Hotel Stardust

by Susan Barrie

  “I hardly expected to have this pleasure this evening,” he told her. 'The lamb putting its head into the lion's mouth!”

  “And I'm the lamb?”

  “Yes; and I'm the lion!”

  Her white eyelids were suddenly lowered. His firm arm supported her with complete adequacy.

  As the music ceased Martin Pope was waiting to demand another dance.

  “I couldn't think where on earth you were hiding yourself,” he said, his kindly grey eyes looking down at her in a slightly speculative fashion.

  Eve did not dance again that night with Commander Merlin, but when Mrs. Neville Wilmott was introduced to him she suddenly discovered that they were old friends, and immediately claimed him as such. If he was not quite as delighted at this unexpected encounter as she was, he was certainly polite, and he danced two dances with Mrs. Wilmott, and one with her daughter, Ann. Poor Ann had been too shy and tongue-tied up till then to have excited much competition amongst the younger men to secure her as a partner, and she was obviously grateful for the way in which Roger Merlin, despite his sophistication and his exalted position as the owner of the hotel, had put himself out to talk to her and break down the barrier of her shyness.

  Aunt Kate danced away indefatigably with Dr. Craig

  — or they danced until he decided that it would be infinitely more comfortable if they sat quietly in the verandah, when she listened to the story of his life with all the sympathetic attention that was necessary. But before she left the ballroom she looked meaningfully at Eve, about to take to the floor with an unknown young man who had requested her to partner him in a tango.

  “I saw you dancing with Commander Merlin, and you looked almost as if you were enjoying it!” she whispered. “Don’t tell me you’re no longer enemies?”

  Eve had no time to answer her just then, for the tango was beginning, her new partner was no mean exponent, and she was swept away to the music of “Jealousy” with the realization that she

  had better give her mind to what was going on around her or find herself in difficulties. But later on, during a breathing space, she thought of Aunt Kate’s question:

  “Don’t tell me you’re no longer enemies?”

  Were they, she wondered, enemies? Or what were they?

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THE following morning, down on the beach in glorious spring sunshine, Mrs. Neville Wilmott, in a gaily-colored beachwrap, wearing sun-glasses and with a huge straw hat protecting her flawless magnolia complexion from the serious menace of suntan, offered up a tribute to Roger Merlin which caused Eve to wonder just how well she had known him in the past.

  “A man with a curious kind of fascination, although not, by the accepted standards, handsome. I knew him when my husband was stationed in Hong-Kong and he was a SubLieutenant. But the last time I saw him he was .. transferring to Submarines, and his war-time record, as a result of that transfer, was quite spectacular, I believe. But, then, I always thought there was something spectacular about Roger — in a dignified way, of course. He's nothing if not conventional, as most sailors are. The Nelson breed of men, you know!”

  “But Nelson was not strictly conventional,” Eve reminded her. “Otherwise we should not have heard so much about Lady Hamilton!”

  Mrs. Neville Wilmott glanced at her sideways, a thought superciliously. Eve was wearing a simple cotton dress, with a rather faded cardigan draped about her shoulders, but her hair was a living flame of red in the sunshine, and despite the fact that she took no care at all with her complexion, it had the smooth, matt surface of a piece of sun- ripened fruit, and was as creamily pale as anyone could desire.

  Mrs. Neville Wilmott recollected that Lady Hamilton had had red hair, and decided that although Eve was quite an able hostess she could never feel positively drawn towards her. And she delved in her large, embroidered beach-bag and produced a bottle of sun-tan lotion which she dabbed all over her exposed — and still very shapely —legs and arms.

  “But the poor lamb had a simply ghastly time in the war, and that’s why he had to leave the Service. And that must have been a blow.”

  “You mean he was injured in some way?”

  “A leg injury, yes. Probably you haven’t noticed that he limps a little?”

  “Well, as a matter of fact, I haven’t,” Eve confessed. It certainly hadn’t affected his dancing, but that was different. Then she realized that she had been so preoccupied with the antagonism with which Roger Merlin had filled her that she had had no time to observe very much else about him. Until last night! She had taken rather a different view of him last night!

