ESCAPE TO HAPPINESS
Mary Whistler
It was just another newspaper story to Rose—a Society wedding, nothing that would ever touch her life.
Certainly, when the wedding was called off, the bride left at the altar, the last thing Rose expected was to find the bridegroom on her doorstep, begging for help that he declared only she could give him!
CHAPTER I
As she slid the final sheet of paper out of her typewriter Rose Arden sighed with relief.
Now she could go home, and the somewhat oppressive silence that pervaded the offices of Mancroft, Mancroft & Miles after office hours would be exchanged for the bustle of the tube station.
As she looked about her at the filing cabinets and the denuded desks she wondered why it was that premises that, from nine to five each day, presented a scene of activity and a certain amount of animation - even in a lawyer’s office people joked and discussed the latest plays, etc. - should settle down to such a frightening calm when the day’s work was done. And it wasn’t a lifeless calm, either.
There was always the unexpected creak of a floorboard, the busy movement of a mouse behind the wainscoting. And the offices of Mancroft, Mancroft & Miles were so old that there were probably vast regiments of mice hidden away behind the wainscoting. The panelling -although frequently admired by clients - was dim and dusty; the fireplaces yawned like open mouths, and the evidences of a reasonably modern system of central-heating were incongruous.
Rose gathered up her work and carried it through into Mr. Mancroft’s office. There, the atmosphere was heavy with the stale odour of law books and Mr. Mancroft’s briar pipe. Rose shifted the latter gingerly - together with the pouch of tobacco that the senior partner had somewhat carelessly left behind - from the middle of the blotting-pad, and set down her own neat file of papers in its place. Then she noticed that, obviously suffering from a temporary mental aberration, Mr. Mancroft had left his evening paper behind as well.
She picked it up and studied it for a few seconds. The front page bore a photograph of a very beautiful young woman, and beneath it the caption ran: Miss Carol-Ann Vaizey prepares for the Wedding of the Year.
Inset in the photograph was a slightly smaller reproduction of a recent likeness of Miss Vaizey’s husband-to-be, Richard Guy Denzil Wakeford, son of the shipping millionaire. The caption in connection with his arrestingly regular features and Old School tie was enough to arouse interest in the breast of any female, and Rose read it with a slight quickening of the pulse, and a fleeting glow at the back of her eyes.
“Mr. Guy Wakeford is one of the wealthiest young men in the country, owner of a string of polo ponies, several specially-built racing cars, country houses, and a penthouse flat in New York. He also has a house in Bermuda, and that is where the honeymoon will be spent. Or part of the honeymoon, for the couple propose to travel extensively before returning to set up house at Willowfield Hall, in Yorkshire.”
Rose felt as if her breath caught in her throat for an instant, and she closed her eyes. Yorkshire ... her own county! And although she had never heard of Willowfield Hall, she could see the backcloth of moorland against which it would be set, and smell the sharp tang of the sea as it was borne inland from the sturdy line of coast. She could even hear the lonely crying of the gulls as they too swept in from the sea.
Yorkshire! ... Willowfield Hall, and ... Bermuda! A honeymoon in Bermuda!
She glanced again at Guy Wakeford’s photograph, and she thought there was a faintly brooding expression in his eyes, and his chin looked a little mutinous. Apart from that he was the answer to every maiden’s secret prayer, handsome, virile, impeccably groomed, and - of course - rich!
Miss Carol-Ann Vaizey was described as being a member of a very old family, and her portrait had hung in the Summer Exhibition at the Academy. It had put the artist right in the front rank of portrait painters, and brought the sitter a number of offers to appear in advertising and films and other mediums of public entertainment. The offers had been disdainfully refused - although the information about her in the newspapers did not, of course, reveal this sidelight - and that afternoon she had attended her wedding rehearsal, and large numbers of women had rushed to watch her leave the church.
There was a pencilled note in Mr. Mancroft’s hand at the top of the evening paper, and Rose read it with a faint feeling of surprise.
Remember Guy in his prep school days ... Money’s a curse!
Rose couldn’t seriously believe that money was a curse, but being short of it was frequently a cause of embarrassment. She had discovered that when she was left to fend for herself, and her father’s old house in Yorkshire had been sold. Once everything was settled there was not enough left to furnish the most microscopic flat for herself, and she couldn’t even think about a holiday until she had saved up for it.
Perhaps that was why, having survived a sweltering summer in London, she thought wistfully of open spaces and cool zephyrs from the sea.
She went back into the outer office, and was about to adjust the cover on her typewriter when she thought she heard a sound that could hardly be occasioned by mice. It was a step - a step on the stairs - and it was followed by another muffled step, and then a hard masculine cough. She walked swiftly to the door and flung it open, and the man who had just reached the top of the flight and was clinging to the handrail looking at her vaguely.
There was blood streaming down from a cut above one eyebrow, and he was so pale that she uttered an exclamation. The incongruous thing about him was that he had a flower in his buttonhole, a very pale pink carnation that was beginning to wilt.
