by Susan Barrie
“No; but I came as soon as you had gone!” Her golden hair fell away from her face as she looked up at him, not apparently interested in his companion. She was wearing a bright red fisherman's jersey and some very brief shorts, which allowed her long slim, deeply tanned legs to receive every attention from the afternoon sun, as well as some intensely disapproving looks from Mrs. Wilmott, while she knitted away expertly. As usual, Annette's long, brown hands were scarlet-tipped — the nails a trifle suggestive of claws, for she permitted them to grow very long — and a collection of gold bracelets jingled on her arms, including a gold charm bracelet which was loaded with charms. She stroked soothingly, with the tips of her sensitive fingers, while she fastened her eyes upon Roger. “Why did you not let me know where you were going this morning, Rogaire? Why did you not ask me to accompany you?”
“Because I wasn't particularly anxious for your society, I expect,” he answered carelessly, tweaking one of her pink-lobed ears, in which a small pearl stud was fastened. “Because I wanted to escape from your chatter!”
She made a face at him.
“But I found out where you had gone, and I followed you! I have been inflicting myself upon Mrs. — Mrs. Neville Wilmott, all the afternoon, and she has been correcting my English for me. She thinks that I do not speak it at all well!” casting a demure look towards Mrs. Neville Wilmott, who thought, amongst other things, that the French girl's ostentatious glamour had the effect of putting her own daughter’s slightly more anemic charms completely in the shade, and for that reason alone she knew that she could never like her.
“I understand from Miss Le Frere that she is over here to study English,” Mrs. Wilmott remarked, lifting beautiful cool dark eyes from the lacy pink bed-jacket she was creating. “But I should have thought that a private house and English family life would have suited her purpose better than an hotel. If I wanted to send Ann to France to improve her French, I certainly would not place her in a French seaside hotel.” “Run,” she might have added, but did not, as her eyes fixed themselves upon Roger Merlin, “by a bachelor!”
Roger Merlin seated himself and looked slightly amused. He was well aware what the look in her eyes — as well as the faint hint of rebuke because he had absented himself for the afternoon
— was meant to convey, and for answer he produced his cigarette-case and offered it to her, and then offered it to Annette. He was holding his lighter to the end of Annette's cigarette when Eve, who had hastened indoors to see about the afternoon tea, reappeared with the tea-trolley, which she wheeled out on to the terrace.
“Ah, but then you see, Annette is like no ordinary young Englishwoman of her age,” he remarked, while Annette’s sparkling and definitely amused eyes gazed into his. “She is a law unto herself. Aren't you, my infant?”
“Am I, Rogaire? But I do always what you tell me,” she murmured meekly.
“Sometimes!” he exclaimed. “At others you are such a pest that I don't know what to do with you.” But he gazed at her so affectionately that Eve, who was pouring out the tea, could not help thinking the same thoughts that Mrs. Wilmott was thinking about her, and wondering by what spell it was that she managed to keep a man like Commander Merlin—obviously pretty hardbitten where women were concerned, and almost certainly no fool when it came to assessing their values and understanding their motives — willing to put up with her childish importunities and her sometimes not-so-childish and very obvious attempts to claim him as her property! She obviously thought she had a right to go everywhere that he went, and she was by no means willing that he should pay very much attention to any other female, and had sensed that last night, at the dance, when her petulance had looked out of her eyes, and a certain grown-up vexation because he had for a short while escaped her made her look like an angry but pretty cheetah at a zoo. Her scarlet-tipped fingers could well resemble claws, if she felt like it, Eve was sure, and inflict noticeable scratches, too, despite the sunny way she smiled at
Commander Merlin.
Whilst they had been dancing, and when Annette had drifted past in the arms of an obvious admirer and had waved at him, he had told Eve that Annette was the daughter of some very old friends of his, but he had not elaborated the matter further. She had been left to wonder why, even allowing for the fact that the parents, obviously, had earned his esteem, the daughter should command him as she did, when he was not the type of man it was easy to imagine being commanded by anyone.
