by Susan Barrie
But there was no security here in these lonely mountains, on which she must presently turn her back—and, if it came to that, there was no security for her in England, no actual and complete security. Only the position of a dependant in another’s more luxurious home, and the prospect of being turned out of it at a moment’s notice, more or less, if it suited the whim of her employer!
She sighed—the sigh escaping her before she realized it—and Richard ceased prodding the bowl of his pipe to regard her. His dark eyebrows shot upwards.
“Miss Brooks is pensive tonight!” he observed. “Why, Miss Brooks?” he demanded. “What is the cause of that so gusty sigh?”
Even Noel, who had been turning the pages of a magazine, looked at her curiously, and Melanie felt herself coloring a little, although she quickly denied the sigh.
“I have no reason to sigh,” she prevaricated. “If I did it was probably because I was thinking it is very comfortable in here, and outside, for the first time, the weather is bad.”
“And that depresses you?” he asked. “But it will probably be clear again in the morning. These mists come down very suddenly, and often they clear just as suddenly.”
She glanced out of the window.
“But they are apt to make one feel a little—cut off,” she ventured.
“They might,” he agreed, “if you and Noel were here alone, but you have Trudi and myself to bear you company. Is there anything more you could desire?” with mockery in his glance.
He stretched himself luxuriously in his chair, and the smoke from his pipe curled upwards into the mixture of firelight and soft lamplight. Melanie with difficulty repressed another sigh, for if only she were able to relax as completely herself and take the maximum advantage of the superb comfort of the chesterfield, stretching her own slender legs out in front of her, then the toe of her neat right shoe would come into direct contact with the toe of his stout-looking but beautifully turned brogue. And once that happened! ...
A kind of quiver shot through her at the thought, and she was trying to force her mind into more prosaic channels—and less dangerous ones!—when Trudi appeared in the doorway behind her and suddenly announced a visitor.
Richard Trenchard lifted his eyes lazily to regard the tall form of Dr. Kurt Muller, towering above Trudi on the fringe of the oasis of color and light, and then abruptly his eyes narrowed as he realized who it was. Before even calmly inviting him to come along in and join them, and to be seated in the only spare comfortable chair.
“Not a very good night for your visit, Doctor,” he drawled politely—he himself did not rise from his chair. “But no doubt you were under the impression that Miss Brooks might be lonely?”
Kurt Muller looked a little surprised at sight of him, but his surprise did not prevent him from appearing pleased as soon as he, too, realized who the other man was.
“Mr. Trenchard!” he exclaimed. “I have been wanting to meet you.”
Melanie rose from the couch and offered him the seat beside Noel, but Richard Trenchard ordered her back into it somewhat unceremoniously. The quiet-faced doctor, surveying the two—the girl with a flush like a damask rose suddenly staining her cheeks, and eyes that were openly uncomfortable, and the arrogant, well-dressed Englishman whose affable voice had a clipped edge like ice—took in without difficulty the whole situation, but did nothing to betray the fact that he did. And Melanie offered him coffee, as she had done on a previous occasion when they two were alone.
“Certainly not coffee!” Richard Trenchard said, in his arrogant voice, causing her to set down the coffee percolator rather hurriedly. “Trudi!” calling her back into the room. “There is some excellent cognac in the corner cabinet over there. Let’s have it out, please. Dr. Muller must not be permitted to visit us on so inclement an evening and be regaled with only coffee.”
Melanie bit her lip slightly, and Noel began to grin a little behind her hand. She had never seen her uncle in quite such a high-handed and haughty humor before! and she believed she knew the reason why. Dr. Muller admitted it was a most unpleasant evening and accepted his brandy without demur, lifting it as a toast to his young patient, who was plainly making such excellent and rapid strides back to health.
“To the continuance of such encouraging improvement in your niece, Mr. Trenchard,” he said. “At any rate you will have her home in England in another six months, although I would prefer that she be permitted to stay out here in our clean, good air for a much longer period than that.”
“And Miss Brooks with her?” Richard suggested very dryly.
Dr. Muller instantly agreed, as if he thought it an excellent notion.
“And Miss Brooks with her! That, of course, would be ideal. But can Miss Brooks be persuaded to stay? I am hoping you will use your influence with her, Mr. Trenchard, and then perhaps she will agree to another few months, at least.”
“And after that?” Richard inquired curiously.
Kurt Muller looked faintly surprised.
“After that your niece might even be well enough to be entered at one of our good schools out here, or in Switzerland—how do you say, ‘Finishing Schools?’—and Miss Brooks will presumably return home to England. Unless by that time my country has made so strong an appeal to her that she will not wish to leave it,” with a gentle and very attractive smile at the girl herself.
Melanie expected Richard to’ say something crushing and disdainful, but he did not do so. Instead he surprised her considerably by becoming suddenly much more moderate and actually looking at the doctor as if for the first time he recognized him as quite a pleasant human being whom he was almost pleased to know, and towards whom he wished to express a modicum at least of appreciation.
