The butler reminded: “This way, Miss.” His tone was slightly peremptory. Small wonder. How long had she and the man been staring at each other? He must have had the same thought for like sudden sunshine a smile crinkled his eyes, revealed his perfect teeth. He touched his hair in a salute, said with a hint of swaggering gaiety:
“Welcome to our city, lady.”
His engaging grin was contagious; Sandra smiled an impulsive response. Before she could answer he whistled to the dogs.
“Come on, fellas, we’re blocking traffic.”
She heard his footsteps on the tiled floor of the hall, the pad-pad of his four-footed companions, the clang of an iron door. The sound echoed through the still room. It added a macabre touch to her impressions of the house in which she was to earn her living.
Until the slump in her father’s investments, her life had been as neatly arranged as the itinerary of a personally conducted tour; she had a curious presentiment that after today she never would be quite the same person again, that the old pattern would be torn to shreds and a new pattern substituted. It was a curious sensation. Perhaps she was making too much of it, perhaps every girl upon taking a position for the first time felt as if she were setting sail on uncharted seas.
“Nice job, secretary.”
The trainer’s voice echoed through her mind. Had he meant to discourage or warn her when he had said:
“There are family quarrels here, all right.”
CHAPTER III
A woman was seated on a divan in the room Sandra entered—a room with a large studio window flanked by gold mimosa trees which made a charming frame for the gay garden beyond. In one corner was a concert grand piano upon which lay a violin. There were flowers, odd pieces of furniture, ceramics from all over the world. Little recesses in the walls were painted a luscious orange pink which appeared again in the rug and between the ceiling beams and in the glass curtains. The licking tongues of flame in the fireplace were reflected in the tea-service of ebony and silver on a small table.
The woman set down her cup. Behind her, rosy light glowed softly through the window. Mr. Damon had been right. Mrs. Pat Newsome—if this were she—never would see forty again, Sandra decided. A dynamic personality; even seated, she seemed to radiate energy. The Roman type. Hair, yellow and brittle, showed beneath the brim of a brown felt hat which matched in color her tweed coat and skirt; heavy, muddy brogues accentuated the size of her feet. No make-up. No lipstick. Her face was flabby; even in the rose light from the curtains the skin looked pasty; her greenish brown eyes gave the impression of tears just below the surface; her mouth had a bitter curl at the corners. It was evident that she was horribly unhappy. Was her son worrying her?
“Miss Duval? I am Mrs. Pat Newsome. Huckins, pull forward that chair.”
“Yes, Madame, unless possibly the young lady would like to freshen up in her room first.”
His tone was patronizing. Angry color surged in his employer’s face, making it almost pretty. Sandra flung herself into the breach.
“I am quite ready for tea. The air since I left the stuffy train has been like champagne, all bubbles and sparkles. I got ravenously hungry while I waited for the car—”
“Wasn’t the limousine waiting for you?” Mrs. Newsome’s eyes flashed lightning signals of approaching storm.
Sandra groaned in spirit. Now she had done it, she had conjured a hurricane out of nowhere.
“There was nothing on wheels or on legs visible except a fat robin when I stepped from the train. While I was wondering in which direction to walk, a man in a roadster drove up. ‘He looks hard as a rock but any port in a storm,’ I said to myself, and proceeded to inveigle him into bringing me here. He took a lot of persuading, but here I am.”
She felt as if she had been talking through ages of time as she drew off her gloves. Suppose she were asked the name of the good Samaritan?
“I’ll know why Daniel, the chauffeur, didn’t meet the train before he and I are an hour older. I run a boarding house for servants. Can I get anything done the way I want it? Not a chance!”
Had Mrs. Newsome started on one of her rages? Sandra allowed a faint trace of weariness to creep into her voice.
“Might I have tea? I was too busy packing to stop for luncheon. I would be consumed with mortification to faint from hunger on your threshold.”
Her plea switched the woman’s mood. She smiled. She might be crude but she had sense enough to recognize the light touch when she heard it.
