by Susan Barrie
She leaned her forehead against the ice-cool glass for a moment, and during that moment she felt extraordinarily at peace. Her problems faded, and for an all too brief while nothing that was essentially earthly mattered very much, and the emptiness of her future did not actively appal her. She was still leaning against the window when Charles Leydon came along the corridor and also paused outside Lorne’s door.
Alison, who had withdrawn hurriedly behind the protection of the long velvet curtain, saw him smile a little ... and then he went on to Jessamy’s door.
Outside Jessamy’s door he stood and appeared to be lost in sudden, intense thought. Jessamy was moving about on the other side of the door—Alison knew she was tying up her presents and doing them into attractive gaily tied packages to be placed beneath the Christmas tree in the morning—and quite clearly through the stout oak door came the awkward echo of her limp, and the slight uneven tapping noise that her footsteps made on her light, flowered carpet.
Alison, making every endeavour to remain concealed, noticed that Leydon frowned, and in the dimness of the corridor his dark, shapely head was bent and his lips appeared compressed.
To Alison his whole expression suggested that he was very much concerned about something, and she did not need to ask herself what it was that he was concerned about. It was Jessamy and her limp ... only Jessamy had the power to make him look quite like that, as if his whole inner being was in a state of silent revolt, and he was overtaken by a feeling like helplessness because despite his own personal success and his wealth there was little he could do himself to help her.
His money might achieve something in the end, but for the time being he had to endure this shattering sensation of frustration, and Jessamy had to remain handicapped although for the moment perfectly content on the other side of her carefully locked door.
The cold air from the window was chilling the soft fair hairs on Alison’s slender neck by the time Leydon moved on, and she was able to escape to her own room. It took her some little time in front of her electric fire before she was warm again, and even then she was not entirely warm. At the very heart of her she felt bleak and cold, and curiously disenchanted.
She had little time to feel disenchanted the following morning, while she was cooking the breakfast, and as Leydon insisted that they all had it together in the vast mausoleum of a dining-room she even felt ridiculous as she accepted his invitation to take the seat at the bottom of the table facing him.
Nevertheless, it was a brilliant morning, and outside on the lawns the sun sparkled on the short wintry turf. The dining-room itself was not really a mausoleum this morning, for all the pictures were decked with holly, and the table looked quite gay, bedecked with pretty china.
The girls wore new warm dresses, and she herself wore a soft lambs-wool sweater and a slim skirt. She had had her hair shampooed and set two days before, and it framed her face in pale silken curls as she sat at the table. She wore a neat row of pearls and a wristlet-watch that had been a present from her late husband on one of her birthdays, and although slight and in some ways insignificant she seemed to fit into the chair she occupied.
There was nothing about her to suggest that she was going to dart back upstairs to her kitchen in the south tower the very instant breakfast was over, and don a clean concealing overall and plunge her hands into the flour-bin.
Miss Prim was in very festive mood, and looking forward to the short walk to the church, where Marianne was to sing with the choir. Nevertheless, she offered to help Alison with the preparation of lunch, and did not seem at all convinced when Alison thanked her and said there was nothing at all she could do. Alison, it is true, had arranged everything so that she could accompany the others to church, and in the end she was the only one apart from Charles Leydon who drove to church, he having no great liking for walking and insisting—somewhat aggressively, Alison thought—that considering all the demands she was making of herself in one way and another she had no right to submit herself to the ordeal of walking.
Even Jessamy was permitted to trudge over the sunlit ground, and that was one thing Alison would have insisted on having altered if Leydon’s car hadn’t shot away with her, and as they sped down the drive and along the winding road to the village he glanced at her almost triumphantly, and addressed her on a note of barely concealed mockery.
“For once you’re ahead of the others, and it will do them good to walk, anyway. Prim’s figure demands a little hard exercise occasionally, and I’m sure Marianne likes dawdling behind with her boy-friend. As for Jessamy, she insisted on walking, so you needn’t feel in the least bit guilty about her.”
“But she is the one who shouldn’t walk.”
“I thought you considered it a bad thing that she should have a car of her own.”
“I do. But only because I—we—”
“Can’t afford it?” He smiled peculiarly at the road ahead. “Forget what you can and cannot afford on Christmas Day. Christmas is a great leveller, you know ... or should be. We none of us own more than the next man while the spirit of Christmas exerts its influence. When it’s all over we can resume our old ways and take up the old threads and foster the old hates and wallow in the old misconceptions, but not while the church bells are pealing as they are now, and the presents are still unwrapped. Relax, Alison, while you have the chance, and if you don’t mind my saying so you look very fetching in that outfit.”
She was wearing a slim blue coat with touches of dark fur about it, and a little sapphire-blue velvet hat, and it was perfectly true that she did look very fetching indeed. She glanced at him for a moment to make sure he wasn’t making fun of her, was surprised by the unusual seriousness of his eyes, and then found it necessary to look away quickly just as he remembered that he was driving a car and the place for his eyes was on the road ahead.
“Happy Christmas, Alison,” he said softly, as they reached the lych-gate. “A very, very happy Christmas!”
