by Pamela Kent
Mr. Vandraaton winked at Melanie.
“And what use are doctors, anyway?” he asked. “Do they ever do the things themselves that they advise other people to do?”
“Of course they do,” his wife returned crisply. She sat down in one of the superbly comfortable chairs near to him, apparently no longer troubled because he was still in the full path of the sun, and the protective awning above them provided protection for her own silvery head only. “What were you talking about when I came along just now?” she asked. “Didn’t I hear some mention of Diane Fairchild’s name?”
“I mentioned her,” Melanie admitted.
Her hostess looked at her with cool inquiry.
“I wonder whether you know that we’re expecting a wedding in the autumn? Isn’t it wonderful!” she said, unable to, prevent herself enthusing. “Possessing only one son I’m naturally longing for a daughter-in-law, and Diane is so exquisite. Every photograph I’ve seen of her is more exquisite than the last! And her connections are so admirable.”
“Dukes are dying out, as Octavia said yesterday,” Lucas remarked.
“Don’t be absurd, dear. The Duke of Allerton’s family is so old, and so revered, that it wouldn’t matter if every member of it died out tomorrow. They would still be remembered.”
“And a lot of good that would do them,” Lucas observed, with another wicked wink at Melanie. “And, in any case,” he added, “so far as I know Rick and this young woman aren’t engaged yet, so why talk about a wedding? Talk won’t get Rick to the altar! Not even,” a trifle more sinisterly, “threats!”
“Perhaps not,” Mrs. Vandraaton agreed, quietly—almost thrillingly quietly. “But nowadays civilized people don’t threaten, they use reasonable persuasion. And Rick has promised me—promised me!—that I shall have my daughter-in-law before another six months are up.”
“In that case you’ll have a wedding in the dead of winter!”
But Melanie didn’t wait to hear any more of the conversation. She suddenly felt that she had heard more than enough, and the blue of the sky had become dimmed, and although the sun was tropical she didn’t feel its warmth. She felt cold, and repelled, and dismayed.
Yes, actively dismayed! Rick really was going to marry Diane—he had promised his mother!—and only the day before he had kissed her, Melanie, out of a state of apathetic unawareness of the real reason why she had been born!
Until that moment she had been only partly aware of the advantages of being feminine, as well as reasonably attractive; and of the strange, magnetic compulsion of the opposite sex. Now, when there wasn’t much point in having acquired such a knowledge, she knew that she could delight in her own femininity if she would, and that Rick’s masculinity was a completion of something that had its roots deep down inside herself.
In other words, if she wasn’t very careful Rick would become so important to her that her whole future happiness would be blighted because of him—because of simply having known him! And because he had kissed her once!
She was glad to get away from the glare of the terrace. She stumbled rather blindly into a huge room filled with flowers and couches, and delicate examples of china and glass, and found Candy sitting alone on a Chesterfield. She was wearing tailored shorts and a sky-blue blouse, and had recently been playing tennis; but she looked as if she had deliberately cut herself off from the rest of the house-party because she preferred to be alone. She was like, and yet unlike Rick, with her slanting eyes and her delicate face, and she seemed to be surrounded by an aura of unhappiness.
She looked up and smiled curiously at Melanie.
“Did I hear Mother chattering about weddings? It’s her favorite subject!”
Melanie didn’t know whether to sit down beside her, or to leave her alone again, but Candy stood up, yawned, and stretched herself languidly.
“Poor Mother! Perhaps one day she’ll get what she wants, especially if Rick decides that the line of least resistance is the best line to take!”
“What—what do you mean?” Melanie stammered, feeling rather stupid, as well as an intruder, and she thought that Candy’s cool, bored, yet searching look had a good deal of Rick’s insolence about it.
