During the following week preparations for Fiona’s big charity affair went on with gathering speed and momentum. Rachel was extremely busy, but although there was a good deal of routine work, she could not but be interested as she saw the whole event beginning to take shape. Fiona seemed satisfied with this side of her activities, but there was a slight air of tension and irritability about her which Rachel was quick to notice. And she could not help wondering if this were due to any action—or lack of it—on Nigel’s part.
She longed to ask questions, but lacked the courage to do so. Until one afternoon, when she had had her nerves a good deal rasped by Fiona’s dictatorial manner. Just what gave her the resolution she was not quite sure, but suddenly Rachel decided that, for long enough, Fiona had asked the questions and she had given the answers. For once the process should be reversed. And, looking up, she enquired, coolly but pleasantly,
“What did Nigel decide to do about your brother’s offer?”
There was a moment’s astonished pause, during which Rachel had the satisfaction of knowing that she had really shaken Fiona. Then her employer said, rather distantly,
“What business is it of yours?”
“Why—“ Rachel permitted herself to open her eyes wide, in an innocent stare—“you told me all about it yourself, and expressed some doubt about his acceptance. I just—wondered.”
Fiona bit her lip, obviously feeling at a disadvantage for once. Then she said shortly,
“There are several minor matters to tie up first. The decision doesn’t seem to rest with Nigel alone.”
“I see.” Rachel nodded reflectively, which must, she supposed, have been riling to Fiona. But her heart was rejoicing, against all reason, and through her mind ran disjointed little sentences of half guilty delight—“He’s delaying things. He can’t bring himself to accept. He’ll have to soon, of course. But not yet—not yet. Any day now—”
But the days went by, and the charity evening was almost upon them. And still she saw nothing of Nigel, yet felt, from Fiona’s attitude, that nothing had been decided.
It was, unexpectedly, her uncle who made the first reference to the matter, at the family dinner table.
“I heard the most astonishing thing from Martin McGrath today,” he said to Hester. “Did you know that he had offered to back Nigel financially?”
“No!” Hester looked interested. “Substantially, do you mean?”
‘To the tune of twenty thousand pounds,” replied her husband drily. “He must be mad.”
“Oh, no. Rather clever,” countered Hester calmly. “For one thing, whether you like it or not, Everard, Nigel is astonishingly brilliant in his own line. Even Oliver says so,” she affirmed, over the ground-bass of her husband’s protests. “And lots of other people think so too. Not that Martin McGrath cares all that much about that, I suppose. What he wants—or rather, what his sister wants—is that Nigel should marry her.”
There was a shocked pause. Then Sir Everard—who liked to describe himself, not unjustly, as a gentleman of the old school—said distastefully,
“Are you suggesting that the McGraths would pay Nigel to marry Fiona?”
“That’s a crude way of putting it.”
“It’s a remarkably crude action to have to describe. ” retorted Sir Everard. And Rachel had an almost overwhelming impulse to get up and go round the table and hug her uncle.
“I suppose,” he went on, with a weighty disapproval, which made her glad she had not done so, that the prompting came from Nigel. ”
“No, Uncle it did not,” stated Rachel crisply, before Hester could reply, and both her aunt and uncle turned to look at her in some surprise. “The prompting came from Fiona, if you want to know, I can tell you, because I took the letter in which the offer was made.”
“How do you mean—you took the letter?” Sir Everard looked as though there were an unpleasant smell on the end of his handsome nose. “What was wrong with the usual postal service?”
“Nothing, Uncle, except that Fiona just preferred to make it all somewhat urgent and dramatic. I took the letter along, by hand, to Nigel’s laboratory. I was a good deal shocked and—and moved—to see in what poor circumstances he and his assistants had to work,” she added, thinking this a good moment to throw in that piece of information. “Nigel opened the letter while I was there—and that’s how I know what was in it. ”
“But when was this?” enquired Hester curiously.
“Two—nearly three—weeks ago.”
“And you never mentioned it until now?”
“I thought it might be confidential.”
“Quite right,” approved her unde, but with a bewildered air of being surprised that there was anything to approve in this astonishing business. Then he added, with a curiosity at least equal to Hester’s, if more naive, “What was Nigel’s reaction, Rachel?”
“He was rather—dismayed, I think.”
“Dismayed?” echoed Hester and her husband in unison. And Hester added, “What on earth is there dismaying about an offer of twenty thousand pounds?”
“I suppose,” Rachel said slowly, “the conditions which might be attached to it.”
“What conditions were attached?” That was her uncle, again looking as though he found this all most distasteful.
“None in actual fact, Uncle. But one can’t accept twenty thousand pounds without feeling under a great obligation to the givers, can one?”
“Certainly not,” agreed Sir Everard, with an emphasis which suggested that he had frequently refused twenty thousand pounds for the best of motives. Hester, however, gave a scornful little laugh.
“But he can marry Fiona, surely? Then there’ll be no obligation, and he’ll have a great deal more than the initial twenty thousand.”
“My dear, I don’t think you should say such things, even in joke,” said Sir Everard. And, glancing at him, Rachel saw that he really did credit Hester with humorous intentions in this, unfortunate remark.
