A Nightingale in the Sycamore

by Jane Beaufort

  “I thought perhaps it might worry you,” Virginia said, because she didn’t quite know what to say.

  “Nothing could ever worry me here,” he assured her, “except the presence of your too attractive sister. Tell her I’d rather she didn’t sit with me. And if you can’t spare the time to sit with me—or at least visit me sometimes! ” a mixture of audaciousness and curious, rather attractive appeal looking up at her from under the heavy eyelids—“then I’m quite all right if I’m left alone. But I decline to go into a nursing-home.”

  Dr. Cameron prepared to leave.

  “In any case, I’m sending a nurse to-night,” he said, “so she will sit with you.”

  Charles Wickham regarded him with an amused twinkle, recognising that he thought he had had the last word.

  On his way out Colin Cameron looked back to say:

  “If there is anyone you would like me to get in touch with on your behalf you’d better let me know where to find them.”

  “There is no one.” Wickham spoke decidedly, and a sudden inscrutable look closed down over his face. It made him look older, slightly more ravaged, and the mutinous firmness of his jaw attached itself to his shapely mouth as well. “I don’t wish to see anyone—anyone, do you understand? Tell them to leave me alone if they begin making inquiries. Tell them I’m in no condition to be bothered by anyone, and if possible don’t let them know I’m here.”

  Dr. Cameron closed the door firmly, and on the landing outside it he looked at Virginia.

  “I think very decidedly a nursing-home,” he said, “if we can’t get them to take him into the Cottage Hospital!”

  But Virginia said nothing.

  She found it necessary to say quite a lot, however, on the telephone that night, when Lady Wickham put through an agitated call to her. Lady Wickham suffered badly from rheumatoid-arthritis, which kept her chained to her flat, and it was impossible for her to get to see her son. But the knowledge that he was injured had upset her very much indeed, and she pressed Virginia to give her all the information she could concerning him and his condition. Virginia calmed her considerably by assuring her that he was receiving every possible attention, and that he was already on the road to recovery. She further promised Lady Wickham that she would do everything to aid that recovery, and that she would ring her nightly during the more critical stages in order to let her know exactly how he was progressing.

  Actually, Virginia was so sorry for Lady Wickham, despite the hint of arrogance in her voice which was so exactly like the hint of arrogance in her son’s, that she felt she was able to appreciate only too well how she felt about the whole matter. An only son, apparently—a successful son, probably devoted to his mother, and she to him—lying helpless under a strange roof after a most unpleasant accident! She felt that Lady Wickham had a right to reassurance.

  But when, the following morning, before breakfast was scarcely over, a car drew up at the door, and a very fat, short gentleman climbed excitedly out, and bombarded her on her own front doorstep with a tempestuous stream of inquiries, she felt a little bewildered.

  “I must see him!” cried the little fat man, whose face was as pink and as smooth as a child’s. “I must see him immediately! Tell him Pablo Enrico has left everything and come haring out from London to make certain he is alive and being properly cared for! Tell him I will take him back with me, and that I have a car for the purpose. Tell him—”

  “Mr. Enrico,” said Virginia, inviting him into the drawing-room, which was mellow with sunshine and agleam with furniture-polish and sweet with the scent of flowers, “you must understand that Mr. Wickham is in no condition to see anyone just now. The doctor is most firm—” not altogether truthfully.

  “Nonsense!” replied Mr. Enrico, puffing out his chest, which was covered with a dove-grey waistcoat, while an enormous old-fashioned gold watch and chain, as well as a collection of fobs and seals, hung upon it and jingled a little as he moved. “Charles will see me—of course he will see me! He would never deny me! And he is committed to a series of concerts at the Arcadian Hall—something must be done about them.”

  Virginia was about to inform him that at that moment nothing could be done about them, when Mr. Enrico caught sight of the grand piano in a corner—a beautiful rosewood grand piano which was actually one of her most cherished possessions, and the gift of a wealthy aunt at a time when she thought (in the days, that is, before her father died) of taking up music seriously—and without another word he strode across to it, seated himself on the piano stool, and began to play.