“As a family we never do the things that are expected of us,” the other girl informed her, examining the tips of her lightly-polished nails. “That is to say, we younger members never do. I’d say we were definitely a disappointment to the parents, but they can hardly blame us for that, can they?” She regarded Melanie once more coolly, and as if inviting her opinion. “Mother’s a social climber, you know, and her plans for Rick are really ambitious—all mixed up with coronets, and so forth! This girl, Diane, whom we’ve none of us seen apart from Rick—do you think he’s keen on her?”
“How—how would I know?” Melanie demanded, taken aback.
Candy shrugged.
“You’ve seen her—you’ve seen them together. Or haven’t you?”
Melanie admitted that she had seen them together once.
“Well, once should be enough. It would be enough for me, knowing Rick! But honestly, I don’t think he’s eager to dash into marriage, not even for the sake of a link-up with a duke. And if he’s got any sense he’ll stay free and fight them all, just as I mean to do. Only in my case it’s not freedom I’m striving for, but the right to marry the man I’m in love with!”
“Oh!” Melanie exclaimed, feeling suddenly a little weak about the knees, because the heat was something she was not yet accustomed to, and although the other remained standing she sank into the lap of the settee. “And your family—your parents—don’t believe in love?”
“Not unless it’s accompanied by something they consider much more valuable.” There was unconcealed scorn in the young, rich voice. “In Mother’s case it’s old and established names—even if the owners haven’t a bean to support them! In Father’s it’s the possibility of improving business relations with someone or other. What a couple!” she exclaimed, and Melanie thought: What an oddly ill-assorted family!
“Father isn’t so bad, of course.” Candy removed a delicate toy of a platinum cigarette-case from a pocket of her shorts, and offered it to Melanie. “One could get round him—in time! But Mother isn’t the type one can get round easily.”
“Then what do you propose to do?” Melanie asked, after she had accepted a light.
“Marry—without asking anyone’s permission!” came the instant response, and the glorious dark eyes looked as if her mind really was irrevocably made up. “I’m of age, and I’ve even got a little money of my own—just a little! So there’s nothing to stop me.”
“Not even the man you—you’re in love with?” Melanie asked, hoping he wasn’t a fortune-hunter who was banking on her parents relenting once they were well and truly married.
Candy looked first scornful, and then strangely tender.
“Mike isn’t the type to bother about anything that’s likely to come my way one of these days. He’s not interested in money. He’s a doctor, interested only in tropical diseases and suffering humanity, and he’s been offered a post in some rather uninviting spot in Central Africa. As soon as everything’s fixed we’re going off there together, and as I said before nothing’s going to stop me—nothing!”
“You’re not afraid I might disclose what you’ve just told me to your parents, and they might try to stop you?” Melanie suggested softly.
Candy regarded her—a long, fixed look—and then smiled, and shook her head.
“No,” she returned. “Otherwise I wouldn’t have told you.” And there was something wondering in her own voice. “Do you realize you’re the only person—apart from Rick, of course—I have made a confidante of? Not even Aunt Octavia has wormed the whole truth out of me!”
“Then why did you tell me?” Melanie wanted to know.
Candy looked as if she wasn’t quite sure of the answer to that herself.
“It must be because I like the look of you. And because Rick has displayed such an
interest in you. He asked me to keep an eye on you, and to see you weren’t left out of anything. And Rick doesn’t often bother himself to that extent—not about someone he employs. And I hope you won’t think that sounds snobbish.”
“I don’t,” Melanie assured her.
“Look,” Candy said, “I’m slipping out to meet Mike tonight—we’re going to have dinner together—and I’ll get Terry Ransome to look after you.” Terry was one of the two young men who appeared very devoted to her. “He’s nice, and you’ll find him quite amusing and he’ll attach himself to you very faithfully if I ask him to. O.K.?”
“O.K.”, Melanie replied, a little wryly, but Candy’s suddenly brilliant smile warmed her. She had the feeling that she was now reasonably persona grata with another member of the Vandraaton family apart from Lucas. And, of course, Rick!—who handed her over to other people because he hadn’t the time to devote to her himself!