  And that set her thinking suddenly along quite different lines. That night when she had burst in through the doorway of The Smuggler, and they had had their first encounter with one another on the fringe of the tiny hall, and he had been so almost savagely rude to her. Was it possible that, when she thrust the door open unexpectedly, it had caught him a glancing blow on his injured leg, and being, as Mrs. Wilmott had just described him, “one of the Nelson breed”, his choler had risen easily and he had all but flayed her alive? In fact, had she been a man, he would probably have said a great deal more!

  But that was the truth, she felt she could forgive him. “I would like to ask him to lunch one day,” Mrs. Wilmott continued, lighting a cigarette but not offering Eve one from her expensive gold case. “Ann was quite charmed with him last night, and I do want her to meet people. She’s so dreadfully retiring, and it isn’t good for her. Perhaps you could see to it that we have something rather special one day soon? I’ll get him on the telephone and find out when he can be free.”

  “Why, of course,” Eve was beginning, when, happening to glance upwards, she noticed that a big cream car had come to a standstill on the cliff road, and a man and a dog were making their way down the rough-hewn pathway which was a kind of natural stairway leading to the beach. The man was tall and wore a light, well-tailored suit, and the dog was large and cumbersome, very definitely a bulldog, and held in on a leash.

  Eve stood up.

  “I don’t think it will be necessary for you to get Commander Merlin on the telephone,” she said. “Here he is now.”

  “What!” Mrs. Wilmott hastily replaced the sun-tan lotion in her bag, and looked round in disbelief. Then she whipped off her dark glasses and smiled enchantingly with her Dig, mysterious eyes. “Why, how nice!” she exclaimed. “How really nice, Roger! And just as we were talking about you!”

  “Were you?”

  He stood looking down upon them, a cool smile in his eyes, while

  Jocelyn made some disdainful grimaces which permitted his two incisor teeth to become very noticeable, and blinked his slightly rheumy eyes at Eve. She decided that it was time for them to become better acquainted, and kneeling down in front of him extended a slim, tanned, hand, whereupon Jocelyn provided her with a massive paw.

  “That’s better, old chap!” Eve said. ''Now we really know one another.”

  As she stood up again Mrs. Neville Wilmott regarded her with some astonishment, but she obviously had no intention of copying her example.

  “I remember you had a dog in Hong-Kong, Roger,” she said. “A mastiff, I believe it was. You always seem to go in for big dogs — awkward dogs, I’d call them.”

  “But then you’re not very big yourself, are you?” he observed, his glance running over her slender form, swathed in the bright-hued beach-wrap; as her pansy-dark eyes were lifted again to his face, the smile in them became positively brilliant.

  “Not very,” she agreed very softly. “Just tall enough to reach to a tall man’s heart, as my husband used to say!”

  He regarded her for a moment without making any reply, and during that moment the expression on his face was most difficult to read — in fact, Eve would have described it as inscrutable. Then he put a hand in his pocket and produced a wisp of lace-edged, cambric handkerchief, with the initials E.P. finely worked in one corner, and handed it to Eve.

  “You lef
t this under your chair- on the verandah last night,” he told her.

  “Oh, did I?” For no reason that she could think of she flushed delicately pink under his eyes, and became all at once confused. “But you need not have bothered to return it. I’m not as short of hankies as all that! But, all the same, it's nice of you. Thank you very much!” she finished.

  He did not answer her, but turned back to Mrs. Wilmott with one of his dark eyebrows lifted inquiringly.

  “You said you were talking about me,” he reminded her. “Quite a lot to my discredit, I imagine?” in a somewhat pronounced and very cool drawl.

  “Oh, not at all,” she assured him emphatically. “In fact, quite the contrary! We were discussing your splendid wartime record, and things like that.” He did not appear greatly impressed, and she went on: “And I was saying I wanted to ask you to lunch one day, when you were not too busy. Now that you’ve gone in for this hotel running, I know that you’re very much occupied, but you must have some spare time. You’re not always concerned with affairs connected with people’s meals, and their sleeping arrangements, and amusements, and so forth. And, by the way, it was a most enjoyable dance last night. Ann simply loved it.”

