by Susan Barrie
Clive seemed much touched by the mention of his aunt. “Good old Aunt Hetty! ” he observed. “I could always depend on her, and even during these years when I’ ve been roaming, as you put it, sir. about the globe, she’s never omitted to write to me at least once a month.”
“That’ s why I say the woman’ s a fool,” the general told him.
But Virginia leaned forward quickly.
“Oh, no,” she said softly, “oh, no, she isn’t, General Maddison! And women are not really fools, you know! They’ re only more intuitive than men and much more prepared “to forgive and forget.”
“Is that so?” the general inquired with a twinkle in his eyes and then he pushed back his chair. “Well, you can let me have your views on this subject while we have dinner, but I object to taking my meals in an overcrowded dining room and that’ s what it’ s going to be like if we delay much longer.”
With old-fashioned courtesy he offered her his arm until they reached their table, and when they did so Virginia saw that it was in quite a prominent position near the center of the huge room, and that it was decorated with some exceptionally choice dark red roses. Had they, she wondered, been ordered specially by Clive? And if so what a pity it was that Lisa was not here in her stead to appreciate them.
Champagne was already cooling in an ice bucket beside the general’s chair and he directed his attention to it from the moment that he handed over his strong, gold-banded cane—without which he was seldom seen, being, he declared, a martyr to gout—to the care of the waiter and had Virginia installed in the chair on his right hand.
He toasted her with extreme dignity as soon as the champagne had been poured into the three glasses, and then settled himself to enjoy what was plainly going to be an excellent dinner.
Whether it was the effect of the champagne or whether there really was an almost complete lessening of tension as the meal progressed Virginia could not be sure, but by the time the dessert course was reached she actually began to feel that she was glad she had accepted Clive’ s invitation. Her own concerns had for the time being ceased to be of any major importance, and the general, she had made up her mind by that time, was really charming. He might have an embarrassing twinkle in his eyes and his manner was decidedly martial and his voice was so loud and penetrating that she felt sure that at moments it was heard in every corner of the room, but he had a lively sense of humor and underneath his occasional brusqueness she sensed a genuine kindness. And he certainly paid her a good deal of attention. He told her more than once that if her sister was anything like her he would look forward to meeting her, which certainly pleased Clive, who also began to look somewhat more at his ease as they waded through course after course.
And after that one little outburst while they were having drinks on the veranda the general made no further reference of any kind, to his son’ s defections. Instead it looked very much as if, having established contact with him again, he was not even dwelling on any past lack of consideration and was prepared thoroughly to enjoy his own evening and his visit to Switzerland.
This made Virginia happier than she had been tor a long time, if only because it looked as if things might work out well for Lisa.
An orchestra played soft music in the enclosed courtyard adjoining the dining room and couples were dancing when they left their table and had their coffee on the fringe of the open space beneath the starry night sky. The lighting effects were highly flattering to feminine frocks and complexions and Virginia, in her black dress with her eager eyes and vivid mouth and pretty, soft hair, was as appealing as any woman who danced or looked on at the dancing.
Not that Virginia looked on for very long, for the general, despite his gout—which was perhaps not quite so troublesome for the moment—insisted on being the first to escort her out on to the dance floor and she found that he was a very adequate performer. Then Clive asked her to dance, too, and as it was a waltz and a favorite and popular tune, Virginia thoroughly enjoyed it. When she returned to her seat on the edge of the floor her eyes had a happy sparkle in them and there was a most attractive soft color in her cheeks.
The lights went down for a floor show and she leaned forward to watch it with the enthusiasm of one who was not often allowed the chance: to witness this kind of spectacle. The dancers wore Swiss national costume and the yodelers’ voices thrilled her. With that width of night sky like purple velvet sewn with stars above her head, and the glimpses of snow-capped peaks on all sides of her, this was something she knew she would always remember! She looked a little bemused when the lights went up again and the pair of eyes watching her from a neighboring table did not immediately affect her with the awareness that she was being watched.
But when, inevitably, they did draw her gaze like a magnet, her heart gave one of its tremendous bounds and then she went quite alarmingly pale. The general was clapping the floor show heartily and at the same time he commenced a dissertation on a subject that was very dear to him, namely Simla in the days when he had been a subaltern, and the displays of native dancing that had intrigued him at that time, but Clive noticed the sudden alteration in Virginia’s looks and the direction in which her gaze had been drawn. And he looked, too, and saw—not altogether to his amazement—that it was Dr. Hanson who was sitting back in one of the gilt-legged, rather spindly chairs, and proclaiming all the advantages of a first-class tailor who had fitted him out with his evening things, and staring at the same time very hard and rather bleakly at Virginia.
Beside him at the little table on which were liqueur glasses and coffee cups was Carla Spengler, wearing something that was spectacular and infinitely suited to her golden glamour. The effect was heightened by brilliant emerald earrings, an emerald bracelet and a pendant that blazed like green fire on her faultless neck. She looked a little bored—even a little peevish—and Dr. Hanson wore an expression that recalled to Virginia’ s mind those sculptured marbles she had seen in museums, which always suggested a remoteness and lack of kinship with ordinary commonplace human beings.
