"That's so, but it still might have to be Bart's thing," said Priscilla in the loving voice again, "if that first indicative operation that Bart keeps on delaying comes out contra. I think that that is why Bart hesitates. While he doesn't know the truth, there's still hope. But he must submit eventually." She sighed. "Peter, of course, could do it. Peter can do anything "
"Except settle down? Oh, do forgive me. I don't usually gossip like this."
"It's not gossip, it's fact. You have to know more than the things you sell in a job to make it a success."
"Thank you, Priscilla," appreciated Verity. "Thank you, too, for the tea. Now I really must get to work. What time do I open the doors?"
"We don't. We leave them unfastened and customers just browse in as though it was their own house."
"That's perfect," applauded Verity. She took her cup to a sink in the corner of the office, washed, dried and replaced it, then went out to look around.
The shop was formed like the rooms of a house. She went from room to room, becoming progressively enthralled. There was a bathroom done in black and aqua. A kitchen in cherry red and white. A grey and coral lounge. An apple green dining setting. A bedroom entirely in white. Apart from these offices there was a purely antique room that she longed to explore, and beyond it the annexe she had spoken with Priscilla about, and where the secretary had said that Bart Prince housed his collection of oil lamps.
She went there first.
It was pure delight, she found — superb ruby, opaque amber and cranberry-coloured majolica, brass lamps, venetian lamps, iron, marble and copper. There were hanging lamps, bracket lamps, barn lanterns, conductor's and policeman's lamps, piano sconce lamps. — She had no doubt there were all the lamps of China.
In the antique room there were the expected treasures, yet
in this instance very treasured, Verity sensed. That French walnut bureau, for instance. That embroidery frame. The Georgian dropside table. The rouge marble wash stand.
She came out of the antique room to find there was a browser in the pretty kitchen setting. The women wanted a biscuit barrel. As a child she had always reached up for biscuits from a barrel, she related nostalgically, and now she wanted her children to do the same. Verity found a variety of barrels, one in floral china that the customer chose at once. — "Because," she said, "I change my colours around."
Closely following the biscuit barrel, she sold a jardiniere, and later in the morning a wall tapestry. The time raced and she loved every second of it, she told Priscilla at lunch.
After the secretary got back to her typing, Verity decided, business having drowsed away like the drowsy day, or so it appeared, to change a setting. At the Chelsea place at which she had worked they had changed the settings often, many customers laughingly complaining that barely had they time to get used to something than it was whisked away. However, the proprietor had believed in showing what he had, and every afternoon it had been Verity's job to re-set a room.
The sun porch in tawny golds seemed a likely change, and Verity decided to offer the customers a study in its place. A brown study, she thought, inspired.
She whisked away the gaily striped cushions and took down the sunflower curtains. The neutral furniture in the room, concealed before by gay covers and bright hangings, now lent itself to a more sober corner. Verity chose plain brown hopsack from a chest of drapes to hang at the mock windows, took the chintz off the table and left the table bare except for some books, a blotter sheet and a desk calendar, then she stepped back. Now was the time to add a touch of colour, she knew. One orange cushion, perhaps? Or a butter yellow? Or would she keep to a bookish fawn?
She opened a cushion box and went despairingly through it, despairing because not one cushion seemed to fit the bill. She tried several, only to discard them at once, and was just sampling a muted green when a male voice behind her called : "No."
She turned round.
Her first impression of the objector was not one of height, and yet she saw that he was a tall person. She supposed it was the slight stoop that took away the inches — that, and a perceptible droop to the shoulders. The man was flint-hard, she also saw, but she received the impression that he had forced himself into this near-whipcord condition, almost a kind of challenge to what fate had delivered him. For the rest, she had only a quick impression of dark unsmiling eyes, dark unruly hair, and from the forehead to the beginning of a brown throat, a scar. It was, she thought at once, not a disfigurement, rather it was one of those flaws that seemed to make up a man's character.
"Seen enough?" The voice was cool, and Verity reddened. She searched for an apology that was not the usual trite excuse and during that moment he moved a few steps. He had a faint hesitation when he did so, not a limp so much as a deliberation, a pause.
Undoubtedly, Verity decided, it was Bartley Prince. "I'm sorry." She gave up looking for the right apology.
He shrugged. "Excused. It does come as a shock at first." "It does not," she came back. "I would have looked at anyone. You're my first customer this afternoon ... or so I
thought."
That halted his deliberate movement. "Your first customer? Who are you?"
"The new assistant." She remembered what Mrs. Prince
had related about the bathroom setting, and added before she could stop herself : "Now you say 'Oh, Mother ! ' "
"Oh, Mother !" he obliged.
There was an awkward moment, then, meeting each other's eyes, they both laughed.
"I'm sorry you weren't told about me," apologized Verity.
"Now I know why my parent kept changing the subject when I asked about filling her void at Woman's Castle while she was away. Sly puss, that mother of mine. She flew out last night and knows I can't put her in her place."
"Woman's place ?" As she said it, Verity glanced around her. Surely of all places Woman's Castle was a woman's place, she appreciated.