As she handed round sandwiches and feathery light cakes baked by Chris, Eve decided that this was no time to delve into the matter, but she could see very plainly that Mrs. Wilmott was not in agreement with her. Mrs. Wilmott’s opinion of Annette was given away by her glance every time it rested upon her, and Annette must have sensed that her stocks were low in that quarter because she gradually became more impish, and flirted outrageously with the owner of the Stark Point, who seemed to derive amusement from her languishing looks and blatant smiles and non-stop provocative conversation. And when Laurence Pope returned from his long walk and cast aside all his diffidence and unsociableness after one sparkling, friendly glance from her eyes, Mrs. Wilmott’s opinion of him, too, dropped several degrees lower, for she could see that Ann’s chances of arousing his interest receded farther and farther into the background with every moment that Annette lingered there on the terrace.
And Annette lingered for as long as Roger Merlin would permit her, which was for about half an hour after they had all finished tea. Then he rose and slipped a hand inside her arm and propelled her towards the head of the terrace steps.
“Thank you,” he said, looking at Eve, “for a most pleasant day!”
Eve did not see his eyes, for she was bending over the trolley and stacking cups and saucers and plates together neatly, but she thought that his voice contained a faint note of something which sounded very like mockery.
She did not answer, but Mrs. Wilmott condescended to accompany him to the foot of the terrace steps, and Annette called out:
“Au revoir, everybody!” She gave an extra wave of her hand to Laurence Pope, who looked as if he would have liked to accompany her back to the Stark Point Hotel. “Au revoir, Laurence!” He was left with an impression of melting eyes and a
smile which was to keep him wakeful for several nights.
Martin Pope stood up and came behind Eve, and he started to help her push the trolley.
“You ought not to have to shove this heavy load about,” he said, his eyes on her slender shoulders. “Can’t we get some more help?”
“I will as soon as I think I can afford it,” Eve answered, looking up at him with one of her pleasantest smiles.
“Then we’ll afford it straight away,” he replied to that, “and you can put it down on my bill! No!” as she opened her mouth to protest. “I mean it! And I mean that I'm going to London at the beginning of next week to see what I can do in the way of interesting various friends of mine in this place. I mean to fill it for you, if I can!”
“That is nice of you,” Eve told him, feeling a warm sensation of gratitude rise up inside her because he was, she felt absolutely certain, completely dependable. No disturbing and changeable moods about him, or inexplicable looks or shades of irony or mockery in that voice of his with the slight but attractive North-country accent. No feelings of hostility, or anything about him to make her pulse leap in an extraordinary and quite uncalled-for fashion because his hand accidentally touched hers, or— supposing, for instance, a bat flew out at them and he caught her in his arms!
Nothing but a comforting sensation of having a pair of sufficiently broad shoulders beside her that would take the burdens off her own shoulders if he could and if she would allow him. And the knowledge that he really was anxious to take the burdens off her shoulders. His kind grey eyes told her that.
She sighed suddenly, before she could stop herself, and he said quickly:
“You’re tired! You’ve had a busy day. Why not let me take you out to dinner this evening
, and you can forget what’s going on up here? We can go down to The Smuggler—Tom Geake always puts on a good meal in the evenings. Will you?” with a note of insistence.
Eve hesitated. If Commander Merlin saw her having dinner alone with Martin Pope at The Smuggler, he would feel justified in laughing in a hollow fashion deep down inside him. Those blue, seaman’s eyes of his would survey her with amusement— not particularly kindly amusement, either!—and one of his dark, satanic eyebrows would lift, very definitely in a quizzical way. He would say to himself: “Ho, ho! So I was right, after all! I wonder how long Treloan will survive now as a guest-house?”
Eve caught her lower lip between her teeth and bit it rather hard. It would be nice to have dinner at The Smuggler and to spend the evening with Martin Pope, and if Roger saw her, or heard about it afterwards (as he probably would from Tom Geake!), that would be satisfactory, too, because it might convince him that he really had planted an idea in her head, and that it was he who had pointed out a way for her!
“Well?” Pope asked anxiously. “Will you?”
“I will!” Eve answered, and smiled at him brilliantly.