She followed him silently into the Leydon pew in the centuries-old church, and was surprised because he had a most pleasing light baritone voice, and he seemed to know the words of all the familiar hymns—which perhaps shouldn’t have been so surprising—without looking them up on the hymn sheet, and after sitting in the pew for ten minutes or so he seemed to grow very still and withdrawn, as if overcome by a great deal of thought.
His eyes were on the Norman arches and the Norman beams alternately, and it could have been that he was merely studying them and appraising them from an architect’s point of view. Or it could have been that he wasn’t even seeing the arches or the beams at all.
Lunch, when they returned to Leydon, was a great success, and although they had to do their own waiting at table the meal was still a success.
For dinner, Mrs. Davenport was arriving to be of as much assistance as she could, and Margaret, too, had seemed quite willing to sacrifice her own Christmas at home in order that the meal should be properly served.
After lunch they all gathered round the tree in the firelit hall, and Leydon undertook the task of handing out the presents. Marianne said jokingly that he should have worn a red robe and made himself up to look like Father Christmas, but by this time he wasn’t in quite such a responsive mood, and he didn’t answer.
He was intent on watching the girls’ expressions as they received their presents. Alison received several small parcels from her stepdaughters, and they in turn received several from her. Mrs. Davenport and Margaret were handed parcels from the tree, and in addition to one of the finest handbags she had seen in her life Mrs. Davenport discovered a bank note in hers. She looked gratefully at Charles Leydon, and somewhat cynically he waited for the joy to overspread Margaret’s face when she discovered a somewhat similar handbag and a rather smaller bank note in her package from the head of the house.
He was not disappointed. Margaret flashed him a radiant smile. She and Mrs. Davenport departed hugging boxes of chocolates, scent, stockings and Leydon’s presents up in
their arms, and made themselves a cup of tea in the kitchen while Leydon handed out the remainder of the gifts from the tree. These were largely composed of his own personal gifts to each of the three girls, and to Alison.
In the case of the latter, after much rather embarrassed lifting of several layers of tissue paper out of a rather large box she was able to remove from the box a dressing-gown ... beautifully warm and essentially practical, but by no means the most glamorous dressing-gown she had seen in her life, although undoubtedly a very expensive one.
Somewhat taken aback, she stared first at Leydon, and then at the girls. Both Lorne and Jessamy were trying to look as if they thought she was extraordinarily fortunate, but Marianne was unable to conceal her surprise. With uplifted eyebrows she shrugged her shoulders, and then laughed.
“Well, the next time you have to take on a spot of nursing, and you’re needed in the night, you’re all set for it,” she said. “No risk of taking cold!”
“That’s what I thought,” Leydon observed quietly. “That’s why I bought it.”
Marianne gazed at him incredulously, laughed more shrilly, and then fell silent as Alison rebuked her with her eyes.
“Thank you very much, Mr. Leydon,” she said quietly to Charles. “It’s the very thing I most needed.”
Which was not exactly true, as she had just bought herself a far more frilly conception of a similar garment, and had an extremely practical if rather well-worn one in the back of her wardrobe.
As she met Charles’s eyes, and the embarrassed colour continued to sting her cheeks, she thought that his expression was distinctly odd. He appeared, in some curious way, to be enjoying himself in a distinctly restrained fashion.
His present to Marianne was the next one that was handed out. This failed to raise eyebrows, but brought forth a few “Ahs!” of delight.
It was a beauty-case in cream leather filled with an expensive make of beauty preparations and a lot of most attractive cut-glass jars and bottles. In addition she received a bottle of perfume that brought a delighted rush of colour to her cheeks, and a box of chocolates and some sheer nylon stockings. Lorne received a set of books that she had been coveting for some time, and an enormous box of chocolates. Miss Prim received a silk headsquare and a beautiful scarf brooch that very nearly deprived her of the power to express her thanks, it was so plainly not just costume jewellery.
“You are most generous,” she declared, when she could get the words out, “more than generous!” She glanced round at Alison with suspiciously over-bright eyes. “Do you marvel I find him a most satisfying employer?”
“If a trifle over-demanding on occasion,” Leydon himself put in drily.
He was waiting for Jessamy to discover what was inside her various rather outsize packages, and indeed they were all waiting for Jessamy to untie the satin ribbon that confined an unmistakable dress-box and let them all have a good look at the contents. This time there was absolute silence as Jessamy, with trembling hands, lifted out a fur coat ... full length, of nutria lamb, and as pliable as silk. The satin lining alone must have ensured that the coat was a most expensive purchase, and in addition to it there were other presents.
A short evening dress in rose-pink chiffon with some touches of gold embroidery on the bodice; a pair of fragile sandals in rose-pink satin that at the moment she couldn’t wear, but which were intended, no doubt, to encourage her to look forward to the future, when she would be able to wear them; a fine wool sweater also in rose colour—which was the one colour that really suited Jessamy—and a gold lipstick and powder compact.
Nobody said anything at all for several seconds, and then Marianne’s “Well!” expressed the reaction of all of them, even including Miss Prim.
