The second collection of 3 great novels by Mary Burchell

by Burchell, Mary

  "Then you'd better be down in the entrance hall. Miss Thea," Denham said with decision.

  "Y-yes. All right, I will," Thea agreed, wishing it didn't all seem rather like a stage intrigue. That was the worst of people like Geraldine and Lindsay Varlon. You always found yourself involved in theatrical situations where they were concerned, thought Thea rather crossly.

  By Sunday morning, however, any possible discontent that Thea could have felt with the situation had vanished. She woke to find the sunshine of a perfect April day streaming into the room, and jumped out of bed immediately, full of excited anticipation.

  Fortunately the beauty of the day did not seem to have the same effect on Geraldine, who woke late, breakfasted in bed and, to Thea's inexpressible relief, had put in no appearance by twenty minutes past eleven. If Geraldine had been up and around when she left the apartment, Thea hardly saw how she could have gone to the lengths of concealing the fact that it was Lindsay Varlon with whom she was going out.

  "I'm off now, Denham." She put her head into the kitchen for a goodbye smile. "Isn't it a perfect day?"

  "Perfect, Miss Thea." Denham smiled back indulgently. "You have a good time and don't worry about anything I said the other evening."

  "All right." Thea laughed, gave Denham a final wave and ran quickly through the little hall and out of the apartment. As she closed the front door behind her, she heard Geraldine open her bedroom door and call "Denham! " rather peevishly.

  Only just in time! she thought, with a faintly guilty but relieved little laugh. And then the elevator silently bore her downward to safety—if one could regard Lindsay Varlon as representing that desirable state of affairs.

  He had not yet arrived, and Thea spent an agitating minute or two wondering if Geraldine had really come out of her room already dressed to go out, and would presently step out of the elevator and find her waiting there.

  And then, as the cracked bell of the nearby church tinkled out the half hour, his car drew up at the door.

  "Oh, hello!" Thea ran out to him.

  "Why, hello." He paused in the act of getting out of the car to give her an amused glance. "I haven't been keeping you waiting, have I?"

  *'0h, no." Thea dismissed the last anxious minutes with this airy untruth. "I was ready and I just thought I'd come down to save time."

  "I see." He held open the door for her with such a quizzical smile that she felt sure he saw exactly—both what she had done and her motive for doing it.

  Oh, well, it didn't matter. They were off now, with no untoward interruption from Geraldine, and the day was lovely and the car was perfect, and he looked frightfully handsome—and she was happy.

  Presently Thea began to hum to herself as they spun along, and he glanced at her with a smile and said, "Happy?"

  "Yes, awfully happy. It's a wonderful day, isn't it?"

  "Yes, wonderful, Thea. You make me feel quite youthful and carefree when you hum like that.''

  "I don't see why you need someone to make you feel youthful and carefree. You aren't exactly grandfatherly, you know," Thea told him gaily—even a little pertly, because she felt very much at ease with him today.

  He laughed and said dryly, "There are a few grey hairs, nevertheless."

  She looked with interest at his thick dark hair, usually so smooth but now slightly ruffled by the breeze from the open window.

  "Hardly any. And what there are only help to make you look distinguished. Anyone can see you're someone important and famous."

  "Oh, thank you. But all the same—" and he quoted mischievously:

  Give me back, give me back the wild freshness of

  morning. Her clouds and her tears are worth evening's best light.

  ''Don't be silly. You needn't talk about your 'evening' yet. I'm tempted to ask you flatly how old you are. But instead I'll be a nice polite girl and ask where your quotation comes from."

  "The answer is thirty-five, Thea. And the words come from one of the most beautiful of all Irish songs, 'I Saw from the Beach.' "

  "Why, thirty-five's no age!" Thea declared. "In a man," she added.

  "Charming child. Why haven't I taken you out before? You are so good for one s amourpropre,*' he said with his rather lazy smile.

  "I expect," Thea said, thoughtfully, "that you take out lots of girls—well, more likely, women—who say things that are good for your amourpropre.'''