"Yet not this particular room," Bart Prince said drily, evidently reading Verity's thoughts. "A study is intrinsically a man's place. Are you naming it Brown Study, by the way?"
"Yes," she said, a little surprised.
"Then why are you cluttering it up with another colour ?" "Because — well, there should be a contrast."
"Should there ?" He walked across and took the green cushion she still had in her hand and threw it away. "A brown study should be brown," he said. Then he ordered : "Look."
She looked and saw he was correct. She might have been taught about the necessity for a contrast but undoubtedly in this instance he was right. The room was right.
Across the distance between them, the green cushion still where it had been flung, she met his dark unsmiling eyes. Bartley Prince's eyes. Not the prince who was gracious, not the prince who was charming, but the prince who was in-between.
"I'm Bart," he said. "No doubt" . . . the merest flicker of anger . . . "you've gathered that already. And you?"
"Miss Tyler." As he still waited, "Verity Tyler," Verity said.
CHAPTER II
"AND do you practise it?" Bart Prince said lazily, almost uninterestedly as he bent down to pick up the cushion.
She knew what he meant, it often had been said to her, but nonetheless Verity replied, "If you mean truth —"
"I meant that."
"Then the answer is yes. Unless, of course, it would hurt someone."
"In which instance you don't adopt it?"
"No."
"Then little use my coming to you for truth then, is there? Unless" . . . a brief laugh ... "not knowing me, you would be indifferent to hurting."
"I don't know you, but I couldn't be indifferent."
"In short a tender-hearted lady."
"Mr. Prince," said Verity carefully, "do you always look for rebuffs like this?"
"No, but I look for truth. Can you in truth look at me and not look away?"
"Yes."
"Is that being kind?" he taunted.
"It's being truthful. I think" . . .
daringly ... "you vastly exaggerate yourself."
To her relief, for she knew she had overstepped somewhat, he grinned. It was a fascinating grin. The slight scar gave it an amusing, rather lopsided, puckish look. He appeared much less intimidating.
"I suppose I do. We're all over-important to ourselves. My personal trouble is that it was trouble for nothing. If I could only lose that . ." There was a brief return of the anger, then he shook it off. "Seen over the place?" he asked.
"It's beautiful. I worked in a beautiful business in Chelsea, but this is more so," she said sincerely.
"My father did it."
"Yet you carried it on." In her enthusiasm she forgot what Mrs. Prince had said.
He did not let her forget long.
"Only until such time as I can do a man's work," he said, and again there was that harsh edge to his voice.
Quickly she diverted, "I like your lamp section," and was rewarded by his eager smile.
"In the dictionary," he proffered a little diffidently, "it says simply that a lamp gives light. I know that it gave that to me —the collecting, I mean."
"And that's why it's unprofitable," she asked. "You won't part with it?"
"It gave me light," he said stubbornly, "when I was needing it. When I find another light, I'll be as mercenary as the rest. — Ah, Cilla." They had reached the office and he stopped to smile across at the secretary.
But not to smile across a room for long. At once Cilla came over and put her hand in his. "Bart," she said quietly.
He held the hand, put his other hand over it to seal the grasp.
"How was it in hospital ?" she asked.
"Easier, knowing your gentle concern."
"Apart from that?"
"No results yet. They'll be given to Matthew."
"Oh, Bart ! " As Priscilla looked lovingly at him, quite oblivious of Verity he leaned down and kissed her brow.
But he must have become conscious of Verity's rather embarrassed audience, for he tossed, "Pay no attention, it's a business practice."
To the sound of Priscilla's amused but reproving, "Oh, Bart !" again, Verity and the man moved on once more.
"You're not put off by the business practice?" he taunted as he led her into one of the displays.
"It didn't concern me," she said stiffly.
"But a business practice should concern all employees." "One of such a nature presumably only concerns old employees."
"You mean ones who saw me Before, not just After?"
Verity stopped short. "Mr. Prince, I don't know how you were Before, but I can see how you are After, and I see nothing even remotely remarkable about it. But I do find something remarkable in the chip you carry. Even watching you carry it makes me tired."
Again she had overstepped herself, but she didn't care, she had to work with this man, so she must have an understanding.
There was silence for a while, then he said, "I asked for that. Peace, Miss Truth, pax, please."
"I don't like Miss Truth."
"I don't like Miss Tyler."
"Verity," she agreed.
"Bart," he smiled.
They went on.
"Why did you change my display?" he asked.
"In my former place of employment it was Rule One." "Then it wasn't my taste that prompted it?"
"Your taste is quite perfect," she awarded coolly.
"Are you speaking professionally?"
"How otherwise would I speak?" she asked, surprised.
"I don't know. I haven't learned about you yet."
"You're a very odd man," she said indignantly.
"In that way as well as physically. I'm sorry" ... at once . "no harping on the subject, you said."
"Yes, I said." To really close the subject, she crossed to a small, very beautiful Jacobean bureau. "Do you, like my former boss used to, advise young people to go without until they can get the best?" she asked professionally.
"You mean the best is worth waiting for?"
"Yes."
"But is it, though?"
She looked around her, at all the beautiful things. "Can you say that?"
