Unbidden Melody

by Mary Burchell

  “Barry won’t approve,” remarked her mother. “He’s still phoning daily to ask how you are.”

  “Barry? It has nothing to do with Barry,” Mary said quickly. Then, as her mother looked thoughtful, she added rather awkwardly, “I appreciate all he’s done, Mother, and I’m glad you’ve seen his better side now. But—but don’t encourage him in any way, will you?”

  “It isn’t my encouragement he wants.” Her mother looked amused. “The question is—do you want to en­courage him?”

  “No,” said Mary, without elaboration.

  “Then it’s still Nicholas Brenner?” her mother said after a pause. And Mary nodded rather unhappily.

  Characteristically, her mother did not press her further. But later, when she was alone in her own room, Mary opened a drawer and took out the magnificent ring which Nicholas had given her.

  It was not really hers any longer, of course. When an engagement was broken the right thing to do was to re­turn the ring. And yet to send back his ring, as the only answer to his letter, was to accept the justice of what he had written and quench the last glimmer of hope.

  That she had any hope left at all both surprised and slightly shamed her. But almost defiantly she picked up the ring and slid it on to her finger, and immediately her hand clenched round it in a little spasm of anguish, as though every natural instinct resisted the idea, however logical, that she must part with this one symbol of the fact that Nicholas had once loved her.

  It would not be possible to wear the ring openly, of course. It never had been possible, she reflected sadly. But if she could find a chain—

  Suddenly she began to rummage through her modest jewel box, until she found a slender gold chain which had once belonged to her grandmother, and on this she threaded Nicholas’s ring, and hung it round her neck. Cool and hard, it slid down inside her dress, and oddly enough, she found some sort of comfort in the feel of it.

  After that the only thing she could dunk of was to get back to the office. Surely there she would catch some breath of news of him. Dermot Deane must know where—or if—he was in the country, and something of what he was doing.

  When she announced her intention of returning to work her father made a few anxious objections. But her mother simply said, “Let the child decide for herself. She knows her own strength best. But perhaps you’d better drive her down. She shouldn’t be struggling on and off trains in the rush-hour yet.”

  So Mary was taken by car to the office, where her re­ception both touched and surprised her. Her employer actually kissed her and declared he had been lost without her. And although she knew he had managed very well for something like thirty years before she had even come on the scene, she found this piece of exaggeration very heart-warming.

  He wanted to know the details of her stay with Torelli and remarked, “You seem to have made a real hit with her. I gather it’s thanks to you that she’s accepted the London concert.”

  “Nothing of the sort,” Mary assured him. “That’s a little bit of play-acting on her part. She likes the idea that she was snatched from death by a devoted admirer whereas, in actual fact—and between these four walls—she richly deserved to have been run over, and I only hap­pened to be the handy person who yanked her back in time. But she’s a darling and I adore her, and I quite understand why everyone puts up with her nonsense, be­cause at heart she’s real and warm—and oh, what an artist!”

  “I agree with every word of that,” Dermot Deane grinned indulgently. “I even agree to the demand for the extra ten per cent. Why not? She’s worth six of the dimly twinkling little starlets today. But that also is between these four walls. How did you get on in Amsterdam?”

  “It was a superb occasion.” Mary simply willed her heart not to beat any faster. “Are they both back in Eng­land?”

  “Came back a week ago. Suzanne came in to see me before going back to Canada. I don’t know about Bren­ner. I haven’t seen him.”

  “Wasn’t it more or less settled that he should stay in this country quite a while, to study Marcus Bannister’s new work with him?” she managed to ask coolly.

  “That was the long-term plan—yes. But you never know with these artists. They chop and change a lot. He’ll be dropping in one of these days, no doubt, if only to collect his mail.”

  And with that Mary had to be satisfied, and somehow keep herself from actually biting her nails with impatience and frustration.