  The room became filled with melody—melody which held her entranced, and soared, like a flight of doves, to the rafters. Chopin, Schubert, Debussy, Brahms... Pablo Enrico became so engrossed in their compositions that he forgot everything else—even the reason for his visit—and settled down quite happily on the piano stool to enjoy himself until someone should have the effrontery to disturb him. A beatific smile sat upon his face; his mild brown eyes were uplifted to the beams which crossed the ceiling, while his little fat hands moved hither and thither over the ivory keys.

  Virginia would have been well content to curl herself up on the settee and spend the morning listening to his playing, for it was seldom she got such a musical treat as this, even on the wireless. But her patient upstairs was requiring his breakfast, Midge was waiting to be seen off to school, and Iris was hanging about sulkily and anxious to learn whether her services were required at home, or whether she was to put in an appearance at the art school. And to Iris it seemed plain that she would be far more help at home.

  The sound of Mr. Enrico’s playing attracted her to the drawing-room, and she was standing peeping in at him and Virginia when the knock came at the door, a decided, peremptory summons. Virginia looked through the window and saw the most glamorous figure of a female she had ever seen in her life standing on the step before the front door, and in her arms was an enormous bunch of gorgeous hot-house flowers. Behind her a uniformed chauffeur was unloading baskets of fruit and other things less easily recognisable from a silver-grey Bentley.

  Virginia felt too surprised to rush and open the door, and a white-gloved hand attacked the knocker again. It was an impatient summons this time.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  That night, when the house was quiet, Virginia stood in the kitchen feeling a little exhausted. Mrs. Banks had stayed late and helped her with the washing-up of the supper things, but now that the faithful daily had departed, and her endless stream of comments on current events and local affairs was no longer running on like a bubbling brook, the silence around Virginia seemed absolute. A little too absolute, she thought, running an abstracted hand through her hair, and thinking also that the solemn ticking of the grandfather-clock in the hall sounded almost as if it was muffled. And when an owl hooted suddenly close to the house she actually jumped, saying to herself worriedly:

  “I hope that hasn’t disturbed the patient!”

  The patient was lying upstairs in his comfortable bed, with a very stiffly starched nurse sitting beside him instead of Virginia. If, every time he opened his eyes—and as he had been rendered suitably drowsy with sedatives that wasn’t very often—he was inclined to recall nostalgically the picture of his hostess, with her delicate heart-shaped face and grey eyes framed in that lovely cloud of golden-brown hair, while she sewed away untiringly, he knew there was very little point in his offering any objections to the changeover.

  Colin Cameron, he felt, could be quite adamant in some respects.

  But downstairs Virginia was feeling as if the day had drained her of her vitality, and she would far rather have been sitting upstairs beside the patient, with that monument to trim efficiency in a cap and apron and Sister’s belt not sharing the same roof with her and Iris and Midge—and, of course, Mr. Charles Digby Wickham!

  To begin with there had been Mr. Enrico, with his exquisite piano playing that had exhausted her spiritually because it had done something to her emotions that had caused them t
o pop up like a jack-in-the-box and want to take wings, and it had been with great difficulty that she had crammed them back into the box. Then there had been the arrival of Miss le Clair.

  Annette le Clair had quite shattered Iris, because she was quite unlike any living, breathing woman, not so many years older than herself, with whom she had so far come into contact. She looked as if she had stepped out of the pages of a very rare book of ancient legends, and then been dressed by Dior, or someone like that. Her face was exquisite, angelic, and at the same time not lacking in worldly wisdom. She had enormous brown eyes, corn-silk hair, a mouth that riveted the attention, and a figure that had been intended by Nature to ravish, but had been toned down by careful dieting to a sylph-like slenderness. She spoke English with an engaging accent.