“Poor child, no one ever accused Pat Newsome of turning away from the starving. Get out, Huckins. We will serve ourselves.”
The butler fussed at a table before he departed with a last backward glance.
“He’s gone, thank heaven! He has been here two months and I still want to hit him every time he comes into the room. Can’t make out why a man with his rummy nose stays in a house in which liquor isn’t served—if I served it, how could I justly fire a trainer, or a swipe, or an exercise boy, when I smelled it on his breath? A man who’s been tippling has no place in stables like mine, he might ruin a Thoroughbred—they’ve had the sense to rule it out in the hard riding set here; no drinking now before a hunt. Huckins is not too good at his job but he stays—I’ve never kept a butler so long before. Because he once worked for an earl and for a countess he’s snooty. If he were in the stables I’d soon put him in his place.”
Her tone, which had been surly to the servant, was crisp, curt, businesslike. The personnel magician had waved his adjustment wand and she was back in her element. She poured tea, inquired Sandra’s preferences as to trimmings, loaded her plate with sandwiches and cakes. The requirements of hospitality fulfilled, she crossed her knees, extracted a long, thin cigar from a box of Chinese lacquer and lighted it. She pushed a silver container toward the girl.
“Cigarette? You smoke of course?”
“I can, but as I don’t really care for it, it seems senseless to acquire the habit.” Sandra regarded her employer with steadily mounting interest. She had seen many women in Spain and England smoke cigars—that meant nothing; it was the woman’s change of personality which was astounding.
“Like horses?” Mrs. Newsome inquired.
“Immensely. I never feel so fratty with them as I do with dogs, perhaps because I do not understand them so well, but I love them. I have ridden all my life.”
“B. Damon, when he phoned, told me that you could pilot a plane.”
Was that all he had told her? Evidently Mrs. Newsome did not know that he had been a friend of her father. “I have done more or less of it.”
“You won’t have a chance for that here. Were you told before you came what you had to do?”
“Sketchily. I would like to know from you.”
The stimulation of the hot, aromatic tea, the delicious sandwiches had changed the feeling of dread, which had hung over Sandra’s spirit like a fog since she had entered the house, into the larky anticipation of adventure she had felt in Damon and Hoyt’s office. Life here offered interesting possibilities, unless she were mistaken.
Mrs. Newsome watched a ring of smoke thin to a pale violet haze. “You are to take care of my correspondence, greet and entertain guests—the housekeeper attends to the assignment of rooms, the hiring and firing of the servants—advise me as to the clothes I need for every occasion—I don’t trust my maid, good as she is—and—and make this great ark of a place into a home, the sort of home which will keep a young man off the street.”
Her tone was bitter, her eyes haggard. Young Newsome evidently had his mother worried. Sandra encouraged:
“I should think that any one would be glad to stay here. The grounds are perfection.”
The woman kicked over a foot-rest as she rose. Feet slightly apart, hands deep in the pockets of her tweed coat, she backed against the mantel. Her greenish brown eyes were specked with fire.
“Perfection! Outside! Why? Because everything on this place except this house and the stables is managed by
Nicholas Hoyt. Of course you know that his uncle married me because I could look after his horses?”
The widow of Mark Hoyt! Why hadn’t Mr. Damon told her, Sandra wondered, before she answered:
“I don’t know anything about you. I came because the position sounded interesting.”
“Well, he did. I looked after him too until he died. He left me the income from a trust fund, this place for my life or as long as I wanted it, and the stables, except for the racing stock and the cups and trophies which went to Nicholas with everything else. That was all right; the breeding of Thoroughbreds is quite a different proposition from breeding saddle and show horses which is my job. He left Stone House to Nick with instruction that he was to take all care of keeping this place up. I tried to be nice to my nephew-in-law, but would he have it? Not he. He hasn’t been inside this house since—I ask you, isn’t even an endowed widow entitled to some degree of personal liberty? To marry again if she wants to?”
“Why not, in this go-getter age when the meek no longer inherit the earth?”