  She looked round as her daughter, who had been improving her over-arm stroke under the kindly supervision of Martin Pope, approached rather shyly over the sand, wearing a sky-blue swim-suit, which made the most of her slightly immature proportions. Martin, who was a strong swimmer, was still cleaving a way through the water.

  “Ah, darling, here you are!” Mrs. Wilmott exclaimed, to all intents and purposes the devoted mother. “Come and tell Commander Merlin how much you enjoyed last night!”

  Eve interposed hurriedly:

  “Perhaps Commander Merlin would stay to lunch today?” She had suddenly recollected that Tom Geake had sent them up some fine lobsters, and there was some cold chicken, and the remains of a particularly succulent brace of roast ducks. “If he can spare the time? And if,” she added, '“he doesn't mind a very simple and ordinary lunch?”

  “Thank you,” he replied, and addressed his reply to her. “I'd like to very much, if it won’t be causing you too much trouble?”

  “No trouble at all,” she assured him. She was anxious to escape and leave them to a chat about old times. She felt sure that Mrs. Wilmott was simply dying to have him to herself, and no doubt to relive over and over again a probably quite exciting period they had passed through together in Hong-Kong, when Mrs. Wilmott must have been an extraordinarily lovely young mother and Roger Merlin a confident and lively young Sub-Lieutenant “Then if you'll excuse me, I’ll just let them know up at the house.” “Of course, my dear,” Mrs. Wilmott answered carelessly, and slid a hand inside Roger's arm and started to lead him away along the beach. He looked over his shoulder at Eve.

  “Remember — no special preparations! he called after her, and she smiled and disappeared up the cliff.

  “No special preparation!” she said to herself as she climbed. When the ex-arch-enemy was coming to lunch, and somehow he had to be impressed! What would Aunt Kate have to say about the unexpected luncheon guest?

  Aunt Kate was in the drawing-room when she reached the house, shaking her head over a smashed china ornament which she was endeavoring to restore to its original and pristine loveliness.

  “That new girl, Betty Forster, is hopeless!” she said. “She has about as much respect for Dresden as I have for a heap of rubbish! Just look at this—and the old tale about it coming apart in her hands when she was dusting!”

  “Oh, never mind that now!” Eve sounded impatient and she looked almost excited. “Commander Merlin is coming to lunch, and I want to make sure that everything is as nice as possible.”

  “What!” Aunt Kate very nearly dropped the ornament afresh, and then she set it down carefully on a Buhl cabinet.

  “Coming to lunch? Here? But why? How? Who invited him?”

  “I did — or, at least, Mrs. Neville Wilmott suggested it first, and then I suggested today because I remembered the lobsters Tom sent up last night. But do come through to the dining-room and let’s see what we can do about the table arrangements. And don’t you think we ought to get out the best glass, that lovely, glowing Venetian glass we've been too scared to use yet? And I think the Minton china.” “Well, upon my word!” Aunt Kate exclaimed, looking at her with a slightly quizzical expression on her face. “If I were a vulgar sailorman, I'd say 'Blow me down!’ Only a few weeks ago you were all for throwing the Commander out on his ear if he ever dared to place his unwary nose inside this house again, and now you’re anxious to place the fatted calf before him and goodness knows what else! Is this the result of dancing with him last night?”

  “Don’t be silly,” Eve answered shortly, feeling a most absurd flush rise up in her cheeks and declining to meet her aunt’s eyes. “Of course it’s only because I’ve seen the way they do things at the Stark Point, and I can’t help regarding him as a rival. You may be sure he thinks we don’t know the first thing about running an hotel.”

  “Well, darling, if that’s the way you feel, we’ll try to convince him that we do.” But Miss Barton’s rubicund countenance was still creased in faintly humorous lines as she bent to unearth the Venetian glass from the dining room sideboard. “This stuff is terribly dusty. It’ll all

  have to be washed and polished beforehand ----- ”

  “I’ll do it,” Eve offered eagerly, “if you’ll do the flowers.”