C H A P TE R F O URTE E N
APRIL blossomed into May and May into June. Apart from a few squally days in May, when the fruit blossoms was at its best, and the sudden boisterous wind sent it flying like a shower of crumpled butterflies’ wings, scattering in all directions, the weather remained perfect, Treloan drowsed beneath hot blue skies, its gardens full of the scent of roses, and the endless song of the sea rose upwards from the foot of the cliffs. The sea had an incredible blueness about it—a Mediterranean blueness. And the tiny, sheltered cove that was washed clean and sweet at high tide was a most popular place on a hot day, when guests desired nothing better than to lie about languidly between bathes and improve their coating of tan.
Mrs. Neville Wilmott was the only one who never allowed the sun’s rays to touch either her face or her shoulders, but even her limbs were golden and smooth as a pomegranate, and she wore the most striking beach wear which called attention to them. Her daughter, Ann, was looking decidedly healthier and much less fragile, and when a young man arrived at Treloan after booking a room through the medium of an advertisement, and apparently decided she had something which appealed to him, she became infinitely happier. Not that she had altogether given up the idea of Laurence Pope taking notice of her one day; but the newcomer was older and therefore more sophisticated, and he wrote plays which were apparently successful—judging by the pigskin suitcases and his silk shirts and his general air of affluence. And although his manner of taking notice of her was not all that she might have desired, for he had decided that in some curious way she gave him inspiration and he liked to have her near him when he was lying at full-length on the sand and thinking out details of elusive plots, it was better than Laurence’s cool disregard of her.
Laurence should have returned to Oxford, but he had succeeded in fracturing a bone in his ankle, and borrowed his father’s car to make daily trips to the Stark Point Hotel, where Annette Le Frere was always waiting to bedazzle him. The Stark Point was getting very busy, and the owner of it had little time these days to bestow on “a graceful slip of a French girl, who nevertheless had to be entertained— which was where Laurence came in. And Laurence was only too happy to “come in at all,” even though he knew that in the evenings Annette sat at Roger Merlin's table in the big and brilliant dining-room, and Roger had something about him which he could scarcely hope to compete with.
At Treloan Manor, too, the rooms were becoming filled, and Eve found herself with little time on her hands. One or two of Martin Pope's friends had listened to his advice and were giving the Manor a trial, and in addition Aunt Kate's system of advertising was yielding results.
One particularly worthwhile visitor was an elderly widow, very stout and amiable, who called herself Mrs. Joseph Brownrigg, and arrived with an angular and elderly maid known simply as Prout. They planned to stay the summer, and possibly throughout the winter also, if it suited them, and occupied a suite on the first floor, next door to the large best bedroom which Mrs. Neville Wilmott still occupied. Mrs. Neville Wilmott was only too certain that she could never have anything in common with the Mrs. Joseph Brownriggs of this world—regrettably Mrs. Brownrigg occasionally dropped her aitches, and was addicted to slightly vulgar jokes which caused Mrs. Wilmott to look down her carefully powdered nose, although Dr. Craig had the bad taste to enjoy them—and she was greatly annoyed with Eve for placing them in such close proximity to herself.
However, Eve was getting a little tired of Mrs. Wilmott, despite the fact that her having a daughter who also occupied a room meant a larger weekly bill, and at least it was always settled promptly. But Mrs. Wilmott, as well as Laurence Pope, had taken to visiting the Stark Point fairly often, and she was sometimes a little critical when she returned to Treloan.
At the Stark Point, as she pointed out to Eve, they had waiters to attend upon them at table, and waiters were always much more efficient than waitresses. For one thing there was less risk of the soup being dropped down the neck of her favorite evening-gown than when Betty Forster, from the village of Treloan, handed it round each evening. And Betty was clumsy in other ways, too, and liked to be chatty sometimes, which was a thing a well trained waiter never attempted to be, unless he was certain his chattiness was welcome. And then at the Stark Point, of course, there were so many other visitors that it was impossible to be dull, whereas the emptiness of the dining room at Treloan Manor was sometimes a little inclined to weigh upon one's spirits. Or, at any rate, it weighed upon Mrs. Wilmott’s.
