The Other Miss Donne

by Jane Arbor

  That evening she did not join Carey for dinner. But lately this was not unusual and Carey was glad to escape for once Michael’s speculations as to where she was and whether Auden Calvin’s absence from the dining-room also meant that they were out together. Though Carey suspected that both she and Michael knew it was so, she felt she must try to reassure him, and she was beginning to run out of alternative suggestions which it was clear Michael did not believe.

  On the day of the Ball she had time for little else than dealing with his work as well as her own, and she went to dress early, meaning to make her last chore one of his—that of checking the guests’ place-cards at the long candlelit dinner tables which for that evening were substituted for the smaller individual ones.

  Her dress still delighted her, though she wished she could do something glamorous with her short hair. Denise could swirl or pile hers and so could Gerda Ehrens. But as Carey brushed her own to its customary sheen and turned its ends inward she was thinking wryly that unremarkable hair and a dress that was dark enough to make her an unobtrusive figure would probably, in Randal’s opinion, comply with that original dictum of his—that she was to melt into her background ... to mingle. He wouldn’t recognise that for her the dress had a poignant meaning. Why should he?

  When she was ready she went down to the dining room and was there when he came in. She was tense as she straightened to face him, aware that he was looking her over. But he made no comment; merely surveyed the tables and the flowers for himself and then asked whether Denise were yet down, as he would like her to join him in the foyer to welcome the arriving non-resident guests.

  Carey said, ‘I haven’t seen her. Would you like me to go to her room and tell her so?’

  ‘Yes, you might, please, when you’ve finished what you’re doing here.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Say I’ll expect her in a quarter of an hour,’ he said as curtly and impersonally as he usually issued requests or orders to her lately.

  Her knock on Denise’s door was greeted by an automatic ‘Come in,’ followed by a small scuffling sound and the hasty correction, ‘No, just a minute ... All right. Now,’ upon which she opened the door.

  Carey got the impression that Denise had just risen from thrusting something under the bed. She was still in her slip, neither her hair nor her face done, and from the open writing-pad on her inlaid escritoire, Carey judged she had been interrupted there too.

  Carey delivered Randal’s message, cutting across Denise’s irritable, ‘Yes, I know. He already told me,’ to ask, ‘Is there anything I can do for you now? I’m ready myself, and I’m free.’

  ‘Do for me? What? No. Or—’ seated now at her dressing-table and beginning to cream her face, Denise went on, ‘That is, there is something I’d like you to do for me if you will.’

  ‘If I can.’

  ‘Yes, well—at about ten or so, if I’m not around, will you tell Randal that I—I’ve got a very bad headache, and I’ve gone to bed?’

  Her hesitation over the hoary old excuse was not lost on Carey. Their reflected eyes met in the mirror they both faced. ‘Meaning,’ she suggested carefully, ‘that you won’t have a headache, but wanting to leave for somewhere else at ten o’clock, you mean to keep Randal from enquiring where?’

  Denise looked away. ‘All right, no headache. But will you do as I ask?’

  ‘Without knowing why, I’d rather not,’ Carey said uncomfortably.

  Unexpectedly Denise did not urge her, but merely shrugged. ‘Oh, very well. If your conscience is overworking, I’ll resort to the classic note on the mantelshelf.’ She jerked her head at her escritoire. ‘I was going to write Randal one, anyway. Your telling him I’d come to bed would give me more time. But before he misses me I’ll be gone, so it doesn’t really matter.’

  She was looking again now at Carey’s reflection. Carey stared back for a calculating moment until the rough urgency of her hand on Denise’s shoulder forced the girl to face her.

  Carey said thickly, ‘You don’t leave a note just because you’re keeping a secret date! Why, then? You’re leaving one for Randal because you’ve got something else planned—something much more serious ... more final. What?’

  Denise’s answering stare was defiant. ‘Can’t you guess?’

  ‘You’re leaving ... running away?’

  ‘What else? Martin did it. Your own sister did it. They ran away from Randal, didn’t they? And I’m not running away only from Randal. From her too!’