“You’ve looked after my niece very well, Doctor,” he told him, “and I was surprised to find her so far on the road to recovery when I arrived yesterday. But I know Miss Brooks has done her job well, too. Miss Brooks is efficiency, reliability and complete dependability all rolled into one.” He cast Melanie a curious, half-humorous glance, and then continued: “I’d like to have a chat with you before I return to London. I shall be here for a few days, and perhaps you can find the time to lunch with me at my hotel?—or dinner tomorrow night, if you can manage it?”
Dr. Muller expressed himself as delighted to dine with him, and so it was arranged, and after that the conversation continued smoothly until the doctor announced that he must leave. The mist had thinned a little by that time, although the air was full of a fine, soft-falling rain. A few stars were visible in a tiny patch of clear sky almost immediately above the chalet, but all around the heavens were dark and obscured, and no lights pierced the blanket of mist in the valley. Dr. Muller, who was as familiar with his countryside as most men who have lived all their lives almost in the same spot, and knew every whim of Nature in that area by heart, offered to drive Richard Trenchard back to his hotel in the valley, but the playwright declined. He had his own car, and was quite capable of driving himself—or that was what the doctor gathered from his refusal.
But Melanie, who with Noel accompanied him to the door when he left, shortly after Kurt Muller took his departure, was not so sure when she looked up at that thin film which screened the one or two visible stars, and then at the unseen mountains on either hand. She wished he had allowed the doctor to drive him.
“Perhaps you ought to remain here for the night,” she suggested suddenly, impetuously, as she pictured him and his car being precipitated into the valley, and his mangled remains lying there undiscovered until the morning beneath that blanket of uncanny white vapor. “Noel and I could share a room, and you could have mine.”
“Now that really is kind,” he said, as if surprised, looking down at her through the darkness. She felt, rather than saw, that the twinkle was in his eyes, but there was an extraordinary softened look round his mouth. “But I wouldn’t dream of putting you about like that.”
“It wouldn’t be putting me about. And I think you ought to stay,�
�� insistently.
“Do you?” He dismissed Noel back to the warmth and comfort of the living-room, for she was standing shivering in the gloom and then once more looked down at Melanie. This time she could see his eyes, and there was no longer any twinkle in them, while his mouth was almost grave. “Can it be that you would dislike to hear that I had had an accident? That you might even be slightly upset?”
Melanie shivered inwardly. If anything like that happened to him she would be more than upset. She would—but the very thought caused her eyes to dilate a little, and as his hand was on her shoulder and he was bending a little towards her he was able to study the expression in those eyes with comparative ease. It might have been that he learned something that she would never willingly have allowed him to learn. In any case the pressure of his hand suddenly increased, and he said softly, “You would be—just a little upset! Wouldn’t you, Melanie?”
He did not often call her Melanie, and when he did the warning telegraph inside her brain caused her to stiffen as if she sensed the need of placing herself upon her guard. But he merely bent a little closer and imprinted a light kiss upon her brow—almost a fatherly salute—and then gently touched her cheek with his long forefinger.
“Thank you, my dear,” he said, “for so much concern, but I’m not in the least likely to meet with an accident. Good night!”
And she watched his car lights disappearing down into the valley.
The following night he dined with Dr. Muller, and then he had the girls to his hotel again and entertained them to dinner at his flower-decked table in the window which overlooked the whole of the wide valley, filled at that hour of the evening with a purple bloom like the purple bloom on fruit.
He had intended when he arrived to remain in Zindenbourg for no longer than a few days, but the few days became a week, and the week spread out into nearly a fortnight, and still he refrained from booking his seat in a return plane. His presence in London was essential, as he several times explained to Melanie, but after that one night when the mist closed down over the mountains the weather became again so settled and perfect that it was easy to understand his desire to linger on amid such enchanting surroundings.
There was something almost unreal about life in the shadow of the eternal snows, where the atmosphere was so sparkling and clear that it was more dangerously heady than champagne, and every twenty-four hours impressed one with a sensation of living in a drop-scene at the theatre. To awaken to the music of cow-bells and the silver tones of an angelus, breakfast on a balcony overhanging like a precipice a carpet of lush meadows and multi-colored wild-flowers, breathe in all the perfume of intoxicating scents which seemed to float like a cloud in the warm air, and with the coming down of the dusk wait for the stars to shine forth like jewels—all these things were sufficient to tempt him, but they were not the only things.
Trudi, at the chalet, whipped up her most feathery-light omelettes when he elected to remain for a meal, and served him with coffee on which the cream floated in great puffs. His niece took him for walks in the cool pine wood which adjoined his property and succeeded in worming her way into his good graces by growing so much more startlingly alluring every day that his artistic soul was charmed by her, and Melanie undertook to type his letters for him because he was temporarily lost without a secretary. And in the evenings Dr. Muller spent comfortable half-hours either chatting with him at his hotel or seated beside the wide fireplace in the chalet—for it was usually cold enough at that hour to permit of a great, glowing cheerful fire—and they discussed all sorts of subjects from the advance of medical science to mountaineering.