It was not so much a detached expression as one that was deliberately withdrawn. It provided no clue whatsoever to the thoughts that lay behind it or the sensations that must exist somewhere beneath that elegant black and white exterior. He was not even smoking a cigarette as he sat very still and studied, with those strange, inscrutable eyes, the reactions of the woman in the black dress, who had been so obviously and genuinely enjoying herself up till now.
Clive exclaimed, “Hello, it’s Hanson!”
“And Fraulein Spengler,” Virginia murmured mechanically.
“Who? Where? What?” The general was gazing about him, full of the Englishman’ s desire to do the correct thing and be hospitable if
necessary. “Friends of yours, Clive? Then introduce them! ”
Clive cast a quick glance at Virginia’ s face as if silently asking whether she would approve of this or not, but Virginia was in no condition to respond to a tacit appeal of this sort even if she understood it, which was doubtful. The sight of Leon Hanson and the woman everyone expected him to marry had had the effect of dissipating all her calm enjoyment of the evening, and it was as much as she could do to appear natural as Clive walked over to the other table and invited the two who sat rather stonily there to join them and meet his father.
But Dr. Hanson rose immediately to the situation and with Clive’ s rather awkward explanation that his father would be delighted to make the acquaintance of the surgeon who had worked with such skill upon his own battered person after his skiing accident, the doctor stood up easily and went quickly across to meet the general, giving him one of his pleasantest smiles as they shook hands.
Carla, no doubt because Clive was so very personable—and perhaps also because her evening had been falling a little flat for some reason or other—smiled at him graciously and was unusually affable to General Maddison after she had been introduced to him. She was sufficiently a snob to recognize that although the son might have become somewh
at impoverished of recent years and found it necessary to earn his living in a way that most of her friends considered a little below the dignity of one they received into their intimate circles, the father had obviously a good deal of substance behind him and had something besides that was even more important than substance and could never fail to command respect.
Virginia received a cool little nod from Carla and was thereafter ignored by her almost completely, but Dr. Hanson crossed over to her side and sat in a chair and talked to her. His talk was along the most conventional and somewhat frigidly polite lines, but whenever she lifted her eyes she saw that he was looking at her and there was something in his look that set her mentally groping for an explanation of whatever it was.
He seemed almost to be trying to probe her mind and read her thoughts, and yet he sounded detached and even uninterested as he persisted with his flow of unimportant small talk. He did not so much
as mention Lisa.
At last he asked her whether she would like to dance. Carla had made it plain to Clive that she would like nothing better at that moment than to dance a tango with him that the orchestra had just struck up, and they were out on the floor with the singer moving superbly in the sensuous motions of the dance and Clive guiding her movements with just as much skill. But Virginia knew that she had none of that skill when it came to dancing the tango and she more than suspected that Leon Hanson was as accomplished as Clive. Moreover, she had an extraordinary sensation amounting almost to panic at the very thought of dancing with him and although he could not know it her fingers were cold with dread and something inside her was trembling uncontrollably in case he should insist. And then what? How would she feel and behave if he did insist?
But he did nothing of the kind. If he disbelieved her excuse that she had acquired a blister on her heel and had made up her mind to dance no more that night, he did not show it. He merely continued to sit beside her, looking on at the dancers, while General Maddison tapped out the rhythm of the tango on the side of his glass and looked as if he would like to be among the dancers himself.
No sooner had the tango come to an end and Carla returned to their table than he insisted that she should be his partner in the next dance, and as it happened to be an old-fashioned waltz this particularly delighted him, for he had been dancing waltzes in Simla when she was not even in her cradle. Clive caught sight of two of his tennis pupils at another table and went over to speak to them, and for the first time Virginia and the doctor, found themselves seated alone at the table on the edge of the dance floor.
Leon Hanson said suddenly, as if he had been thinking the matter over. “So you don’ t want to dance with me?”
Virginia gave a little start, looking up at him in a queerly frightened fashion.
“Why should you think that?”
“I don’ t merely think it. I’ m sure of it! ” And then, before she could say anything further, he suggested. “But I think we’ll forget about that blister on your heel and dance all the same, don’t you?” Mutely she stood up, recognizing that there was no other course open to her. As she had suspected he was a perfect dancer. He held her just as closely as Clive had done, but not a fraction of an inch more closely, and instead of talking as they circled the floor he looked over her head and seemed to be studying the rest of the dancers. Her hand in his was now as cold as ice but, although expecting to stumble a little occasionally and disclose the fact that evenings such as this were an infrequent occurrence with her, she found that she followed his steps perfectly and in fact they moved beautifully together. It was just as if that harmony of thought or instinct or whatever it was that had drawn them together in the first place when they had been, as he had said, on the verge of becoming real friends, was exercising so strong a charm upon them physically that united movement was the easiest thing in the world. The only strange thing was that they had never danced like this before.