  Carey protested, ‘But you can’t, Denise! Not like this! Where would you go? What are your plans? After all, Martin and Rosalie went together, knowing they meant to get married!’

  ‘Well? Supposing I—we—are taking them as our model; Tangier, marriage, and after that, the world our oyster—the lot?’

  ‘We?’ Carey echoed faintly. ‘You mean you’re not going alone? With—Auden Calvin? But why, why like this, if he has asked you to marry him—?’

  ‘Pff!’ Denise scoffed. ‘How outdated can you get? Men don’t propose on their knees these days. People—both of them—just know they mean to marry, and that’s that.’

  ‘And so, though you and Auden Calvin are both free agents and there can be no need, you mean to do it this underhand way; you can do this to Randal, after all he’s done for you, all he thinks of you, all he thinks for you? Denise, you can’t! You mustn’t!’ Carey begged.

  ‘Sorry, but I can and I shall. And if you need convincing—’ Denise rose and went to kick forward from beneath the valance of her bed the dressing-valise she had bought in Tangier. She opened it to show it already half packed and a-froth with tissue. ‘What do you suppose that is but a honeymoon case?’ she challenged Carey, then went on, ‘And as for why I’m choosing this way, say if you like that I mean to pay Randal out for choosing to inflict her upon himself and on me for good. Though that, as I told her to her face, is something I’ve no slightest intention of waiting to see happen!’

  Carey felt suddenly and physically cold. ‘Then it is so? You are talking about Frau Ehrens, aren’t you? And Randal is going to marry her? He’s told you?’

  ‘Told me? Randal—when he knows how I would react? And though he may think he can present her to me as a fait accompli, then he has never been more mistaken in his life! No, after I had come upon her in his arms one night, she made it her business the next morning to tell me it was as good as settled, and she thought she ought to break it to me that I shouldn’t be very welcome here after they were married, though she would see, if he didn’t, that I should be as well provided for as ever—’

  Carey broke in passionately, ‘I don’t believe Randal would have left it to her to tell you! You didn’t take it just from Gerda Ehrens? Surely you asked him if it was the truth?’

  ‘After he had shirked telling me himself? I wouldn’t stoop,’ Denise scorned. ‘But I certainly told her she could keep her charity; that I should be leaving in my own time, when it suited me.’

  ‘But surely she will have told Randal that?’ puzzled Carey.

  ‘If she had, wouldn’t he have had me on the carpet? She is probably afraid of his hearing from me that she tried to bribe me to go. As he assuredly would, if I were staying long enough now to tell him,’ Denise threatened.

  Carey tried again. ‘And Auden Calvin—he is actually willing for you to do this to Randal?’

  ‘Willing enough. Since their talks have broken down, Randal isn’t one of Auden’s favourite people. He was leaving officially tomorrow anyway. But then he put up this idea of our getting married and taking off tonight. He isn’t showing up at the Ball, so that when we’re both missing, we shan’t be suspected of disappearing together. He’s going to spend the evening in one of the bars in Hassi Ain.’

  ‘Which bar?’

  ‘How should I know?’

  ‘Well, haven’t you arranged to meet there?’

  ‘Heavens, no.’

  Where, then?’

  ‘At the villa. Not that it’s any business of yours.’

/>   ‘At—Michael’s villa?’ Light dawned on Carey. ‘You’ve been meeting Calvin there ever since Michael gave you the keys?’

  ‘Escaping the gossip, yes. And now, if that’s all you want to know, perhaps you’ll let me get on?’

  Carey said, ‘With your dressing, of course. Randal is waiting for you. But not with the rest. You are not meeting Auden Calvin at the villa, nor eloping with him tonight!’

  Denise’s chin jerked up in outraged astonishment. ‘And who are you to say I’m not going to? You’ve no right—!’

  Carey realised she must give ground in order to gain it. She said less peremptorily, ‘I know I haven’t. If you insist, I can’t stop you. But I’m begging you, Denise. And if that doesn’t carry any weight with you, I shall tell Randal what you plan.’

  ‘You wouldn’t dare betray my confidence! I needn’t have told you a thing!’