  She was not allowed to work at all hard during that first day, and halfway through the afternoon her employer was just proposing to send her home when Anthea Warrender came in, on her way to a late rehearsal. She was openly pleased to see Mary, and enquired about her welfare so kindly that it was suddenly quite easy to ask,

  “Have you seen anything of Ni- of Mr. Brenner since he came back from the continent?”

  “I was just going to ask you that,” Anthea countered. “Have you run into him?”

  “No,” Mary said, unaware how forlorn that sounded. “No, I haven’t.”

  There was silence for a moment. Then Dermot Deane said she had better go now if she wanted to avoid the rush-hour.

  “Yes, you don’t look as though you could do much battling yet,” Anthea remarked. And then, as though a pleasing idea had struck her, she added, “Why don’t you come down to us for next weekend? It’s lovely by the river just now, and I’d make it my business to spoil you at least as well as Torelli.”

  “How kind of you!” Mary thought of the beautiful house where she had first began to hope that Nicholas loved her, but which was now full of poignant memories. “I would willingly, but my mother’s rather enjoying hav­ing me under her eye for the moment, and I think she’d be disappointed if I left just now.”

  “I understand. My mother would be the same,” Anthea agreed unexpectedly. “Another time, then.” And she dropped a light kiss on Dermot’s balding head, waved to Mary and went off.

  “That’s a lovely girl,” remarked Mary’s employer. “Too good for Warrender.”

  “But he adores her!” protested Mary.

  “Oh, yes, in his demanding, dictatorial way. Very wear­ing sometimes, I should think. Would you like to be adored by Oscar Warrender?”

  “Certainly not!” said Mary, who wanted to be adored by Nicholas Brenner and no one else at all.

  “Well, there you are, then.” Dermot smiled at her, but his glance was shrewd. “You’re looking a bit pale and peaky by now. Today was a good effort, and I appreciate your making it. But take it easy tomorrow. There’s no need to come in. It will be a slack day and I shan’t need you.”

  “You’re quite sure?” The suggestion was more wel­come than she wanted to admit, for she felt unexpectedly tired by now.

  “Quite sure. Go along with you.”

  So Mary went, and was glad enough to go straight to bed when she reached home.

  “If I feel stronger again in the morning I shall go,” she told her mother. But when it came to the point she was relieved not to have to repeat the previous day’s effort.

  The following day, however, she woke feeling entirely different and she realised that she had come to that turn­ing point which marks almost all periods of convalescence when suddenly one is something like one’s real self again. She yielded to her father’s insistence on giving her a lift once more, but she knew it was hardly necessary. And when she walked into the office it was with such a brisk step and such an eager air that her employer exclaimed,

  “Ah, that’s my girl again! You look quite different.”

  “I feel quite different,” Mary told him. “I’m really ready for work again, though I was glad of the rest yester­day. How did things go?”

  “You mean—how did I possibly manage without you?”

  “I didn’t mean that at all! I meant—was it as slack as you expected?”

  “Pretty well. By the way, your favourite came in.”

  “My favourite?” She turned sharply from hanging up her coat. “Who do you mean?”


  “Brenner, of course. He’s your favourite, isn’t he?”

  She didn’t answer that. She couldn’t answer at all for a moment. She was struggling too hard to hide her bitter disappointment at having missed him.

  “He seemed very shocked about your accident,” her employer went on. “He heard about it only recently—from Anthea, I believe.”

  “What did he say? about me—about my accident, I mean.”

  “Just that. That he was shocked, and he wanted to know how you were. Nothing else much. He didn’t stay long. Only came in to collect his mail, and there was little enough of that, as it happened. Just a letter sent on from the Amsterdam hotel.”

  “The Amsterdam hotel?” There must have been an odd note in her voice because Dermot Deane glanced en­quiringly at her. “What—what did he do with it?”

  “Do with it? What does one do with out-of-date fan mail? Chucked it in the wastepaper basket, I suppose.”

  “He did that? You saw him do that?”

