notes as he examined each piece.

  Meanwhile Verity wandered round the house. There was no bric-a-brac; evidently only what could not be moved easily had been left. She wondered how Bart Prince would shift the stuff he decided to buy from the house, for like all old furniture it was heavy.

  She browsed on.. . then all at once she stopped.

  She had reached a fireplace, empty and cold, of course, but the width and depth and friendly accommodation of it somehow caught at her. She could see a family gathered here, a chair for the man of the house, a chair for the woman, a cradle for a child. She could see logs waiting that the man had cut, tea waiting that the woman had brewed. The child slept.

  It was so real she could smell it, and hear it, and in her enchantment she half-turned as though to embrace it . . . and found herself breath-close to Bart Prince. He must have come in and in her absorption she had not heard him. What an idiot he must think her !

  He did not speak for a long moment, then he put his hands out to the grate.

  'Were you cold?" he asked, and she knew that he, too, was seeing the logs, the tea, the sleeping child.

  Priscilla was calling out that a piece he had chosen appeared to have woodworm. Without another word, he went.

  They had lunch from a hamper and a flask, then some men arrived in a utility to help Bart store the chosen pieces in the van. Verity was a little disturbed over this, for she had thought the inside of the van would be used as sleeping quarters, that the furniture would be consigned separately. Where then did they sleep?

  She heard Bart arranging for the men to finish loading in the morning, and saw with surprise that this would be necessary, as already the sun was slipping away.

  "Do we use the house tonight?" she asked Priscilla.

  "No, it would be musty through being closed up — besides, Bart is a great one for stars." Priscilla gave that fond little laugh.

  Bart drove the van to a small clearing he must have known about, and in an astonishingly short time had erected a tent for the girls and swung a hammock for himself.

  "Now for tea," he said.

  It was no hamper meal this time but steaks on green sticks, and damper. After they finished they just stopped where they were, talking idly, relapsing into comfortable silences,, looking at the sky.

  Then Priscilla, yawning widely, said that the mountain air always rocked her . . . how often? Verity wondered, and with whom? . . . and declared that she would go to bed.

  Verity got up, too, but she did not cross as Priscilla did and lightly kiss Bart's brow, though Bart's Battering eyes challenged her to. It would amuse him, Verity thought, to be bid goodnight by both girls.

  Inside the tent Bart had placed two inflated mattresses.

  "They're wonderfully comfortable," Priscilla assured her, getting into sensible pyjamas.

  Verity felt all varieties of a fool. Never having lived much of a social life, she had always expressed her instinctive femininity in pretty nightwear, fluffy concoctions like the scant apple green waltz-length gown she had brought now. She looked at Priscilla's cotton and then at her own gear with dismay.

  "Oh, I'm sorry," regretted Priscilla genuinely, "I should have told you, Verity."

  "I thought we'd be inside," Verity explained.

  "I should have told you it would be canvas. Never mind, it's only tonight."

  Priscilla was in bed by now, and grateful at least that Bart Prince could not see just how new was this new chum he now had in his employ, Verity stretched down on the pump-up and took up a magazine.

  Priscilla had gone to sleep at once — she must have spoken genuinely when she said what the mountain air did to her —but Verity stayed awake for a long time.

&nbs
p; At length she did feel a little drowsy, and decided to put out the lantern that Priscilla had left alight for her. Instead of getting right up, she leaned across, and in her inexperience she turned the wick up, not down, instantly flooding the tent with flaring light. Still uncertain which way to work it, not wanting to waken or alarm Priscilla, not at all happy over the ferocious leaping of the flame, she stepped carefully out of the tent with it.. . and into Bart Prince's arms.

  "What in tarnation —" he began.

  "I was frightened," she admitted.

  "No need to be, the hurricane is foolproof, it won't start a fire." He took the lantern from her.

  "I was frightened of waking Priscilla. She went to sleep at once."

  "Presumably sleep is the idea." He was turning down the wick . . . and then he stopped. Without looking up at him to check, Verity still knew that now he was looking at her.

  "You're a fool, Miss Tyler," he said at length.

  "I'm sorry, I'm not used to lanterns."

  "You're a fool to wear gear like that," he went on, ignoring the subject of the lamp. His eyes were taking in the soft revealing folds of the gown.

  "You mean if fire did start . . ."

  "Fire?" The way he said it she knew he had not been thinking that at all.

  There was a long moment of complete silence. Not even the bush cracked. Not even a nightjar called.

  "Not fire," he told her a little thickly, "man. A man can stand so much. Even my kind of a wreck of a man."

  "Bart . . . Mr. Prince . . ." she stammered.

  "Which I mustn't harp on. You've told me so."

  Another silence, then:

  "For heaven's sake, woman, get back to bed ! "

  CHAPTER III

  IN THE week that followed, Verity often wondered if Bart Prince had really come to stand beside her at an empty grate to ask quietly : "Were you cold?"

  Lilith Vale seemed a long way away now, much further than its seventy miles, as far away from Woman's Castle as the ends of the earth. The man was far away, too. She knew that a business background was totally different from a mountain one, but Bart Prince was more coolly remote than he had been when she had first started here, and, ruefully, he had not been exactly friendly then.