  Carey agreed, ‘I realise that. But I would dare, and I will.’

  ‘So? And where does that leave me?’

  ‘Well, certainly not free to go tonight. Though tomorrow, I suppose, as you are of age, free to defy even Randal. But I beg you—tell Auden that tonight is off and that you mean to let Randal know what you’re going to do before you do it. Denise—please!’

  There was a silence long enough for Carey to hold her breath, waiting. Then Denise muttered, ‘I couldn’t get in touch with Auden now to tell him. He’ll have gone down by now to Hassi Ain.’

  An inch of ground gained? Hoping so, Carey urged, ‘Then you must slip out and keep your rendezvous at the villa, and tell him then. What time was it for—ten, did you say?’

  A nod. ‘More or less.’ Denise bit her lip and looked away. ‘I couldn’t do that either. I—daren’t.’

  ‘You daren’t tell the man you’re planning to marry that you’ve decided after all to do the right thing, not the wrong? Oh, come!’

  ‘Well, I can’t. I can’t face him, and I won’t. So what have you to say to that?’

  Carey thought quickly. The girl seemed half won; she mustn’t be allowed to slip back now. ‘But supposing I offered to keep your date with him instead of you, would you let me do that?’ she asked.

  ‘You would tell him for me, you mean?’

  ‘I shouldn’t enjoy it,’ Carey admitted. ‘But since he must be told. I’ll do it, yes.’

  Another pause strung out. Then Denise opened a drawer, took out a key, handed it over and on a long sigh of breath said, ‘All right. Do it. That’s Michael’s key; Auden has one that he’ll use. And now please—go!’ Carey went. But not before, on a sudden impulse of gratitude for Denise’s courage, she had brushed the girl’s cheek with her lips. ‘I promise you, you won’t regret it,’ she whispered, and then she was alone in the corridor, her spirit utterly drained of effort, but glad ... glad of the very small victory she had won for Randal’s sake.

  CHAPTER TEN

  THERE was no moon. The stars and the ray of her small torch were Carey’s only light to the garden of the villa and the dark shape of the house itself. Before she left the hotel she had sought out Denise to say she was going and then had watched her chance to slip away, taking the short cut through the El Gara’s own grounds.

  She was trembling with apprehension as she used her key on the door and flicked the wall-switch just inside it. She was first at the rendezvous; how long must she wait in this state of tension before Auden Calvin arrived? she wondered. And what was going to be his reaction when he did? Consciously bracing herself for the ordeal, she threw back the attached hood of her dress and looked about her.

  The villa had no hall. The door gave straight into one of the two living-rooms, both of which had been transformed since she had viewed the place, empty then, with Randal. It bore Denise’s tasteful signature everywhere—in the circular handwoven rush mats which were the coverings for the tessellated floors, in the carved stools which were the chairs to the dining-table, in the low silk-covered ottomans, in the wrought-iron jardinieres which graced the window-embrasures and in the bold designs of strutting peacocks and formalised flowers worked into the coarse canvas-weave of the tasselled curtains. It had been made a gem of Moroccan decor.

  Carey noted the signs of its use as a meeting-place—the piled crushed cushions, the tray of drinks and glasses, the coffee-set on a side table, some fashion magazines with which Denise had probably whiled some time, waiting for Auden Calvin to join her on occasion. As Carey was forced to wait now, hating every moment of her vigil.

  Unable to sit still, she moved about nervously, touching this and that, wondering how long he would be, wondering, supposing he were late, how long she dared be away from the hotel ballroom before she was missed. Time moved so slowly. She had to resolve not to look at her watch until she estimated each five minutes had ticked away. She had been early herself, but now he was late ... now later still. When twenty minutes and then half an hour had passed since the time of the rendezvous, she began to look at the irony of his being late tonight of all nights, and then—at the intuition, as sure as it was cruel to Denise, that this night of all nights he wasn’t coming at all.

  Yet how could he, how could he trick Denise into this plan for their elopement and then leave her standing, for any excuse whatsoever? Surely he couldn’t? For all her conviction that he had done just that, Carey knew she was still alert for some sound of his coming even as she drew the hood back over her hair and prepared to leave.