  "Wrong," he assured her. "I have to say things that are

  good for theirs,"

  Thea laughed. "Well, you can have a rest for today. You don't need to say anything to tickle my vanity. I can bear it if you omit that part of the day's pleasure."

  "Why, don't you want to hear that your hair looks wonderful, your charming gaiety is infectious, and that I consider myself a lucky man to be taking you out for the day?"

  Thea looked at him speculatively.

  "Do you say that sort of thing to lots of women?" she inquired. Whereas he laughed more than she had seen him do so far, and said, "You have the oddest idea of me, Thea. Do I look as though I spend my time saying that sort of thing to all and sundry?'

  "Not to all. But rather to sundry," Thea said, and grinned.

  "You little beast," he retorted pleasantly. "Well, at the risk of disappointing you, I'm not at all in the habit of saying that sort of thing to anyone. That's not my technique."

  "Oh. Then you didn't mean it when you said it to me, I suppose."

  "On the contrary, I did."

  "Then I wish you'd say it again, because I discounted it so thoroughly before that I didn't really notice what it was," Thea told him.

  ^ J 2 Meant for Each Other

  ''I will not say it again," he assured her. "You don't deserve it."

  "All right," Thea said equably, and leaned back contentedly again in her seat.

  He gave her an extremely amused glance, and they drove on in silence. But it was a companionable and pleasant silence.

  After a while he said, '^I hope you're getting hungry. We've nearly reached the place where we are going to have lunch."

  Thea sat up and began to say that yes, she was hungry; but instead she broke off to cry out, "Oh, how lovely!" as the car swept over the brow of the hill and began a gradual descent to the river, which curved round at the foot of the hill in a shining arc. Trees clustered on either side, sometimes drooping right over to touch the water.

  He smiled at her pleasure and a few minutes later drew up outside a riverside restaurant where he appeared to be extremely well known.

  The man in charge of the parking lot greeted him as an old friend; the manager, looking very suave and elegant in the entrance hall, came over to give him a special welcome; and the head waiter immediately led the way to a table on the terrace overlooking the river.

  "Oh, isn't this heavenly!" Thea leaned her elbows on the table and gazed out over the river, leaving her companion to choose her lunch, which he did with an admirable regard for a young, healthy and rather unsophisticated appetite.

  "I am enjoying myself." She smiled at him across the table when the waiter had departed to carry out Varlon's orders.

  "I'm very glad, Thea. Didn't I say the first time I met you that you have a very lively appreciation of pleasure?"

  "Did you?" She smiled. "Yes, I believe you did. But there's not much in that, is there? What's the good of being alive if you can't still appreciate the good things that come your way?"

  "What indeed?" he agreed with a Smile.

  "You still enjoy things, don't you?" she said a little anxiously.

  "At least, I am enjoying myself immensely at this mo-

  ment,* ne assured her and smiled straight into her eyes, introducing an experience that was entirely new to Thea.

  *'Is that part of your technique?" she inquired with an irresistibly mischievous smile.

  "No, you unkind little wretch, it isn *t."

  "Well, it's a good hne," Thea told him. "You ought to get results with it.'*

  He leaned back in his
chair and regarded her with amusement and mock dismay.

  "And I imagined you couldn't look after yourself!*' he said.

  "Well, I can." Thea began to eat her lunch with great enjoyment. "All the same—" she looked up and smiled at him "—I was most awfully glad when you came to meet me at the station. I very nearly cried, just before you spoke to me."

  He shook his head.

  "You don't expect me to believe that, do you?"

  "Oh, but it's true! I was miserable and quite terrified," Thea insisted. "When I said just now that I could look after myself, I only meant if there were essentially nice people around."

  There was a thoughtful silence, and then he inquired dryly, "Am I to take it from that remark that I rank as an essentially nice person?"

  "Of course."

  "I'm afraid that's one mark down for you, Thea. No one has ever before committed the error of describing me as a *nice'man."