That night she saw Candy slip out when she was crossing the hall on her way to join the others before dinner. Rick’s sister’s dark, arresting loveliness was vividly offset by an emerald green dress, and she looked radiant as a girl only looks when she is going to meet a lover.
Melanie experienced an actual pang as she watched her run lightly down the steps to a waiting car, and as she went on her way to the ornate lounge, filled with chatter and laughter and people sipping a variety of expensive drinks that were intended to improve their appetites for the dinner of many courses that would follow before long, she tried to analyse the type of pang it was.
But somehow it defied analysis. It was a new kind of pang, compounded partly of envy—perhaps almost largely of envy—and the strange, unsatisfying pleasure of discovering that someone else had discovered the secret of perfect happiness.
Rick unlike his sister, did not look as if she had passed on her secret to him, but he was noticeably attentive to the attractive widow, Janet Carey. He more or less ignored everyone else—including Melanie, who being merely his secretary could not reasonably expect any other form of treatment from him—but he smiled once or twice when he saw how Terry Ransome was warming to the task of looking after her.
Terry was an uninhibited young man who found it a simple matter to transfer admiring interest from one young woman to another, and although Melanie knew he was acting on instructions she also felt a little flattered before the evening was over because he seemed to enjoy carrying out those instructions.
He took her for a walk in the garden after dinner, and she was terrified of running into Rick and his particular lady-friend—in the absence of the beautiful Diane! Although she knew that Rick thought nothing of an odd kiss or two—hadn’t he kissed her in his car only the morning before?— she shrank from the sight of him bestowing the same attention to another woman as keenly as she might have shrunk from the news of his actual engagement.
And she knew that it was only a matter of time, before the news of that engagement was released upon the world.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Back in New York, Melanie found that she was once more expected to work very hard, and this time it was on a scheme of improvements for the Nonpareil.
Rick and his father and Jake spent many hours closeted together, and as a result Melanie was kept busy at the typewriter. It was quite plain that Jake was responsible for most of the suggestions, for it was he who waited for the sheets to come off the typewriter, and perused them with the utmost thoughtfulness afterwards. And it was he who didn’t hesitate to seek further interviews with Mr. Vandraaton, and as Melanie knew had more than one somewhat prolonged interview with him alone.
Frequently when she looked at him she wondered what he would say, and how he would react, if she returned to him the fragment of letter, signed Di, that she had found rolled up in her bath towel. The reasons why she hadn’t restored it to him—although there were obviously vast numbers of young women in the world who answered to the diminutive Di—were a little complex. Deep down in her heart she didn’t trust him, she didn’t like him, and the letter had been written on such extremely expensive notepaper—hand-woven notepaper with a crinkly edge such as the goddaughter of a duke might be expected to use. And she couldn’t forget the way in which Diane Fairchild, in the midst of her distress at the airport over saying good-bye to Rick, had visibly brightened and smiled at Jake when he approached her.
And Jake’s little nod for no apparent reason had considerably increased the brightness.
If one dwelt upon Diane’s reaction to Jake’s curiously obscure method of conveying something to her at the airport (unnecessarily obscure if they were the casual acquaintances they claimed to be on the surface) and then considered the possibilities of the tail end of the affectionate letter Melanie had become possessed of as a result of her visit to the beach, then there was a good deal of food for further and constant thought.
So Melanie overcame the conviction that she should restore the fragment of letter because it didn’t belong to her—and it did belong to Jake— and resisted a second impulse to tear it up. In the end she tucked it away with her handkerchiefs, where at least it could do no harm, and decided that if nothing ever came to light that would make it appear even more incriminating she would tear it up. And if something did come to light...
Well, if it did, would it be her concern? Would she have any right to interfere whatever came to light?
Even in Rick’s best interests?