Hester evidently believed in leaving her husband some of his illusions, for she merely gave a slight smile at this, and after a short pause, it was Sir Everard who spoke again. And the totally unexpected thing he said was, “Did you really find Nigel working in
poor circumstances, Rachel?”
“In the sense that it was all shabby and poverty stricken—yes, Uncle,” Rachel replied. “But there seemed to be a most eager and enthusiastic spirit among the workers there, and the one who showed me around spoke glowingly of Nigel. So did the man at the entrance. ”
“What man at the entrance?”
“The entrance to the hospital,” Rachel explained.
"Do you mean the hall porter?” enquired Sir Everard incredulously.
Rachel said she did.
“Well, my dear—” her uncle smiled—“without being snobbish or condescending, I think we must say that he was scarcely qualified to pronounce on the professional excellence of Nigel or anyone else.”
“He didn’t pronounce on his professional excellence—though he said Nigel was very highly regarded by those who could. He merely told me that he—he was the finest man in the hospital, and always ready to help anyone in trouble. He said—not only by putting his hand in his pocket, like most people, but by giving his time and himself. I thought it a tribute anyone might be proud to have paid to them. ”
Sir Everard cleared his throat. Then, because he was essentially a kind man, and because he had probably noticed the slight tremor in his niece’s voice, he said, “Well, yes, my dear, I suppose that’s true. If only Nigel had a real sense of purpose and responsibility—” he stopped and frowned "If he married the right woman, it would probably help a good deal, of course.”
“Yes, Uncle,” Rachel agreed, a trifle breathlessly.
“Well, we must just hope Fiona McGrath is the right woman,” he concluded. But Rachel did not say, “Yes, Uncle,” that time.
Instead, she finished her dinner in silence, and then went up to her own room and cri
ed, which was silly of her, because the evening was less than half over, and it was unlikely that she would be left to her own devices for long. And, sure enough, she was called to the telephone within a quarter of an hour, and had great difficulty in making herself presentable before sbe ran downstairs again.
“Yes?” she said, a little agitatedly, into the telephone. “Rachel Linding speaking.”
“Miss Linding,” replied a pleasantly pitched voice, with a slight foreign accent, “this is Florian. I have just arrived, with my wife, and we are staying at the Gloria. As you know, the dress rehearsal is tomorrow, and there are one or two points I should like cleared up before then. Would it be trespassing too much on your kindness if I asked you to come along this evening?”
“Of course not! I’d be delighted to come,” declared Rachel, with truth, for few interruptions could have been more timely or more exhilarating than this one. “But wouldn’t it be better to discuss those points with Miss McGrath?”
“No. It seems to me that it would be better to discuss them with you,” was the reply, and Rachel knew from the tone of his voice that he was smiling.
“Oh, Monsieur Florian, how kind of you! I’ll come right away,” Rachel promised.
And, less than ten minutes later, Rachel was in a taxi on her way to the Gloria—her troubles, if not forgotten, very much in the background of her mind.
This time she entered the famous hotel by the big main doorway and, as she crossed what seemed like acres of deep blue carpet to the enquiry desk, she was fascinated by the varied and colourful throng of people, coming and going, meeting and parting, talking in groups or sitting done, entering or emerging from the silent lifts on either side of the immense foyer.
Even at this hour of the evening, there were several people round the enquiry desk, and Rachel had to wait her turn. But she was content to stand there, watching the scene. Indeed, so absorbed was she that she actually jumped when someone touched her arm and said,
“Hello. You’re Miss Linding, aren’t you?”
“Yes—” She turned, and was surprised to find Keith Elman standing at her elbow.
Rachel had not seen him since the night of Hester’s accident, and she had always supposed that his feverish pallor on that occasion had been due to the anxieties of the moment. Now she saw that the rather febrile impression was natural to him, and that, though he had a certain degree of boyish charm and good looks, there was a touch of instability in the way he continually looked at and then away from the person he was addressing.
“How are you?” asked Rachel, for lack of anything else to say. “Foul,” he said gloomily. “What else can one be when everything that matters has been taken away?”
“Well, that’s a bit of a blow, certainly,” Rachel agreed, though briskly. “What’s happened? Have you had a death sentence or merely lost all your money?”
“Neither.” He looked at her as though he wondered now why he had taken the trouble to address her. “Didn’t Hester tell you what happened the other night?”
“With you? No. We never discuss you,” Rachel assured him astringently. “What did happen?”
“She went for me as though I’d engineered that cursed motor accident on purpose. Told me she would never forgive me and that she didn’t intend ever to see me again.”
“She wouldn’t mean that quite literally, you know,” Rachel told him kindly. “People use these expressions when they’re angry—and I suppose, after the rotten time she had, Hester was tempted to take it out on someone. I shouldn’t brood about never being forgiven, if I were you. But, as far as not seeing you is concerned, I’m sure she has realised—and you really must too—that anything but the most casual friendship between you would be both wrong and silly. ”
“I don’t realise that, and I don’t accept it,” he retorted, so violently that a man standing near them turned his head in surprise.