  “No.” Her employer was looking extremely surprised by now. “He shoved it in his pocket, if I remember rightly, and threw it in the wastepaper basket when he got home, I imagine. Does it matter?”

  “No,” said Mary, uttering this thumping lie with des­perate calm. “It doesn’t matter really. It’s just that I al­ways have a certain sympathy for fans, having been one myself.”

  Dermot Deane laughed callously at that, declaring that experience would teach her to be less soft-hearted. And so she had to manage to smile and go to her desk and get on with the morning’s work.

  It was all she could do to keep her attention on what she was doing, for hammering insistently at the back of her mind, were half a dozen anxious questions.

  Had Nicholas destroyed her letter unread? To the best of her remembrance, he had never had occasion to see her handwriting, so why should he connect her in any way with the readdressed envelope? And then if—kinder than Dermot—he did open the letter and glance at the signa­ture, was his anger and disillusionment such that he would just crumple it up and throw it away?

  To that question she felt the answer must be “No”. Nicholas was neither petty nor ill-tempered—and surely sheer curiosity would make him turn to the beginning again and read? Would the date convey to him imme­diately the importance of that mislaid letter? Had she even put a date, now she came to think of it?

  And, when she had exhausted all the possibilities and improbabilities connected with the letter, came the most chilling question of all. Was it quite possibly not her letter at all? He might well have had hers long ago and found nothing in it to modify his fixed opinion that all was over between them. In which case, this was no more than her employer thought it was—an out-of-date piece of fan mail.

  “That’s it,” she told herself. “You’re getting excited about something utterly unimportant.” But then back would come the questions, clamouring for an answer.

  Not long after lunch Anthea came in again, looking unusually harassed for her.

  “Dermot, I’m in a jam!” She flung out her hands ex­pressively. “Can I borrow Mary? If she’s willing, I mean.”

  “I expect so.” Dermot smiled indulgently. “For how long and for what purpose?”

  “For the afternoon. And to fetch my score from home. I’ve stupidly left it there, and it’s an important rehearsal today.”

  “We have most of the standard scores here.” Dermot gestured towards one of the big office cupboards. “What do you want?”

  “No, no, you don’t understand. It has to be my own copy. The one Oscar marked for me with everything just as he wants it. He’ll be furious if I haven’t got it on this day of all days.”

  “Let him be furious. Do him good,” Dermot began.

  But Mary interrupted to say, “Of course I’ll go! How do I get there? I was taken by car last time, you remem­ber.”

  “Yes, of course. You’re an angel, Mary. If you take a taxi to Paddington right away you’ll just catch the five past three. It doesn’t take more than half an hour, and I’ll phone Trudi to see there’s a car waiting for you at the station. She’ll know where to find the score too, when you get to the house.”

  “Why not get her to send the score with the car?” sug­gested Dermot practically.

  “Oh, Dermot!” Anthea turned on him with the only spurt of temper Mary had ever seen her display. “Will you stop interfering? I know what I’m doing. Trudi may have to look for the thing.”

  “Sorry, sorry. Don’t mind me.” Dermot put a hand in mock self-defence. And suddenly Anthea gave him a remorseful smile and said,

  “No—I’m sorry. I was being temperamental, wasn’t I?”

  “Just a bit. But it suits you. And it’s nice to know Oscar isn’t the only one in the Warrender family to ride high.—Off you go, Mary.”

  So Mary went. And, in the taxi on the way to Padding-ton, she realised how disappointed she would have been if she had been deprived of this chance to catch a glimpse once more of the house where so much had happened to her and Nicholas.

  She caught her train with five minutes to spare, and at the other end of her journey there was a car waiting for her. The drive was longer than she had expected, but it was a beautiful afternoon, and she looked out on the late autumnal scene with that touch of enjoyable melancholy which most of us associate with that season.

  It had been the high summer of her hopes when she had come before. But she refused to allow too many re­grets to shadow this unexpected journey back into the lovely past. If she spent only a few minutes in the house she intended to enjoy them.