One day, she supposed, she would tear it up, and then she could forget all about it. In the meantime she strove to forget that it was reposing amongst her handkerchiefs, and concentrated on giving full value for her salary. Rick seemed scarcely to be benefiting from his stay in New York, or developing a more amenable disposition. Over the week-end he had been an entirely different person, but once he was back on the job the old irritable impatience seemed to clamp down on him again. Possibly the heat affected him, and the knowledge that he was three thousand miles from Diane Fairchild, but it was also perfectly plain that, whatever the basis of their friendship, he and Jake were not in perfect accord with one another.
Jake was always suave in his dealings with his employer’s son, and an onlooker would have said that he went out of his way to make the more fortunate young man’s lot in life easier. And, unlike, Rick, he was slow to take offence. But none of this forbearance seemed to endear him to Rick, and occasionally the young Vandraaton’s temper flared so unreasonably that even Melanie had to admit life was not entirely easy for the assistant manager of the Nonpareil. It was not within his province to make really forceful retaliation, and his nature, apparently, found it easy to overlook snubs, and even direct insults.
But Melanie had the feeling that he didn’t forget them.
She didn’t flatter herself that Rick’s more noticeable hostility towards the assistant manager dated from the morning when the latter had forced his kisses on her on the beach on Long Island; but it did strike her that it was a hostility that appeared to be growing. And she wondered whether—just supposing it was Diane Fairchild who had written so uninhibitedly to Jake—Rick had some sort of suspicion of what was happening.
On the surface he and Jake were occasionally quite good friends, and they went off together to lunches and dinners, and attended functions together in amiable accord. Long-distance calls came through late in the evenings for Rick, and he took them in his private sitting-room; and frequently one of the first calls he made in the mornings was to the number from which the late call had come the night before.
Jake was aware of the calls, and smiled blandly. He was more capable of smiling blandly than any man Melanie had ever met before.
Towards Melanie Rick behaved like an employer whose mind was filled with other things. There were rare moments when he smiled at her, rarer moments when he inquired what she did with her free time, but mostly she was sure he had no idea what she did with her time, save that she spent many hours at a typewriter, and taking down his dictation.
Actually, her free time was rath
er a burden to her, for she had no idea what to do with it. She was a little timorous of exploring New York on her own, but she did start up an acquaintance with one of the female receptionists in the hotel, and was recommended to various stores, and places where she could get her hair done and so forth at more reasonable charges than those exacted by the hotel.
The heat-wave continued, and her room at night was almost stiflingly hot. In spite of air-conditioning, and all the other advantages of a luxury hotel, she longed for the week-end, and another invitation which might be extended to her to become a guest in a big, cool house on Long Island.
But her second week-end in America had to be passed in New York, although Rick and Jake both said a temporary farewell to it. It seemed to hurt neither of them, the thought that she was left behind amongst the skyscrapers and the millions who still teemed over the steaming pavements, and sweltered beneath an unkind sun; and she had never felt so lonely and unwanted in her life as she felt haunting Central Park, and looking into windows on Fifth Avenue.
She told herself it was the unsettling influence of one week-end in a millionaire’s home, but she knew it wasn’t that. It was the thought of Rick—who refused to be banished, even although he had barely noticed her during the past week—and Mrs. Janet Carey, listening to the musical splashing of a moonlit sea while they stood in gardens high above it, and enough intoxicating scents floated in the atmosphere to make anyone behave a little rashly.
The thought of Rick, once the temporary intoxication was past, waiting for his nightly call to be put through to London, or for London to come through to him first...
On Monday morning he was back in his suite overlooking Park Avenue, and unless it was purely Melanie’s imagination his mood was a little more mellow than when he went away. By contrast her mood must have struck him as quiet and lethargic, and he looked at her as she sat waiting with her notebook in a crisp candy-pink and white striped frock she had bought in one of the downtown shops. Although there was that tinge of red in her hair the clear pink suited her, and her skin looked extraordinarily matt and pale. Her mouth looked pale, too, for she had been sparing with lipstick, and by contrast with her bright hair her eyelashes were very thick and dark, and they lay very appealingly against the childish smoothness of her cheeks.