  "No?" Thea regarded him with a critical eye, which he seemed to find rather more disconcerting than she would have expected. "Well, of course, I know what you mean. Superficially, you're something of a rake, but fundamentally-"

  "Thea, how old did you say you were? "

  "Nineteen—nearly twenty. Why?"

  "Never mind. Do go on. Fundamentally I am—what?"

  "Fundamentally you mind quite a lot about the things that really matter.

  "And what," he asked carefully, "do you imagine I consider are the things that really matter?"

  "The same as I think," Thea said with startling simplic-

  ^ 7^ Meant for Each Other

  ity. ''Being kind-wanting as fair a deal for other people as you would like for yourself, being capable of moralincligna-tion over meanness and cruelty, and knowing that you have to do something about it, and-oh, well, you know, things like that," she finished comprehensively.

  "And you believe that I subscribe to all that?" he asked | gravely. j

  'Yes, I do. I can't tell you why I know it, but I do. I! suppose it's somewhere at the back of all my small experience of you, and I can't help sensing it."

  "All because I spent some money on you, which I could well afford?'' He smiled slightly.

  "Oh, no The money hasn't anything to do with it—or very little. Money's the easiest thing in the world to give, if you have it. I do understand that. It's the attitude of mind, the—the wanting to spend it that way. But that's only part of it, anyway. There were other things, too. Things that seem much smaller but are really more important.''

  He looked at her rather somberly and then away across the river, and was silent so long that she prompted him a little anxiously.

  "Well, am I right? What do you think?"

  He turned his head then and smiled at her.

  "I think you're such a nice child that it quite horrifies me to remember that I might not have come and collected you from Euston that day."

  "Oh "It was not the reply Thea had been expecting,

  but she saw she would never get him to talk seriously about himself She also saw that, for all his light manner of saying that about herself, he meant it most sincerely. And she forbore to question him further.

  Instead, she drank her excellent coffee, and presently she asked, "What are we going to do after lunch?" "

  "Would you hke to go on the river?"

  "I'd love it! Can you scull or punt or whatever one does?" ^

  "I daresay I can make shift to move the boat," he said, which, for some reason or other, made her laugh. And when she laughed he smiled, too, and his dark, clever face entirely lost its faintly moody expression.

  They strolled down a shady path to the river and rented a boat, which he seemed very well able to manage.

  "Shall I take an oar, too?*' Thea wanted to know.

  "No. You can lie back and trail your hand in the water and look elegant,*' he told her.

  They didn't talk very much, but each seemed to find a considerable degree of contentment in the silent company of the other. Once, a little to her shame, Thea dozed, and when she opened her eyes and saw the slight but perceptible change in the afternoon light, she said guiltily, "Goodness, was I asleep?"

  He was resting on his oars at the moment, and the boat was hardly moving at all. With a slight smile he brought his eaze back from some distant prospect that seemed to have Been absorbing his thoughtful attention.

  "I believe so. Why not? It probably is very good for you. Don't you work hard all the week?''

  "Most weeks. Not so particularly during the last two,*' Thea confessed. "Because I was out a good deal with Mrs. Dorley and Stephen in the evenings. But I'm going to make up for it now. I'm getting on quite well, you know." She seemed to think he would be interested, andf he was.

  "Are you, Thea?" He turned the boat and started rowing back at a leisurely pace to the point from which they had started. "When do you expect to start out as a full-fledged businesswoman?"

  "Oh, not for another three months yet." She glanced at him a little anxiously. "You're not finding it too frightfully expensive providing for me, are you?"

  He laughed then, and said quite unexpectedly, "No, darling. I 'm not finding you too expensive."

  And for the rest of the'way back Thea was silent, trying to decide whether people like Lindsay Varlon really called Tots of people "darlmg, ' or whether he meant it very nicely—or shoula not have used the word at all.

  CHAPTER SIX

  It was after six when they arrived at the Dorieys' house, and the place looked strangely blank and deserted with neither Stephen nor his mother around.