"I often think it. You can wait for the best." He stopped a long moment. "And you can wait and wait." Without another word he turned and left the room.
"Odd," Verity awarded him again.
She heard him later in the office. He was laughing now with Priscilla, and she was surprised at the annoyance she felt at her own failure with him.
Shrugging, she went back to the front room to find a customer trying to make up her mind over a set of kitchen jars, so she helped her decide. After that she sold a small curved stool and a slender long-stemmed vase. Which all made it, she tallied, Priscilla having left now, a rather satisfactory day. As there were no more customers, she decided she could leave as well, but not knowing the ropes of the place yet she went in search of Bart Prince to ask his permission.
She found him where she had anticipated she would, among his lamps.
"Oh, yes, go," he nodded. "No need ever to ask."
"If there was a customer I would wait, but the street is empty."
"That's all right," he nodded again.
She hesitated, she could not have said why.
"How long do you stay, Mr. — I mean Bart?"
"Like the young people waiting for good furniture, I just wait," he told her.
"But seriously."
"I was serious."
"I really meant . . . well, could I fix you something?" "Would you?"
The answer surprised her, but she said at once, "Of course."
"That's extraordinarily good of you, but no, thank you. I live in city digs with a handy restaurant. None of the Princes live at home. Matthew is now doing his G.P., Peter is here, there and everywhere, and I found it necessary to snare an apartment either on the ground floor or supplied with a lift. But" . . . with a meaning look at her . . . "we won't talk about that."
"But you are, aren't you? You keep bringing it back by apparently not talking about it. I'm sorry, I wish I could help." "With fixing me up something?"
"No, with —" She stopped herself in time. "Good evening," she proffered, and went out.
It was a pleasant hour to leave, the office rush over, the rush to the city for the night's entertainments not yet begun. Verity went down to Circular Quay and caught the number five ferry.
The airy, green and white, "showboat" type of large launch that Sydneysiders still insisted on for their harbour transport was just drawing in. She boarded, then climbed the stairs to the upper deck. With a fuss and a flurry the ferry bustled off again, ignoring the more glamorous eastern aspect with its fine waterside houses to pass instead under the bridge and take the river way that the American sail once did. At the first little wharf Verity got off and climbed the steep hill.
When she got to her stone terrace house, she saw a car there, and eagerly she quickened her pace. It would be Robin.
Her half-brother was waiting in the flat for her ... she had given him a key ... and at once they ran to each other. For a moment Verity thought uneasily that it was not usually like this, it was not like Robin to show his affection in such a way —not, anyway, to her — and she searched his face, hoping her anxiety did not show.
He looked ill. She wondered if he had noticed it himself, but then ... and thank heaven . . . it was the one to whom it happened who never noticed. One looked at oneself each day in the mirror and saw no change, or if you saw it, it was such a small change that it meant nothing at all.
But it meant a lot to Verity. She noticed bone structure in Robin's face she had never known before, a pull to his boyish mouth.
"How are you, darling?" She was glad she had always petted him and that now the endearment, almost fiercely felt, would not sound strange.
"Oh, fine, fine. I'm still a little below par after that 'flu thing, but then it was quite a bout, lots of people have been complaining that they haven't picked up. How are you, V ?"
"Thriving."<
br />
"You look it." He gave her another hug. He had never been demonstrative, and it tore at Verity.
"Adele?" she asked as casually as she could.
"Beautiful. She is, isn't she? She's visiting an aunt tonight. That's why I'm here."
Verity restrained herself from saying, "Couldn't you have gone, too?" because she knew that Adele would not have been visiting an aunt at all. She made herself busy with cups and plates.
"Not for me, Verity," Robin declined.
"Eaten?"
"I'm just not hungry lately. This 'flu thing —"
"Yes, I know. It reacts like that. But some tea, surely." "Tea," he agreed.
As she brewed it, he said abruptly : "It's not fair."
"What isn't, Robbie?"
"This place . . . I mean .. well, it's so poor."
"Actually it's elegant. It's early colonial. If you don't believe me ask the agent who leased it to me," Verity laughed.
"Oh, it has a charm, I'll agree, but after our luxury apartment . . . I tell you, Verity, it's just not fair. Father was not fair. He shouldn't have left the entirety to me."
. . . Left what entirety? Verity secretly grieved.
"Oh, I don't know," she said casually, "you were his son." "Yet you were the daughter of the woman he married to get that son."
"Robbie darling, he was a wonderful husband to Mother, he gave her everything. After she died, he gave me everything . the best of schools, of opportunities —"
"He didn't include you in the will, though, you didn't benefit."
. . . Who has benefited? Verity thought achingly for Robin. "You were his son," she repeated stubbornly.
"Well, if you think like that, though I know I couldn't have thought so generously, keep it up, please, V. You see, Sis, now that I'm married, now that I have Adele —"
"Darling, I understand perfectly, a man must always put his wife first. Never think, or do, any other way."
"No," agreed Robin, "but sometimes the unfairness creeps in. I do worry, Verity."
"But why?"
"I with so much, you finding your own way in the world." "You've changed, Robin." — He had. Once he never would
have thought of such things. Again Verity felt uneasy.
There Were Three Princes Page 2