“I beg your pardon,” he said vaguely, “but I’m looking for ... Mr. Mancroft’s office.”
“Mr. Mancroft went home over an hour ago.”
“Oh! ...Oh, I see!”
There was no doubt about it, he was swaying as he clung to the handrail, and Rose forgot the extreme peculiarity of the situation and rushed forward to prevent him falling backwards down the stairs. She caught at his arm and dragged him away from the well of the stairs, and when she had him propped against the wall of the corridor she looked up at him with wide eyes of concern, and demanded to know whether he had been involved in an accident.
“An accident?” he echoed. His voice was slurred, and his eyes had a strange concussed look about them. The pupils were mere pin-points, and the surrounding iris was like a sea of blue that had rushed in to obliterate the power to focus. In the bright light of the corridor it was very brilliant blue, and Rose felt temporarily dazzled. “An accident?” he repeated. “Something caught me on the head ... I think it was the door of the taxi. Although I can’t remember leaving the taxi, I -”
He put a hand up vaguely over his eyes, and said feebly:
“Do you think I could sit down?”
“Of course.”
But it was with considerable difficulty that she persuaded him to pass in through the door of her office, and when she had finally got him seated on a chair he looked so white that she wondered wildly where she could find the key of the medicine chest. There was a small bottle of brandy inside it - kept there for such an emergency as this - but Mr. Mancroft usually kept the key in a drawer of his desk, and unless he had departed from his regular routine the drawers of his desk were all at this hour securely locked. Nevertheless, she rushed through to make certain, and returned with a glass of water from the cloakroom that was all she could lay her hands upon in the way of a restorative.
Mr. Mancroft’s late visitor accepted it gratefully, and then mopped at the blood on his forehead with a fine cambric handkerchief. It was so very fine, and so very snowy, that it showed up the shapely brownness of his hands, escaping from the most immaculate of shirt-cuff
s. A mild tinge of amusement showed on his face as he stared at the handkerchief.
“I seem to be bleeding like a pig,” he remarked.
Rose grew calm and practical all at once.
“It’s not really a lot of blood,” she replied soothingly, “but you’ve obviously had a bad cut over your eye, and I’d better deal with it. If you don’t mind waiting while I collect some towels from the cloak-room, and a bowl of water, I’ll attend to it here.”
He lifted his brilliant blue eyes to her face - blue eyes framed in the blackest of eyelashes, and set beneath shapely dark brows in an attractively tanned face - and for the first time her heart lurched.
She had seen him before ... Of course she had seen him before, in that photograph in the evening paper, and his hair was the warm brown she had imagined it, and lay shining and well brushed against the sides of his head. In the photograph, it was true, there was no carnation in his buttonhole, but...
Only that afternoon he had been attending his wedding rehearsal!
He was Richard Guy Denzil Wakeford, and he had been in some sort of an argument with a taxi. He didn’t seem to be very clear in his mind about the type of argument it had been, but already he was regaining some of his natural colour, and he smiled suddenly and rather quizzically.
“Does the sight of blood make you feel squeamish? My apologies if it does, but it wasn’t my fault that confounded taxi-driver caught me head-on!” He frowned painfully, as if endeavouring to remember something. “My car was a mess, and they wanted to rush me off to hospital, but I gave them the slip and took another taxi. And I think I must have passed out in that one for a few minutes!”
“I - I see,” she said again, and the strange brilliance of his eyes confused her for a few seconds.
“Well, if you do see,” he remarked, still staunching blood, “and could fetch that bowl of water, perhaps I could cease making a mess of your office carpet...”
“Of course,” she cried at once, and flew back to the cloakroom as if she had been suddenly presented with a pair of wings.
CHAPTER II
Ten minutes or so later he was looking much more like the immaculate young man who had driven himself to a fashionable London church to take part in a wedding rehearsal, much earlier that afternoon.
There were a few spots of blood on his elegant light grey suit which would probably never be entirely removed, and his Old Etonian tie was also slightly soiled. But Rose had found a box of adhesive plaster and the cut above his eye was neatly dealt with, although she tried to impress upon him the need to see a doctor as soon as possible, for the cut was deep, and might need a stitch or two. Also he was plainly badly shaken, and although he joked almost gaily while she put away her Good Samaritan implements he was still a little white under his tan, and he admitted he could do with a good stiff brandy.
“But one could hardly expect old Mancroft to maintain a supply here,” he said. “As I remember him, he’s not a very bibulous type.”
Rose studied him gravely with large, clear, greenish-brown eyes.
“It’s some time since you saw Mr. Mancroft?” she suggested.
“Quite a time,” he admitted. “He handles my affairs, but I’m afraid I’ve got into the habit of leaving him to cope with them. One does, you know...” vaguely. He straightened his tie in front of the mirror. “And old Mancroft’s such a dependable type. I used to be very fond of him.”
“Used?” she enquired, on a faint note of surprise, and he turned and regarded her with a slightly quizzical twist to one side of his mouth.