  But Emma seemed really pleased to see them. And poor Darry, sunk in a condition of majestic gloom, emerged from it when he recognized them and became almost kittenish in the expression of his pleasure and his self-congratulation that someone had come at last.

  He deigned to sit on Thea's knee, giving forth full-throated purrs and offering the top of his head to be rubbed and the side of his neck to be tickled. Thea and Varlon obliged him in these two particulars, and Thea hugged him affectionately and promised to come and see him very often.

  Emma pressed them to stay and have a meal, but Thea said it was time they were getting back and they ought to be home before dark.

  "Anyway, I've done nothing but eat large meals and laze today," she explained. "We've been out in the car or on the river all day."

  "That will have been very nice for you. Miss Thea," said Emma, who would not have entered a car, much less a boat, for any inducement, having always regarded both as an almost certain means to sudden death.

  "It was heavenly. I've never had such a lovely day before in my life." She gently lifted Darry from her knee and left him with a large saucer of milk, in which he certainly seemed very willing to drown his sorrows.

  Bidding a cordial goodbye to Emma, she went out to the car again with Varlon, and on the way to the gate, he took her lightly by the arm.

  "Was it really such a lovely day, Thea?'*

  It was the first time he had ever actually touched her, except for the most conventional shaking of hands, and Thea was startlingly aware of his thin, strong fingers on her arm.

  *'Why . .. why, of course it was.*' She smiled at him quickly, very faintly put out by the effect that his touch had upon her. "It might well be. You went to a good deal of trouble about it, didn *t you?''

  "I was not aware of any trouble,*' he told her, and he was smiling, too, as he handed her back into the car. "Now we'll have to get a move on if we are going to be home before dark."

  "I think I should be," Thea explained. "If not, Geraldine just might ask questions since she knows I couldn't have been out with Stephen, and then—well, it might be awkward."

  "Might it?"

  "Don't you think so?'' She glanced at him quickly.

  "I don't know. You know Geraldine's reactions to your behavior better than I do."

  "Oh—oh, it's nothing to do with that. She doesn't care how late I stay out or anything of that sort. Only she probably wouMn 't like my
going out with you."

  He raised his eyebrows.

  "Why not, Thea?'* L "Well ....*' Thea struggled to find a tactful way of I putting things and failed. "Well, she rather regards you as ner property, doesn 't she?''

  ; "She has no reason to," he replied coolly and categorically. And suddenly Thea knew this was much the nicest day she had ever known and that she could have hugged him with some unexplained feeling of relief.

  They drove very fast after that, silent, perhaps because of what they had just said about Geraldine.

  Later Thea was to wonder if Varlon's thoughts had been just a little too much engaged with what she had said rather than with his driving, so that his attention was not at its finest pitch. He was not in the least a reckless driver, but certainly he always refused afterward to exempt himself entirely from blame.

  Perhaps the uncertain, fading light had something to do

  ^jg Meant for Each Other

  with it. Or perhaps it was just that the turning was too sharp, the truck too large and too swift, and the recovery of full attention just a moment too late.

  To Thea it seemed as though the mountainous truck backed sharply into the road from almost nowhere, and their car rushed upon it with the speed of dreadful and inevitable doom. She thought she hardly had time to scream, and certainly there was no sound from Varlon. Only the shriek of brakes applied with frantic urgency, but a second too late.

  She did scream at the moment of shattering impact, and she thought he called out something, too. She knew he flung his arm across her face as a shower of splinters fell around them. But all these were only superficial impressions, dwarfed by the realization of the terrific crash, the tearing pain in her left hand, and the smothering unconsciousness that dropped on her like a great black blanket.

  She struggled up from its folds some time later, but only to partial understanding. Someone was lifting her, and she muttered, "My hand—mind my hand."

  Then she seemed to be back in the car. Only it couldn't be the same car as before, because she had heard that car being ground to wreckage against the side of the truck. But she was in something that was moving fast, and Lindsay (she thought of him suddenly as Lindsay) was there, too, because she heard him say, *'You're all right, child. Don't cry."