Leydon stood waiting, a little smile on his lips, while Jessamy came up for the third time, as it were. She made an excited, and somewhat awkward, rush at him.
“I—I could kiss you!” she declared, lifting a radiant face.
“Do!” he replied, and bent his sleek dark head over her, while his light eyes danced with approval. Jessamy’s petal soft, pretty pink lips just touched his cheek ... and then impulsively touched it again.
Alison felt as if the breath caught in her throat and hurt her, but Miss Prim applauded.
“Well, I must say you have every reason to be extremely grateful to Mr. Leydon, Jessamy,” she remarked. “Such an avalanche of presents!” And then in order that he shouldn’t receive the wrong impression, she added hastily: “And we’ve all been most fortunate! Such a really wonderful Christmas!”
It continued to be quite a wonderful Christmas for most of them, although Alison felt as if it had ceased to mean anything at all to her. She was the only one amongst them who had been singled out to receive something severely practical in the way of a gift from the owner of Leydon Hall ... and unless her imagination was entirely at fault he had actually enjoyed setting her apart from the rest.
If he had had a grudge against her she would almost have been prepared to swear that he did it deliberately ... no engaging trifles to offset the suggestion that she was a practical person who would appreciate practical recognition. Not even a very small bottle of perfume, or a very ordinary lipstick. Not even a silk head-square...
She was surprised that he hadn’t presented her with a set of saucepans, or a new electric iron, or a vacuum cleaner.
And although he had been very generous to her other two stepdaughters, Jessamy’s fur coat alone set her apart from them as someone for whom he had a rather special regard. Her evening dress and her sweater and sandals made it clear that the regard was rather more than special ... and Alison was beginning to suspect that she knew just how important it was, and how seriously it had to be looked upon.
Charles Leydon, bachelor, in his thirties, had made the acquaintance of a charming, helpless girl, and fallen in love with her. The next thing he would be doing would be approaching her stepmother for permission to marry her. Although he would probably wait until after her treatment in Austria to do that.
And it was now perfectly clear that he had every intention that Jessamy should undergo that treatment.
Alison went to bed that night feeling as if she no longer had anything in Life to look forward to ... apart from Jessamy’s future wellbeing.
And as she was only twenty-seven, and not even thirty-seven, the sensation of cold despair that came upon her as she stood before her window in the privacy of her room that night and looked out into the Christmas dark was enough in itself to make her wonder whether she could possibly face up to whatever future was in store for her.
Miss Prim, before she said good-night to her, had pressed her hand.
“My dear,” she said, “thank you for the immense amount of trouble you’ve taken to give us a wonderful time! I don’t know when I’ve enjoyed Christmas Day more!” But her eyes were full of sympathy, because she was a very shrewd woman who had never married herself, and therefore perhaps understood the ache in the heart of a girl who had been most unfairly married by a man who had wanted a mother for his children, and now had to stand aside while one of those children carried off the prize that, although she wouldn’t admit it, she wanted for herself.
The life of the man she had nursed ... perhaps preserved. And a life belongs to its preserver, according to an ancient belief.
Rosalind Prim understood all this, and she wanted to let Alison know that she did ... But all she could do was press her hand, and feel a very real sympathy for her.
Men never, in her experience, reacted the way they should. Alison had not spared herself, but it was Jessamy, with her unfortunate lame foot, who had succeeded in breaking down the defences that surrounded a hardened bachelor’s heart, and found her way in through a gap in the barricades. Been pulled in, in fact, by two strong, and shapely, and eager masculine hands.
But Miss Prim, also sitting before her window after a warm bath and a degree of reflection about the day just ended, thought it a little cruel to distinguish bet
ween a girl and her stepmother so very deliberately. A fur coat for one, a warm but severely practical dressing-gown for the other.
And there was not, after all, a great deal of difference in their ages. They could have been sisters.
Alison, wrapping herself in her well-worn dressing-gown after thrusting the other, in its cardboard box, on the top of her wardrobe, wondered whether the distinction really had been deliberate. If so, Charles Leydon was not a man who expressed his gratitude very easily or suitably.
CHAPTER X
TWO days after Christmas Miss Prim returned to London, and Leydon announced his intention of following her.
Alison, dusting his sitting-room while he made the announcement, concealed any surprise she felt and merely turned and asked whether he was likely to be away for long.
Leydon lighted a cigarette very carefully and deliberately, and regarded her through the faint haze of smoke that arose between them.
“I don’t know,” he replied. “But I shall, of course, be returning to Leydon from time to time.”
“From time to time?”
“Yes.” He was reclining in a comfortable chair, and he crossed one well-pressed trouser leg over the other. He regarded the tip of his cigarette thoughtfully. “I don’t mind admitting I’ve become quite fond of Leydon, but my work lies in London, and I must get on with it. Here I’m tempted to lounge and do nothing.”
“The doctor said you should have a complete break after your illness,” Alison reminded him, polishing the top of the desk with vigour. “He didn’t want you to do any work for several months, and suggested going abroad as a form of convalescence, if you remember?”