Melanie was glad that the early hostility the doctor had aroused in her employer had apparently passed, and that they now appeared to be good friends, although so dissimilar in thoughts, habits and outlook. Kurt Muller’s great hobby was climbing, and although able to admire him for his intrepidity and envy him his enthusiasm Richard Trenchard was in no danger of wishing to emulate his exploits in that direction, although he more than once reminded Melanie that one day—one day!—when he could summon up the energy, she and he would climb the mountain up which she had climbed with Dr. Muller and it would then be her task to guide him to that ledge from which they could watch the gates of dawn swing open. But he did not say whether that day was to be soon—or whether it was to be merely in some distant future which, unlike the unfailing miracle of the sunrise, would never really come.
There were one or two more excursions and picnics, which they made in his car. With the sensation mat all this would soon be over, and that very soon now he would have returned to London—and Sylvia Gaythorpe!—Melanie decided to allow herself to enjoy these various outings, and his society, without continuously reminding herself that they were only outings, and that he was merely being attentive to her because there was no one else apart from his niece to be attentive to, and that even in his nicest moments he was really only mocking her and seeking to find out how she would respond to advances. He was not interested in her—not seriously—she knew that. But for the moment it was enough to be with him, to have him smile at her as if she, sometimes mattered almost as much as Sylvia Gaythorpe, and was as attractive as Sylvia Gaythorpe, even although she was well aware that he would forget her the instant he returned to London.
And having adopted this more philosophic attitude, which was a renunciation of all her secret dreams—she had never allowed them to become hopes!—she grew lighter-hearted and appeared so, and was more able to enter into his spirit of gay good-fellowship and camaraderie, and even to allow him to tease and provoke her without being noticeably affected by the teasing. And if sometimes he surprised her by looking at her a little askance—if he sometimes seemed to be pondering a puzzle—an enigma—when he studied her so closely, she did not ask herself why he did so. And she did not permit him to repeat that light kiss on her forehead when he said good night. When he left the chalet after spending an evening in their company she kept Noel close to her, and it was Noel whom he nowadays kissed good night—albeit it was no more than a kind of butterfly caress—thereby setting a greater seal upon their relationship as uncle and niece.
Dinner dances at the hotel were the gayest feature of that peculiarly halcyon period, and the only really smart diversion Zindenbourg offered at that season. And although Richard was not one to find much enjoyment in the efforts of an out-of-season dance band, he did invite his niece and her companion to extract what enjoyment they could out of dancing with him on at least two occasions, apart from the other occasions when they simply dined with him there.
He had one or two friends staying in the hotel. There were only too pleased to be introduced to the girls, and they formed quite a lively party on the second occasion. On the third—and last—occasion before the fortnight ended, Dr. Muller was invited to join them, and as it was on his way he collected the girls from the chalet and set them down on the balcony of the hotel, where they were to await their host.
While they were waiting he ordered drinks, and as Melanie sat sipping hers she could see through the big window into the main dining-salon, where their table occupied quite a prominent place. It was usually gay with skilfully arranged floral decorations which the manager felt to be only the due of so important a personage as Richard Trenchard, who had patronized his hotel for so long. But tonight the table seemed to be larger than usual, and the sparkle and glitter of cut-glass and plate and flowers was almost dazzling. And an ice-bucket was already in position beside the host’s chair, and that meant champagne, and some sort of a celebration.
There seemed to be unusual excitement in the hotel, too, as if an arrival—probably unexpected—had filled it with more than ordinary bustle.
Dr. Muller leant forward to inspect Melanie’s glass, and was about to suggest another sherry when he noticed the direction of her surprised glance. Me looked over his shoulder at the table and its magnificence, and smiled a little.
“The management is endeavoring to do itself justice
,” he said. “I understand that a film star arrived here today from England, and the entire staff is running round in circles.”
Melanie felt as if someone had hit her between the shoulder blades and temporarily winded her. She could say nothing, for this could mean only one thing—the arrival of Sylvia Gaythorpe! Unless some other film star had been attracted to Zindenbourg, which was unlikely...
And somehow she had known that Sylvia, would arrive like this, unexpectedly, putting an end to her false peace of mind, and scattering all hopes or possibility of enjoyment for that evening.
Kurt Muller saw something like a stunned look appear in her eyes, and he wondered considerably, but he said nothing. Melanie, in his opinion, was looking as delightful as only a young and appealing Englishwoman with chestnut hair and large brown eyes and an exquisite pallor could look, in a tailored dress of white silk jersey worn with a little bolero of leaf-green velvet. But that she was a startled and perturbed Englishwoman was also quite dear, and even Noel looked suddenly completely astonished as she leaned forward and neglected her iced lemonade.
“Surely it’s not—” She was about to say “Sylvia?” when Sylvia herself appeared on the balcony, with Richard Trenchard beside her. Behind them—probably not at all happy at being forced to bring up the rear—was Tony Malpas.
Sylvia did not look at all pleased, and she was evidently sulking. She wore a dress of daring flame-color which, instead of fighting with her hair, seemed merely to merge with it and assist it to throw into prominence the perfection of her white skin and the brilliance of her eyes. Melanie had never seen them so long and green and snake-like under their fantastic eyelashes, and her mouth was like a flame also, and set mutinously.