Virginia began to feel that almost breathless feeling of happiness bubbling up inside her and for the first time in days she knew what it was to come alive again and to be aware of all that life could offer. She even found the courage to lift her head and look up into his face; he lowered his glance and met her eyes and something passed between them that was vital and warm and compelling and made her catch her breath, while unless her imagination was very strongly at fault he did actually tighten his hold about her for a moment. But only for a moment! For just as she was floating in a world of supreme bliss, which had absolutely no connection with the everyday world she knew, the music stopped and the dance was ended and like all the other couples on the door they wended their way back toward their particular table.
But before they reached it he took her arm and guided her through one of the open glass doors into the hotel garden proper, and she looked up at him with some astonishment. She was still very much shaken by her emotion of the past few minutes and she looked a little pale. Unless the moonlight was deceiving her she thought that he looked rather pale as well, especially about his well-cut lips. But the rest of his features might all at once have been carved out of granite.
“It’s quite all right,” he told her quickly, coolly. “No one will think it in the least strange that I want to have a few words with you and I’ ll return you to your friends in a minute. But first I want you to answer me a question.”
“Y-yes?” she stammered, coming to a halt in the middle of the tree shaded path and looking up at him.
“Does Lisa know that you are, dining here tonight with both the Maddisons?”
“Why—why no! ” she had to admit, because after all it was the truth, and she saw the icy look of disdain and cynicism that invaded his eyes as they gazed down at her, and trembled suddenly inside.
“I thought so! ” The cynicism was in his voice, too, and it was distinctly harsh. “There were moments when I was beginning to be a little misled while Lisa was still here and young Maddison haunted her almost as much as he haunted you, but now it’s plain for everybody to see which of the two of you he prefers! He’s even persuaded his father to come out and meet you and that’s certainly something—especially as the old man is quite obviously completely captivated by you! How soon am I going to be permitted to congratulate you? And Maddison, of course! ”
“I don’t think I quite—quite understand what you’re talking about! ” Virginia answered him, speaking in a slow, bewildered fashion, although one thing at least was painfully clear to her and that was that he thought her capable not only of so soon forgetting her sister’ s departure but of behaving traitorously toward her and deliberately trying to annex Clive! After all that Lisa had gone through and suffered, he thought that Virginia was capable of trying to rob her of the one thing that had really given her courage to face up to her ordeal and that was now a part of her life!
His opinion of her must be low indeed!
“Don’ t you?” There was a rough note of impatience in his voice. “I think you do! ”
Virginia gazed at him as if she was suddenly a little dazed, and indeed the abrupt transition from a dizzy state of happiness to one bordering on shocked awakening had had the effect of making her feel that way. She was conscious, too, of a sick sensation of disappointment; a disappointment greater than any she had ever experienced before. It even prevented her from thinking clearly, for at one moment she could have been certain that that strange, bewildering tumult that had had her whole inner being in its grip while they were dancing had found some close kinship with the look that had flashed into his eyes when he suddenly held her more closely, but apparently she had been wildly mistaken. She had never been more mistaken in her life!
She said a little hollowly, “Well, if I do, I’ m not very anxious to talk about it! Shall we go back to the others?”
“Are you going to marry Clive?” he asked bluntly, ignoring her suggestion.
“I haven’ t thought about marrying Clive, and in any case I have a job to do at the moment. Won’ t Miss Spengler be wondering where you ar
e?”
He bit his lip in an uncertain fashion.
“Then you’re deliberately misleading Clive—and that delightful old gentleman, his father?”
“I only met General Maddison for the first time tonight, but if you care to think that I’ m misleading him you can. And now I’ d like to rejoin the others, if you don’t mind!”
“Very well,” he replied with sudden stiffness. “And I must apologize for seeming to interfere in your affairs, but I was amazed to find you here tonight, obviously thoroughly enjoying your evening when Lisa only left for home this morning. I always imagined that you and your sister were very devoted to one another. ”
“We are,” she told him flatly, “very devoted to one another.” But his opinion of her was so evident that she felt she could endure no more. She turned and started to walk back along the path to the hotel and he had no alternative but to follow her.
Carla Spengler was sitting at their table trying to appear interested in General Maddison’ s flow of talk when they returned and joined the others, but at the sight of Virginia being escorted by the tall, darkhaired doctor, the blond singer’ s lips instantly tightened and her blue eyes gazed with rather more than her customary coldness at Virginia.
“I’d like to go now, Leon,” she said as he sank into a chair. “I’m rather tired and the floor show is over and it’s a bit dull now.”
But nevertheless she smiled very sweetly at Clive when they said goodbye and she smiled almost as sweetly at General Maddison. If he bored her a little he had succeeded in impressing her quite a lot, and she was feeling rather vexed with Leon for absenting himself with that insignificant little English governess.
Surely now that the sister had gone back to England there was no reason why he should continue to obey his quixotic instincts and take
such a protective interest in the young woman who was left behind? She would have to talk to him about it when she got him alone!