  “But, of course Charles will see me!” she had declared, her voice soft and flute-like. “Of course he will see Annette! It is not possible that he will refuse, n’est-ce pas?’’

  But Virginia had been unable to make up her mind about this young woman.

  “Mr. Wickham was the victim of a most unpleasant accident,” she explained carefully. “He has to be kept very quiet.”

  “And you think that perhaps I will over-excite him?” The brown eyes sparkled as if she realised how impossible it was that she should do otherwise. “His temperature it is perhaps not very steady?”

  “It could be steadier,” Virginia admitted. “And,” she added, for some reason not quite clear to her, “his pulse!”

  The brown eyes studied her with interest. She had invited this second visitor of the day into the dining room, because Pablo Enrico was still playing away happily in the drawing-room, and she was aware that Annette was looking a trifle amused, in spite of her expressed concern for the patient.

  “Poor Charles!” she murmured. “I am dying to see him—he is quite, quite adorable, and I have been so very worried about him! But I would not do anything that would be likely to upset his pulse still further. You understood that we are”—she seemed to pause for a word—“the very close friends, Miss—?”

  “Summers,” Virginia supplied.

  “We are the so close friends, Miss Summers! The so very close—although it is not that we have known one another for long!” She smiled almost seductively at Virginia. “And you,” she added, “are, I am sure, the so very good nurse!”

  “Thank you,” Virginia replied, a little stiffly, “but a professional nurse is already on her way to look after Mr. Wickham.”

  “Ah, then he cannot fail to get well quickly.” She thrust the enormous bouquet of hot-house flowers into the other girl’s arms. “Please see that he receives these with my love,” she said softly, distinctly. “With all my love, you understand?”

  Virginia said that she understood perfectly.

  “And the fruit, and all these other things I have brought with me, are to build up his strength as soon as he can take them. I will come and see him again when it is safer that I shall do so—when it is permitted that I shall do so!” Her smile made her eyes look languorous and enchanting. “Au revoir, Mademoiselle Summers!”

  She withdrew with the grace of one making a stage exit, accepting the fact that she was barred from the side of the man to whom she sent her love with apparent submissiveness, and her chauffeur closed the rear door of her silver-grey Bentley upon her. Virginia watched it disappear down the short drive, stood very still for a few moments even after that looking rather thoughtful, and then carried the gifts and the message upstairs to the invalid.

  “And there is a Mr. Enrico in the drawing-room who wishes to see you,” she added, when she had deposited the flowers beside him on the eiderdown. “At least, he wished to see you, but at the moment he is immersed in playing the piano!”

  Charles Wickham smiled, an attractive, boyish smile. “I can hear him,” he replied. “I’ve been lying here listening to him. I’d know Pablo’s touch and execution anywhere. But you’ll have to get rid of him unless you want him to make a complete nuisance of himself, Virginia.”

  The easy way in which he said Virginia sent one of her eyebrows up a trifle.

  “Then you really don’t want to see him?”

  “Not to-day. Some other time, perhaps.”

  “Would you have liked to see Miss le Clair? Did I make a mistake in sending her away?”

  “No.” He lay looking up at her with the smile in his eyes, and it confounded her a little, because there was a quality about that smile she couldn’t quite comprehend. “You made no mistake about Annette.”

  “She—she asked me to give you the flowers with her love—all her love!”

  “How nice!” And to her his voice sounded suddenly dry.

  “She’s coming to see you again—when you’re a little better.”

  “That will be something extremely nice to look forward to,” Charles commented, but his voice was even drier, and his cairngorm eyes looked suddenly hard.

  Virginia stooped above the mass of scarlet roses and maidenhair fern on the bed.

  “Oughtn’t I to put these in water?”

  “You can do what you like with them,” he answered absently, staring out through the window at the leafy branches of the apple tree widespread against a patch of clear, blue sky. “Put them in water if you want to; but once in water I’d prefer it if you kept them outside this room. I may be temporarily indisposed, as the saying goes, but I don’t have to put up with the tributes of sick-visitors.”