  It seemed, however, that she was to spend more than a few minutes there. Trudi—the Warrenders’ very efficient maid—met her at the door with many apologies. Madame, it seemed, had telephoned with the utmost regret for her stupidity. She had found the score in her dressing-room, after all, and she begged Mary to forgive her for having sent her on a totally unnecessary journey.

  “It doesn’t matter a bit,” Mary assured the apologetic Trudi. “We all do these things. And Mrs. Warrender had a lot on her mind with this important rehearsal. I quite enjoyed the break from office routine anyway.” She laughed. “And I—I like seeing the house again.” She glanced round appreciatively.

  “Madame said I was to be sure to give you tea,” Trudi explained. And, when Mary protested this was quite un­necessary, she said earnestly, “Please, Miss Barlow. She would be very upset if I let you go back without tea. If you will go through into the studio, I will bring it there. You remember the way, don’t you?”

  Yes, she remembered the way. The way to the long, lovely room where Nicholas had sung to her that com­pelling love song of Marcus Bannister’s.

  With her heart full of memories, Mary crossed the hall to the studio. And as she entered the room Nicholas got up hastily, almost agitatedly, from a chair by the window.

  “Nicholas!” She stood stock still gazing at him, her hand against her cheek.

  “What are you doing here?” Agitation lent a faintly harsh note to his usually musical voice. “Why have you come?”

  “I wouldn’t have come if I’d known you were here!” She spoke in quick self-defence, her tone sounding almost aggressive in her anxiety to explain away her presence. “Anthea thought she had forgotten her score, and I came to fetch it. But she hadn’t forgotten it after all.” The ex­planation poured out jerkily.

  “You mean it was an invented excuse to get you down here?”

  “If so, the invention was hers, not mine!” Mary felt the angry colour flare in her cheeks. “There was no need for me to see you—after that letter. No need at all.” Then, as the lengthening silence cried out to be filled, she added helplessly, “Except to—to give you back your ring, of course.”

  His glance went to her hand then, and he said rather stonily, “You’re not wearing my ring.”

  “I never wore it. Not even when I—I had the right to. Now I—have no right.” But instinctively her hand went to her breast for a moment
.

  She had forgotten that he was used to interpreting the smallest gesture on the stage and that his artistic observa­tion never failed him. He moved so quickly that he was beside her in an instant and, before she could make the smallest movement of dissent, he had slipped his fingers under the chain and lifted the ring from its hiding place.

  It lay there, sparkling in the palm of his hand, still warm from its contact with her.

  “Why were you wearing it, Mary?” The harshness had gone out of his voice, but she could not raise her eyes to look at him. She could only stare down at the ring lying in the palm of that strong, sensitive hand.

  “I meant to give it back,” she whispered. “I did—truly. I just wanted to keep it for—for a little while longer.”

  “Why, dear? Why did you want to keep it?”

  The unexpected endearment took her last ounce of self-control away. She shook her head wordlessly. And as she did so history repeated itself in the most extraordinary way. A tear dropped on his hand, just as it had all that time ago in the concert hall, when she thought he was angry with her. It lay there beside the diamond, like some absurd little poor relation of the other sparkling drop.

  “Don’t cry,” he said softly. “Don’t cry, my dear one. I’m not worth it.”

  “But you are—you are!” she exclaimed despairingly. “That’s just it. You’re everything—to me. The great star—the wonderful artist, the man I lo—” She stopped sud­denly, her hand against her lips.

  “Say that again,” he said urgently, taking her in his arms and holding her close.

  “About the great star and the wonderful artist?” She was suddenly smiling rather tremulously.

  “No, the other bit. The phrase you didn’t finish.”

  “The man I love,” said Mary slowly, savouring every syllable, and she reached up and kissed him. “I love you, Nicholas. However unworthy and stupid and unkind I may have been—”