“Say, I’m going to like you, you’re a bright child. I’m telling you all this about Nicholas before some one else gets a chance to prejudice you against me. The smart set here has gone solid for him and is cutting me. He’s polite enough, I could wring his neck, but—well, something has turned up which may bring him down in a crash of the blood and sand variety. There may not even be pieces to pick up. It will be all right with me.”
Sandra was hotly uncomfortable. She felt as if she had opened a door marked Private. Was it Mrs. Newsome’s custom to strip her heart bare on such short acquaintance? What would she say if she knew that an employee of the hated nephew had brought her secretary from the station? What a disagreeable person the Hoyt heir must be. She disliked him already. And she had suggested to the trainer that some time Mrs. Newsome might take her to see Stone House. Knowing of the feud between the two branches of the Hoyt family, no wonder he had growled:
“Mrs. Newsome won’t!”
She had been here less than half an hour, but already she divined that her principal task would be to act as a shock absorber between her employer and the objects of her rages. She had better begin at once.
“I want to help in every way possible, Mrs. Newsome. If you will tell me what my duties are, I will soon get into the swing of them.”
“Call me Mrs. Pat. Ever worked before?”
“No.”
“What have you been doing?”
“Traveling with my father since my mother’s death. He died two months ago.”
“Any relatives?”
“Distant ones only.”
“Glad of that. They won’t try to get you away by telling you that you are burying yourself here; that’s what happened to the last secretary.”
That was not what Mr. Damon had told her, but why not accept her employer’s version, Sandra asked herself.
“Ben Damon phoned that he had fallen for you at once, said that your gay spirit affected him like champagne. Now that I’ve seen you I understand what he meant. I like you. Don’t get peeved and walk out on me if I’m rough. I have to be rough or I wouldn’t get anything done. Some of the servants were here when Mr. Hoyt was alive and they resent me. Dan, the chauffeur, is one of them. But I’ll show ’em!”
Her voice rose. Sandra hurriedly set a little backfire.
“It must be difficult to find just the right men to care for your marvelous horses.”
“Difficult! You don’t know the half. If it weren’t for my head man Mac Donovan, I would have to spend the night in the stable when a mare is about to foal. I wouldn’t dare trust her to any one else. If Nick were friendly, we could do so much together.”
For a moment she had forgotten her anger. Sandra ventured:
“Couldn’t you make friends with him?”
Mrs. Pat sniffed. “Too late now. I suppose Ben Damon put you wise to complications here?”
“He merely touched on them. He was more interested in engaging a secretary for you.”
“I’m surprised that he bothered to find me one as his sympathies are all with Nicholas. They are business partners and co-trustees of the estate of my first husband, Mark Hoyt. He was a widower when I married him. In his youth he made piles of money in mines, after which he married. There was one son—Philip. When he was three, father, mother, and child went abroad. They took with them a nurse, Anne Pardoe, a French woman who had taken care of the boy since he was born. Mark and his wife went to Egypt, leaving Philip in a small town in southern France with the woman. She had relatives there. After they left, the child was horribly burned while playing round a bonfire. He died—”
“What a tragedy for the mother and father!”
“I’ll say it was! I suppose you think I’m crazy to run on like this, but I’ve got to talk. I can’t talk to Curtis; he drives me mad—you heard me lashing at him, I knew you had by your face. Estelle Carter, who is staying in the house, would be as responsive as a hit-and-you-have-her-doll at a county fair; she has no interest in women, only men. we met her abroad, and when she said she had once lived in this town, like a fool I asked her to visit us. I guess old man Trouble nudged my elbow. I have no real friends. No one but jocks and trainers and swipes to yell at. I shall go goofy if I don’t let loose to some one.” She dropped her head on her arms crossed on the mantel.
Sandra swallowed hard and blinked back tears. The outburst was a recurrence of the storm she had interrupted by her arrival. She had thought that during the months since her father’s death she had plumbed the depths of loneliness, but never had she known loneliness of the spirit like this. There was desolation in it and heartache unbelievable. Could she help? If in no other way, she could be encouraging the woman to unburden her mind. She asked gently:
“Did the parents get back in time to see their child alive?”