  “But, Miss le Clair—”

  “Miss le Clair likes scarlet roses—I don’t!”

  This time the decisive, cold snap in his voice caused her to carry the roses away out of his room, and she took them downstairs to the kitchen and astounded

  Mrs. Banks, who was washing up at the sink, by offering them to her.

  “Lord love you, dearie!” Mrs. Banks dried her arms on her apron and received them with a mixture of amazement and reverence. “I ain’t never ’ad a bouquet like that in me life! Not even when I was married to' my Tom!”

  “Well, you’ve got one now,” Virginia told her smilingly. “With Mr. Charles Wickham’s compliments,” she invented glibly.

  Mrs. Banks looked much more than pleased.

  “Well, now! And I said he was a nice gentleman, didn’t I? The sort it’s a pleasure to wait on! No wonder Miss Iris doesn’t want to go to that art school of hers and miss all the fun!”

  But Virginia decided something would have to be done about Mr. Enrico, and she returned to the drawing-room. She found him sitting contemplating the keys of the piano, his hands temporarily idle, and when she entered the room he turned as if resenting an intrusion. And then the sight of her brought back the reason for his visit, and he shot up from the piano stool.

  “Charles!” he exclaimed. “I wish to be taken to him at once!”

  Virginia smiled at him.

  “Not to-day,” she said soothingly. “Mr. Wickham is really not up to receiving visitors to-day, at any rate not this morning.”

  “Then I can see him this afternoon?” He scratched the top of his bald head uncertainly. “But that will mean returning to town, and what about my lunch? I shall miss my lunch!”

  “You are very welcome to remain here for lunch,” Virginia invited. “But I can’t promise you that Mr. Wickham will see you after lunch.”

  “Never mind.” He beamed at her expansively. “I shall be delighted to stay and lunch here in this charming house, and in the meantime I will continue to take advantage of the opportunity to play on this very excellent instrument,” and he sat down again at the piano.

  He played until just on lunch-time, and then he surprised Virginia by making his appearance in the kitchen, where she was busy draining rice through a colander. He took the colander out of her hands and showed her what he was convinced was the best method of ensuring that rice was served up really dry, well-cooked, and in a snowy mound; and when he learned that there was to be an omelette insisted on whisking up the eggs and demonstrating his method
of omelette-making as well.

  His little, pudgy hands were so skilful, and once weaned from the piano he bubbled over with so much enthusiasm and friendliness that Virginia found him quite a pleasant companion to have, for a change, in the kitchen, and apart from the fact that he confused her a little she had no objections to his remaining there as long as he liked.

  And he even shared her lunch at the kitchen table, declaring it was quite unnecessary to lay the dining room table and behave with anything approaching formality. And as Mrs. Banks didn’t put in an appearance in the afternoons she was glad of his assistance with the washing-up afterwards. He looked rather funny with an apron draped round his portly middle, and flourishing a tea-cloth in his hand; but he did assist her, nevertheless, and it was only during the afternoon that she began to wonder whether she was ever going to get rid ‘of him. He insisted on writing her out numberless recipes, for spaghetti, curry, and a special ragout which he declared was positively mouth-watering; and then dragged her off to the drawing-room to listen to Schumann’s Devotion, which lulled her into a state of utter tranquillity until tea-time.

  Then, although Charles still flatly refused to see him, he waxed lyrical about the invalid, praising his brilliance as a composer, declaring that of all modern young composers he was the greatest. The future which stretched before him was positively dazzling if he continued to work hard. If he allowed nothing to deflect him from his work. But the trouble with Charles was that he was temperamental, and it was not easy to get him to concentrate if he was not in the mood for concentrating. He could be extremely difficult at times—extremely difficult! There was an operetta over which he should be labouring at the moment which, if it was ever completed, would prove to be an operetta to end all operettas. But, would it ever be completed?