Eve was tempted to retaliate by reminding her that the charges at the Stark Point were at least double the amount charged by herself, and that in any case there was no reason why Mrs. Wilmott should remain on at Treloan if she did not wish to do so. But secretly she was certain that Martin Pope was the real reason why Mrs. Wilmott stayed on at Treloan, and not only because he probably persuaded her to do so, but because he was, after all, Martin Pope, and having been his guest on his yacht she knew full well the advantages of remaining in close contact with him. When the yacht was declared thoroughly seaworthy again she might become his guest once more, and it would be a pity to do anything to upset the pleasantness of the relationship between them.
On the whole, the harmony between the guests at Treloan was sufficient to cause both Eve and Aunt Kate to feel fairly well satisfied, however, and they grew more and more satisfied as their rooms filled up. Sometimes the visitors were only week enders—people passing through in a car—and on more than one occasion a car was halted outside the gates by the attractiveness of the new sign which proclaimed the Manor an hotel, and open for lunches and teas to non-residents as well as residents. So far they had not felt capable of rising to dinners for stray callers, as dinner as a meal was always a little more imposing, and their service as yet was not without its defects, as Mrs. Neville Wilmott would have been only too ready to amplify, but they hoped that in time all things would become possible.
In the meantime, in order to leave vacant as much space as possible, Aunt Kate and Eve decided to hurry their move to the
cottage which Eve had visited with Commander Merlin. Chris Carpenter was to go on living in the hotel proper, not only because it would be more convenient for her, but because some responsible person had to be on the premises to deal with any emergencies. And Chris was entirely capable of dealing with emergencies, as well as becoming more and more rapidly indispensible as a cook.
Even Mrs. Wilmott praised her cooking. Martin Pope and Dr. Craig, and the new young gentleman who earned his living as a playwright, frankly revelled in it. Mrs. Joseph Brownrigg said that it was so good that it was destroying every chance of her obeying the instructions she had received from her doctor and sticking to a strict diet.
So Chris was to go on living in her comfortable little bed-sitting-room over the kitchen quarters, and Eve and Aunt Kate were to make the mo
ve to the cottage with as little delay as possible. Eve had had the cottage scoured from attic to ground floor, and a few essential repairs had been carried out by a friend of Tom Geake, who had some connection with local members of the building trade. Aunt Kate selected the furniture, with an eye to a few of the smaller and choicer pieces being brought into closer contact with her and Eve’s daily life. For instance, the little Buhl cabinet from the drawing-room was placed in a corner of the small sitting-room where she and Eve would enjoy their afternoon tea together when they were not otherwise occupied, and the little rosewood writing-table which had stood in her own bedroom window found its way to the sitting-room also. Carpets and curtains were chosen with care, the former with the object of increasing the size of the rooms, the latter with the object of brightening the somewhat sombrely panelled walls. Eve went in for a lot of gay chintz in her bedroom, and Aunt Kate favored dimity. They had a grandfather clock in the square hall, and the chairs in the dining-room were Jacobean and exactly suited the leaded casement windows. Crimson brocade curtains added richness to the dining-room, and a gleaming copper warming-pan was added as a last touch to the linenfold panelling in the hall.
When all was ready, Eve felt quite proud of the place, and so did Aunt Kate. It only needed something being done to the wilderness which was the garden to banish any regrets they might secretly entertain at the idea of living anywhere other than in the manor-house, and Eve made up her mind that she would put in as much spare time as she could manage working on it. Chris promised, too, in her free moments, to expend any excess energy she had in rooting up weeds out of flower-beds and pushing a mowing-machine over the ill-kept lawn.
Even Martin Pope, who viewed their removal from the big house with a certain amount of dismay, offered to put in hours as a gardener if they would allow him. But Eve could not quite see him, in his elegantly tailored flannels and his immaculate, dark blue, double-breasted blazers, bending to the common task in such a neglected area of coarse grass and sea-thrift and windblown tamarisk bushes.