  “No, my pet, you can do the flowers — something rather special for the Commander’s table?” looking up at her niece with her twinkling eyes, and thinking that Eve appeared positively excited. “And perhaps you” decide what we’re going to put inside the glasses? I believe

  they’ve quite an extensive wine-cellar at the Stark Point, and no doubt our guest is used to something a little more exciting than cooking sherry and Madeira. I believe Mr. Pope ordered a case of

  Sauterne, and there’s some gin here------------------”

  “We’ll borrow a bottle of Sauterne, and the gin will do for cocktails,” Eve decided. “I’ll mix them. If they’re undrinkable, that will be my fault and no one else’s.”

  “It certainly will,” Aunt Kate agreed.

  “And the rest of the meal we can safely leave to Chris. She always rises to the occasion.”

  “As to that,” Aunt Kate replied, “we can but keep our fingers crossed, for even Chris is liable to her bad days. But we’ll hope that this will not be one of them.”

  Eve echoed her hope fervently. She felt that it would be too humiliating if anything went wrong with either the preparation or the service of lunch today. If she should see a look of faint amusement, not unmixed, perhaps, with a look of faint pity, in the sea-blue eyes of Roger Merlin, and in her own dining-room, too, she felt that life for the time being would be insupportable. For he would conclude immediately that she was not even capable of carrying out her boasts. He would regard her as pathetic. And her pride could not stand that.

  C H A P T E R T W E L V E

  BUT so far as the lunch was concerned, she need not have worried. It was a complete success. The lobster mayonnaise was perfect, the sweet which followed the cold roast duck served with crisp hearts of lettuce and some very early green peas was a dream of whipped cream and feathery- light pastry, and the coffee which was served afterwards on the terrace as good as Continental coffee.

  Chris had risen to the occasion nobly, and Eve felt deeply thankful to her in her heart. She and Aunt Kate sat at a small corner table in the dining-room, while Commander Merlin — as the important guest

  — shared the great rosewood table with Mrs. Wilmott and the rest of Martin Pope’s party. On both tables the flowers were arranged so that the somewhat commonplace varieties were scarcely noticed, while little feathery trails of fern and young green leaves had been skillfully introduced. And nothing could have outshone the silver or dimmed the splendor of the Venetian glass — Eve saw Roger Merlin carefully examining
his glass in the sunlight which streamed through the great window, and attracting the attention of Mrs. Wilmott to its

  perfection. And as for the table linen, it was utterly immaculate.

  The dining-room itself was such a delightful and reposeful room that it must have been a pleasure for a stranger to take a meal in it, and afterwards, when they made their move to the terrace, Commander Merlin commented on it to Eve.

  “That is an absolutely perfect room,” he said. “You are wise to make so few alterations to it.”

  “Yes; it is really lovely, isn’t it?” Eve answered, handing him his coffee, while Mrs. Wilmott lay back in her chair and looked at her with a frown between her brows as if she was wondering just how soon she was going to remove herself to the kitchen regions and leave the guests to conduct the kind of conversation they would choose to do if alone.

  But Martin Pope drew forward a chair for Eve, and Dr. Craig was quick to thrust one beneath Aunt Kate’s quite generous bulk, while Martin Pope observed:

  “It was nice to have you two ladies with us in the dining room today. Why don’t you treat us to the same pleasure every day?”

  “I entirely agree!” Dr. Craig supported him heartily.

  Martin Pope offered a cigar to Roger Merlin.

  'They're good,” he said. “Years ago, when I was a young and struggling apprentice, I. dreamed of the day when I would sit back and smoke a cigar of this quality on a terrace such as this. And there were times, believe me, when it looked very much as if that day would never dawn! But it did,” he added, triumphantly, surrounding himself with a cloud of fragrant cigar smoke, “it did!”

  The Commander declined the cigar, but he was interested in the other man’s reminiscences. Mrs. Neville Wilmott, on the other hand, although she had enjoyed the hospitality of Mr. Pope’s yacht and even occasionally contemplated the idea of becoming more closely attached to Mr. Pope — always provided he himself was willing, and no one who combined as much wealth as he possessed with an even better background appeared on her immediate horizon — was a little inclined to shudder delicately at revelations of this sort. Her first husband had belonged to the “Service”, and was the son of a clergyman who, in his turn, was the son of an impoverished younger son of a peer. And there were some things people of the better classes did not discuss — in public, at least. Certainly not obscure beginnings, which were in any case better forgotten.