Hotel Stardust

by Susan Barrie

  Eve made a valiant attempt to prevent a second evidence of weakness following the first, but it was no good. The second tear landed on the back of his hand, and he examined it as if it afforded him a tremendous amount of interest. Then he looked up at her again and caressed her with his look.

  “Eve,” he said, “can’t you come just a little nearer? Near enough for me to get an arm about you?”

  “But—but, you’re ill!” she got out with a kind of gulp. “Oh, Roger— I mustn’t excite you!”

  “You’ll excite me if I have to reach out and grab you,” he told her, and his voice sounded so firm and determined, although it was certainly very much fainter than his normal voice, that she ceased arguing and dropped on her knees beside the bed. Her eyes, transformed by tenderness, were a bare few inches from his own, and he could see how her red mouth quivered and her fingers locked themselves within his own.

  “Eve,” he murmured contentedly, drowsily, while her head rested against his shoulder, and he could inhale the fragrance of her hair, “I’ve a feeling I’m going off to sleep again, but before I do I want to tell you something. I was on my way to see you that night when something happened

  — I don’t know quite what it was! And if you won’t marry me, Eve, I’ll refuse to get better! I love you, Eve—darling!”

  And then she saw that he was asleep once more, but there was almost a little smile on his lips, and when the nurse returned and looked at her patient she expressed considerable approval.

  “He’s better,” she said. “Much better! I think we can safely say he’s turned the corner!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  IT was October, and a gale was raging along the coast. But inside the study at Treloan Eve knelt to build up the fire in the white fireplace, and as the velvet curtains were already drawn across the windows, the arm-chairs drawn up to the fire, and the mellow illumination switched on, the atmosphere of cosiness was merely emphasized by the tumult of wind and rain, and the angry roaring of the sea, without.

  Eve wore a new dress of sea-green lace over an underskirt of taffeta which caused it to stand out like a very wide crinoline, and the last deep-scented red rose from the garden was tucked in the front of the off-the-shoulder neckline. She had obviously taken the greatest pains, with her hair, and even her finger-nails shone delicately with a fresh coat of nail varnish. But these things were nothing beside the glow of absolute happiness in her eyes, and the happy, upward curve to her lips. When she had finished making up the fire she re-read again the confirmation of a telegram which had arrived from Aunt Kate, announcing that she and her husband hoped to arrive the following day. Poor Aunt Kate had succumbed to a most unpleasant and virulent influenza germ in Italy, and for that reason, and that alone, her return to Treloan had been postponed.

  Eve was glowing with contentment for another reason also, and when the door opened suddenly and a man stood there, watching her for a moment, the contentment changed to a kind of riotous excitement which caused her a somewhat breathless sensation as if her heart had started to hammer itself against her ribs.

  Roger Merlin was wearing a dinner-jacket for the first time for weeks, and he was conscious of the fact that it fitted him a little loosely, although otherwise his appearance was not greatly altered. The one-sided twist to the lips was there, and the hint of a derisive sparkle in his eyes as he took in the picture of Eve, in the sea-green dress, standing beneath the portrait of her ancestress, and almost outdoing her in sheer spectacular appeal.

  For, if anything, Eve’s hair was a little more fiery than that of the lady in the portrait, and her lips were brilliantly red and parted with excitement, and there was a flush of excitement in her cheeks.

  “Oh, Roger!” she exclaimed. “I didn't mean you to walk downstairs by yourself! You might have felt a little giddy.”

  “I might,” he agreed, “but I didn't. But then, I’ve had nothing to drink since lunch-time, so I'm strictly sober.”

  He advanced into the middle of the room, walking rather slowly, and she went to meet him, her dress a whirl of sea- green lace, and her delicate perfume going ahead of her. When they came face to face with one another he paused and looked at her, and then all the derision went out of his eyes. He opened his arms, and she went into them with badly concealed eargerness, and laid her smooth cheeks against the lapel of his dinner-jacket.

  “Oh, Roger!” she exclaimed. “Oh, Roger!”

  “You shouldn’t keep an invalid standing,” he reminded her, with a laugh in his voice, and she became conscience- stricken and drew him over to one of the deep arm-chairs. When he was seated, with cigarettes on a little table at his elbow, and a glass of sherry which she poured out for him herself, she showed him Aunt Kate’s telegram, and he smiled a little.

  “Trust Aunt Kate to come up to scratch!” he said. “I’ll bet she’s pestered the life out of poor old Craig in an attempt to get him to cure her of that influenza. Even a husband is a poor thing when it comes to her dear niece Eve!” His eyes twinkled a little as he lighted a cigarette. “Do you think I'll have to try to charm her as I so successfully charmed you?”