“There’s no need to shout about it,” Rachel said, in her most deflating manner. “Other people aren’t interested in one’s emotional reactions. But—” she glanced up at the big clock over the desk, reflected that the Florians would not actually be counting the moments until she arrived, and decided to waste ten minutes trying to talk sense to Keith Elman.
“Come over here—” she led the way to a wall-seat, in a secluded corner of the lounge—“and sit down.”
He obeyed her, though reluctantly. For, although he was evidently filled with a desire to talk about himself, he was also reluctant to let himself in for the frank and bracing treatment which Rachd had more than once meted out to him.
“Well?” he said, rather sulkily.
“I’m truly sorry that you’re unhappy about Hester,” Rachel told him, not unkindly. “And I know it’s awful when the person one loves is beyond one’s reach. But that’s something which just has to be accepted, like other reverses in life, and the sooner one accepts it, the sooner one can begin to recover.”
“I refuse to accept it,” stated Keith Elman, with a grand air of spurning all recovery.
“But you have to” Rachel insisted patiently. “Hester is the wife of another man, who, incidentally, adores her.”
“She doesn’t care for him, though!”
“That's not for you or me to say,” retorted Rachel very firmly. "People have different ways of showing their feelings—or hiding them. But Hester has definitely stated that she doesn’t want anything between you and her and, to put it at its lowest, she is not a woman to ruin her very comfortable position by an entanglement with someone she has already written off.”
“But it might be ruined for her,” exclaimed Keith Elman excitedly. “She’s not the only one to take the decisions. Suppose her hand were forced for her?”
“By you, do you mean?” Rachel gave him a very straight glance. “Don’t be an idiot.”
“I’m not an idiot. And nor am I the passive, spineless person you all seem to think. You forget that I also have the power to alter the situation drastically. I don’t have to keep quiet, just because you and that arrogant brother of hers and that self-satisfied Oliver Mayforth choose to make a conspiracy of it, I’ve said nothing so far because I thought—when Hester was better—things would be all right again—
His voice trailed away, and Rachel stared at him in dismay.
“Do you mean,” she said sharply, “that you have some idea of making trouble with my uncle, just because Hester has had the sense to bring this business to an end?”
He didn’t answer immediately, then muttered something finally about not having made up his mind yet.
“Well, make it up now,” Rachel told him curtly, as she rose to her feet, for she realised that she could not linger here indefinitely. “I can’t stay and talk to you any longer, because I have an appointment But please try to behave like an adult, with some sense of decency. You cannot and must not interfere any more in Hester’s affairs. In fact—”
But she never finished the sentence, for he turned and went from her, without any word of good-bye, his slight figure lost in the crowd, so quickly and completely that she could not have followed him even if she would.
For a second or two longer Rachel stood there, disturbed and doubtful. But then, since there was nothing further she could do about this unpleasant little interlude—and her own affairs demanded her attention—she finally decided to dismiss Keith. Elman from her mind for the moment, and consider later if she should say anything to Hester about this conversation.
This time when she presented herself at the enquiry desk she was attended to immediately and, in the care of a perky little page, she was taken up to the Florians’ suite on the first floor.
Here she found not only the famous designer himself, but a charming, dark-eyed, fair-haired girl, with the most beautiful skin she had ever seen. She was introduced as Gabrielle Florian, and it was obvious to Rachel that, even if they had been married ten years, they were still completely, happily and uninhibitedly in love.
“My husband tells me you are
so efficient and helpful,” she said to Rachel. “He declares he would like you for his own secretary, if he had not already got one who rules him and his business with a rod of iron. His words, not mine,” she added, with an amused glance at her husband.
“How very nice of you, Monsieur Florian,” Rachel laughed. “But I don’t think you’ve had much opportunity to judge of my efficiency, have you? We met only once.”
“But every letter which came from you to Paris showed me how well you dealt with every occasion,” he replied. “And when I spoke to Miss McGrath earlier this evening—”
“Oh, you have spoken to her?” Rachel interrupted quickly.
"Yes, indeed.”
“And there still remain points to elucidate?” Rachel sounded sceptical but amused.
Then, before Florian could reply, Gabrielle interrupted to say that, if they were going to talk business, she would finish her unpacking.
“I shan’t be long ” she told Rachel, “and I hope you will stay
and have coffee or a drink with us both afterwards.”
When she had gone, there was an unexpected silence for a few moments. Then Florian walked up the room and back again, looking faintly perplexed—a most unusual condition for him.
“Monsieur Florian—” Rachel looked at him doubtfully. “If there are any details left to arrange—”
“There are not, Cherie.” He stopped in front of her, a slight frown creasing his forehead. “That was merely an excuse to get you here. Because—inexcusably as it may seem to you—I want to speak to you about your own private affairs.”
“In what way?” She looked astonished, and a little defensive, so that he said immediately,
“I should not dream of doing so if you hadn’t given me your confidence the other evening. But—” he shrugged expressively— “you are too nice a child to be left totally unprepared—”
The Other Linding Girl Page 12