Mrs. Newsome squared around. Tears had left shadowy furrows on her cheeks. She brushed at them.
“No. Anne Pardoe claimed that she tried to reach them but they were in the desert. She lost her nerve; terrified at the thought of what Mark Hoyt might do when he saw that mound in the church yard, she ran away with a lover.”
“How idiotic! Straight out of the age of innocence. No modern woman would elude consequences in that fashion. She would face the music, knowing that even if fright suggested a get-away the radio would catch her somewhere.”
“Sure she would, but this happened thirty years ago. When the Hoyts returned, they were frantic—Mark told me this before I married him. The doctor who attended the child, the minister who had officiated at the burial had been crushed under falling walls. The relatives of the Pardoe woman knew nothing more than what the nurse had written.”
“How could the Hoyts bear it?”
“Had to, didn’t they? It’s surprising what a lot of lickings humans can stand. Now, along comes a Kentuckian with old, faint scars of burns on his shoulders, claiming that he is the son of Mark Hoyt, that the child did not die in France but was so seriously injured that Anne Pardoe, intimidated by her lover who had reason to leave the country in a hurry, fled with him and the boy to Buenos Aires, leaving a mound in the church yard and a letter behind her. It was a small village and she could get away with it. Later the three came to the United States.” A telephone buzzed. “Now what do they want?” She crossed the room, manipulated buttons in a niche and talked.
Sandra tingled with impatience. She had heard from her father that Mark Hoyt had lost his son, but of course he had not known of this claimant. Was this the complication to which Mr. Damon had referred? He had said: “There’s bound to be trouble.” Would she meet the long-lost heir? What a curious person her employer was. Mr. Damon had been right when he had warned the new secretary to watch her step.
With a muttered imprecation Mrs. Newsome left the telephone. “I’m going to the stables. A filly has the colic and they want me to give the little thing its medicine. There’s always something taking the joy out of life in this
business. I’ve phoned the housekeeper to show you your rooms. We dine at seven-thirty. Come to the library when you are ready, it is more homelike than the drawing room. Dress for dinner. Mr. Newsome—did you meet him in the library as you came through?”
Sparks in her eyes. Was she suspicious of every one? Poor unhappy woman.
“It couldn’t be called meeting. Your son was—”
“My son! Where do you get that ‘son’ stuff? Curtis Newsome is my husband!”
CHAPTER IV
At a window of the room into which the creaking taffeta skirted housekeeper had shown her, Sandra looked toward the west. It crimsoned suddenly in streaks as if the sun, exasperated by the slowness of the process of tinting, had flung his color-brush straight at the heavens. Dusk was stealing forward trailing an amethyst veil, delicate as malines, across a faintly primrose sky. Pinnacles of cloud roseate now, were stabbing at the darkening dome; the once silver river rippled like molten ebony, setting a-quiver the birch leaves reflected on its surface. The windows of Stone House were faintly luminous from the afterglow. They seemed like lidless old eyes watching for home-comers.
The girl’s mind still twinged from her unfortunate mistake in regard to the relation of her employer to the man who had spoken to her in the library. She had some excuse—he must be at least fifteen years younger than his wife. If she hadn’t had the impression so firmly in her mind, she would have realized as she listened to Mrs. Newsome’s story of her marriage to Mark Hoyt that she couldn’t have had a son his age. She smiled as she remembered his engaging grin. He was likable.
Why had she said anything? Comment had been unnecessary. It would have been much more to the point had nice Mr. Damon warned, “Watch your tongue!” instead of “Watch your step!”
She turned impatiently from the window. It would get her nowhere to stand here regretting. She had much better busy herself unpacking. She glanced at her luggage. Should she wait until morning? She might find a note of dismissal with possibly a return fare on her breakfast tray. Lucky she had not accepted the salary advance offered. Perhaps the rainbow had not been an omen of brightening skies for her after all. Perhaps the future had not beckoned but had held up a warning hand.
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