  “As a matter of fact,” Eve confessed, “I believe Aunt Kate always had a weak spot for you, even in the beginning!”

  “Well, that’s something,” he murmured.

  She seated herself on the arm of his chair, and he looked up at her and, taking one of her hands, examined the slender fingers.

  “Eve,” he said, “there are three matters I want to deal with before we go in to dinner; two things I want to ask you, and one I wish to do!”

  “Yes?” she said, and looked at him wonderingly.

  “Go and sit in that chair facing me, so that I can keep a clear head.”

  His smile softened the request, but she went obediently and sat down, clasping her hands about her knees and leaning a little towards him. He lay back in his chair and let his glance stray round the room, where they had once sat before under different circumstances. And on that occasion, instead of a gale raging outside, the summer moonlight had been flooding the garden, and the french window had stood wide to admit all the intoxicating flower scents.

  “Do you remember,” he asked her, “what we said about this room, once? We decided it was the nicest room in the house, and I said that if I ever owned this house, and was running it as an hotel, I would never allow anyone in here.” “I remember,” she said softly, wondering what else was coming.

  He looked across at her.

  “Eve, what do you want to do with Treloan? It’s yours, and it always will be yours, but if you like we can live in it after we are married—instead of running it as an hotel, I mean. But if we do decide to go on running it as an hotel—and I’m quite sure it has distinct possibilities— we can still keep this room.”

  “You once said,” she reminded him shyly, “that you would like to live in the cottage.”

  “So I would!” he replied immediately. “I’d much prefer it to living anywhere else.”

  “Then that’s what I also would prefer.”

  “You mean that?” looking at her keenly. “You’re not just saying it because you think I’ve been starved of a simple home atmosphere?”

  She shook her head.

  “No; I mean it.”

  “Good!” he exclaimed, and gave her a rewarding smile. “Then that settles question number one! Question number two is more simple.” He paused a moment, and then he looked across at her again. “Will you marry me, Eve, very soon? Within a few weeks, I mean—or days, if you’d consent to it!—without waiting for all the fuss of a white wedding, and that sort of thing? I don’t think I could stand up to the ordeal of bridesmaids and speeches, and all the rest of it, just yet—but I don’t want to have to wait for you, Eve!”

  There was something faintly imploring in his look, but even without it she could have answered him immediately and with all the joy in the world.

  “Of course, Roger—oh, of course!” She wanted to hurry across to him an
d kneel at his feet, and let him see by her expression that any moment he wanted to marry her she was willing to be his. White weddings, bridesmaids, and so forth meant nothing at all compared with the wonder of becoming his wife. Just a wedding as Aunt Kate had had was all she wanted. “Of course” she repeated, but he put out a hand to stay her a moment.

  “Just a moment, darling.”

  He got rather slowly to his feet, and he went across to her. He put out his hands and drew her to her own feet.

  “One thing I want to do to wipe out the memory of something else I did in this room!”

  Gently his hands cupped her face, and he looked long and tenderly into her clear eyes. He bent his head and kissed her, lingeringly, on the lips.

  Eve’s face was suffused with happiness when he drew away. She clung to him.

  “Oh, Roger, darling—and I once made up my mind that you were in love with Annette! I think there was a time when I almost hated her!” “Poor Annette!” he exclaimed, with his old, faintly whimsical smile. “And you never had the slightest reason to hate her, because I’m still as fond of her as I ever was. Her people saved my life for me during the war, and I promised them that I would always keep an eye on her— or, at least, until she married. She’s married now, so you won’t have to do very much worrying in the future.”

  “If I’d known, of course,” Eve excused herself, “I wouldn’t have felt as I did about her.”

  “If I’d known you were never likely to say ‘Yes’ to Martin Pope, I might have liked him a little more, too,” he answered. “Do you realize that I’ve been in love with you since the first night I saw you?”

  “Even when you were so rude to me?”

  “Probably that’s why I was so rude to you!”

  “Oh,” she said, with a faint sigh in the words, “I think I must have loved you, too—all the time!”

  “And you were never once attracted to Pope?”

  “No,” with emphasis. “I liked him, and admired him, and I still do, and I hope that one day ”

  “What about one day?”

  “Well, Mrs. Neville Wilmott would suit him much better that I ever would, and she seems to have sobered down alarmingly since your accident. She’s even stopped talking about going to Italy for the winter. And perhaps, in time, he might begin to see the improvement himself.” “Well, let’s hope he will,” he exclaimed a trifle impatiently, and caught her into his arms again with something of his old arrogance. “But in the meantime you can stop thinking about him, and think only of the day when you will become Mrs. Roger Merlin.”

  He bent his head once more, and this time his kiss bruised her lips a little. But she slid her white arms up and around his neck, and left him with no doubt as to her willingness to obey him in that respect.