  Her finger was actually on the light-switch when she heard it—the sound of footsteps, though not on the path from the road where, driving up from Hassi Ain, he would have left his car, but on the side path from the El Gara by which she had come herself. Her hand dropped from the switch and she stood rigid, waiting. Her palms and face were damp with nervous sweat as the door was tried, found to give to the turning of its handle and the arc of a torch was switched off, revealing the incomer to be not Auden Calvin, but Randal.

  Carey’s dismay was almost a physical pain. For a long moment they stared at each other wordlessly, and only later did she realise there had been little surprise in his look. Then he moved forward.

  ‘So—you weren’t expecting me,’ he said, making a statement of it. ‘Who then? Or needn’t I ask? Our mutual—er—good friend, Calvin, I think? Am I right?’

  Carey flinched, then looked away. Her thoughts raced. She couldn’t tell how he had guessed, but convinced by now that Auden Calvin had backed out and that Denise, disillusioned, might be saved from the folly of her pursuit of him, Carey took a wild leap of decision of her own. She understood now Randal’s lack of surprise at seeing her. Though she did not know why, he had expected to find her here in the villa, which meant that someone must have seen her leave the hotel and the direction she took. Not he himself—she had made sure of that before she left. What she didn’t understand was his assured conclusion that it was Auden Calvin she was meeting. For what purpose? Did he know that too? Or—supposing he didn’t know it was Denise’s date; supposing she let him believe it was an assignation of her own with Calvin, perhaps he might never have to learn how deeply Denise had committed herself to the man. On that faint chance and with no time to look at the recklessness of what she was doing. Carey met the accusation in Randal’s eyes and nodded. ‘How—how did you know?’

  His response was another calculating stare before he said shortly, ‘One of the bellhops saw the direction you took as you left the foyer, and you should have remembered that a light in this place can be seen from the terrace.’ He looked about him. ‘A handy enough retreat. I conclude that Denise has been careless with her keys,’ he commented.

  Though she should have known he would wonder how she had gained access to the villa, she had no reply ready. He waited, brows raised, then said to her continuing silence, ‘All right, if I spare you the sordid details of how, perhaps I may ask instead—How often?’

  She moistened her lips. ‘This was the first time,’ she told him with bitter truth.

  ‘Ah—the only time here? Well, opport
unity is a fine thing, isn’t it? But elsewhere, how often?’ He paused, then suddenly, frighteningly, his anger erupted, searing her with every word he spoke.

  ‘How! When! Where! Why! I’ve no right to ask, you think? Your private life your own affair, h’m? Once you had me fooled with your show of repugnance for Calvin, and had me actually grateful for your apparent concern lest Denise should be in any danger from him, then you had no problem, had you, Miss Donne? Your pretended dislike of him; his cultivation of Denise—both publicly flaunted, and what spice that must have added to your meetings! No scruples at all about the mere lip-service you were paying to the rules I laid down for your job; none whatsoever to my’—there he seemed to reject his choice of words—‘to a dependence on your good faith which you must have known I’ve come to value. Or did value, until an occasion when you and Calvin let your discretion slip a link. No doubt you’ll recall the time and the place you chose?’

  Carey knew. Not straight away, but from very soon after that scene in the writing-room she could date his new cool reserve towards her. Whoever had come upon her and Auden Calvin had delayed the story but must have told it eventually to Randal, who had been watchful of her since and was seeing it now as stark, damning proof of the clumsy hideous lie she had just let him believe about her, had invited him to believe!

  She was appalled. But it was too late now to retract her rash, extravagant impulse to play decoy between him and Denise, and if Auden Calvin had indeed had second thoughts on the elopement, there might still be a chance to save the girl Randal’s scorn and blame. As evenly as she could, she said to him, ‘I think you may mean one morning when I was doing some work for Mr. Calvin and someone—though not you, I think—came to the writing-room door?’

  ‘At least you don’t deny you were then in his arms?’

  ‘I can’t deny it. But he had taken me ... unawares, and I wasn’t a—a willing party—’