“Young lady,” he told her - “and you seem very young, although your ministrations were most capable! - as you grow older you will no doubt make the discovery, as I did myself when I was barely twenty-five, that with advancing years one outgrows a capacity for fondness. The purely spontaneous, unquestioning fondness of youth!...” He looked sober, and slightly haggard. “By the time you’re thirty-five you may have made the shocking discovery that you’re incapable of any sort of fondness at all ... for anything or anyone!”
“Oh, no,” she said, with such conviction in her words that a rather harsh gleam of cynicism appeared in his eyes. “I don’t think so. In fact, I’m sure I won’t!”
“But then you’re only a very little girl, aren’t you? - Nineteen or twenty?”
“Twenty,” she said.
“And you work here, don’t you?” looking about him for the first time as if he realized it was an outer office in which they stood. “You work here, and presumably you weren’t born with what is known as a golden spoon in your mouth...?” He passed a hand across his brow, and frowned with the effort of concentration. “I ought to introduce myself, oughtn’t I? I know it’s after office hours, but -”
“I know who you are,” she told him gently, and lifted the newspaper off her desk and showed it to him. “I’m afraid I recognized you almost immediately.”
He seemed to recoil from the sight of his own photograph.
“What a ghastly likeness!” he exclaimed. “And why do these newspaper people enjoy thrusting people like myself into the limelight?”
“I suppose it’s because the public enjoy reading about people like you,” Rose suggested, as gently as before. “And Miss Vaizey is very beautiful.”
“Is she?” he said, as if he was mildly intrigued by the idea that his future wife was considered beautiful. He glanced almost casually at her photograph, and then away. “Well, even the most enthusiastic amongst the members of the British public would not acclaim me beautiful at the present moment,” he declared, grimacing at himself in the mirror, and in particular at the plaster above his right eye. “Can you imagine me receiving my bride at the altar looking like this? Plus, of course, a morning coat, and the inevitable flower in my buttonhole!” He flung away the wilting carnation as if it offended him. “How I loathe buttonholes!”
“Don’t you think you ought to let Miss Vaizey know tonight that you’ve been involved in an accident?” Rose suggested. “Will you be seeing her?”
Guy Wakeford shook his head.
“I gather you’re not very familiar with the routine of weddings. Tonight I am expected to attend what’s known as a ‘stag party’ - which is a final fling a bachelor is permitted before he sticks his head into the noose! - and in the morning I shall probably awaken with a head so thick that what I’m feeling now will be nothing at all!”
“Then you are feeling rather dreadful?” Rose said sympathetically.
He smiled at her one-sidedly.
“I was feeling worse when I arrived here. And now I suppose I ought to go.”
“Would you like me to let Mr. Mancroft know that you wanted to see him?” Rose asked.
For an instant he looked vague again - as if he was still not particularly clear as to why he had wanted to see Mr. Mancroft. And then he shook his head, and winced because the movement set it throbbing most unpleasantly.
“No ... No, I don’t think so.” He looked at her very earnestly, as if he was seeing her as an individual for the first time, and in the harsh glare of the office lights her short cap of shining fair hair brought a tiny gleam of pleasure into his eyes. And her eyes were very big, and very anxious, and he considered she had coped extraordinarily well with the unexpected situation that had occurred on top of her working day. “Do you normally work as late as this, Miss -?”
“Arden,” she told him. “Rose Arden. And no, I don’t ... not normally. But tonight Mr. Mancroft wanted something rather important finished before the morning.”
“You’re his secretary?”
“I have been for the last six months.”
“Lucky man! ” he exclaimed, with perfect seriousness. Then he held out his hand. “Well, thank you, Miss Arden, for being such a ministering angel! I won’t forget you...” The blue eyes looked dark and clouded. “I’ll look in some time and see old Mancroft. Possibly in the next few days.”
“But you’ll be away on your honeymoon,” she reminded him.
She accompanied him to the door.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t like me to telephone for a doctor, Mr. Wakeford?” she suggested anxiously. “He could come here and see you, and ... afterwards I could see you home in a taxi.”
He smiled with the tinge of real amusement he had betrayed before. “Not on your life, my dear child! I’m going now, and ... thanks again for so much attention!” He hesitated in the doorway. “And don’t read the newspapers tomorrow! I think it’s a very bad habit to read newspapers, particularly when they fill them with stuff and nonsense about weddings.” He frowned severely. “The bridesmaids wore this, and the bride’s mother wore that ... The bride’s mother was looking almost as young as her daughter, and her father had never worn such an expansive smile as he did when he led her up the aisle!’”
He went off, muttering strangely, down the stairs. “As if he had any reason to wear anything else!”
Nevertheless, the first person to seize upon the evening paper when it was delivered at the office the following afternoon was Rose. She got a shock when she read the headlines, but she was not really in the least surprised.
Bride left standing at the altar! ... Beautiful bride waits for nearly an, hour, and then the ceremony is called off! Consternation amongst a huge number of guests!
Escape to Happiness Page 1
