by Pamela Kent
I-THE MAN WHO CAME BACK 87
name it'll have to live up to, and Labradors
are always wise."
"I shall think of a name in due course," she answered as if she had no intention whatsoever of taking advantage of his suggestion.
: "And you won't call it Solomon?" "No. N-no, I don't think so." He smiled again. He had an annoyingly secret
smile that was beginning to infuriate her.
"Tell me," he said suddenly, as if he had a perfect right to know the answer, "since you must be somewhere between twenty-four and twenty-six, why have you not got yourself married? Is it because your artistic soul revels in freedom, or because you have a habit of putting men off with those snapping green eyes of yours? And that tart little tongue�on occasion!"
She answered immediately, and rather glibly: "It's my tart little tongue, of course. And my green eyes I" "Nothing to do with a passionate attachment to freedom?"
"Not so far as I know. But then I've never been psycho-analysed. Perhaps if I was I'd find out a few things about myself that I've never even suspected."
"Perhaps you would."
"You don't go in for hypnotising people, do you?" wondering what it was about his dark eyes that so easily could hypnotise her.
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"Don't worry." He smiled at her almost gently. "I won't hypnotise you."
She got up hastily and went across the room to examine a picture on the farther wall. It was a rather fine water-colour, and she thought she recognised the artist... But she wasn't even looking for the artist's signature as he came up behind her.
"That's nice," she said, and all at once she felt breathless, as if she had been running.
Philip Drew agreed that it was very nice.
She moved over to a bookcase, and started looking at the books. Assuming that they were all Dr. Parkes' she began picking them out and looking at them, and then she discovered that the name Philip Drew was inscribed on one of the fly-leaves, and it was the fly-leaf of a volume of poetry that was a particular favourite of hers.
In some surprise she turned to him, and found
that he was still standing very close to her.
Eagerly she exclaimed:
"So you read Tennyson! I didn't think many
people did nowadays." /
"Why not? Tennyson will always be Tenny
son... and you either like him or you don't like
him. I'm one of the people who do."
"Oh, I'm so gladi" She didn't realise that
she sounded enthusiastic; in fact, she sounded
as if she had suddenly discovered a blood
brother. '^Because I absolutely love him... even
THE MAN WHO 'GAME BACK 89
'Come into the Garden, Maud.' In fact, that's
one of my favourites."
"Mine, too."
"Really?"
He smiled at her�but without any mysterious or annoying inflections this time. Then, to her
acute embarrassment, he actually sniffed at her
hair.
"What is it?" he asked.
"What is what?"
"Your perfume."
"Lily of the valley."
"Stick to it," he advised. "It suits you."
"But I thought you implied that my person
ality was aggressive?"
"Nevertheless, I think you ought to stick to lily of the valley perfume. And talking of flowers, what about going out into the garden and picking some? For my vases. Remember?"
"You really want me to arrange some flowers for you?"
"I won't let you go home until you've done so. You've made me feel that I'm lacking something as a result of not being married and having a sweet little woman around, and if you want to help make up to.me�well, fill the vases. Bring this rather sad room to life and leave me with a fragrant memory of this afternoon."
She smiled at him one-sidedly.
"You know very well we've bickered all through tea. Now, come out into the garden!"
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They spent some time in the garden selecting suitable blooms for his vases, and then Harriet devoted another half-hour to arranging them and satisfying herself that the somewhat neglected drawing-room had a more pleasing effect on the eye than when she first saw it.
She also placed a bowl of roses in the middle of the dining-room table, and did an arrangement for the hall which was extremely artistic.
"I suppose it wouldn't do to put some in your consulting-room," she suggested, and he agreed
with her that it wouldn't do.
He seemed faintly horrified by the thought.
"At least leave me one place where the
atmosphere is as it should be," he said a little
ungraciously.
She laughed.
"Do you feel you're being taken over?.. .By
a woman! Perhaps it's the fear of being organ
ised by a woman that has enabled you to remain
a bachelor."
"Perhaps."
"You prefer the smell of antiseptic, and I'm
sure your wife, if you had one, would simply
hate it." She crinkled up her nose. "Although
personally I'm not averse to the smell of anti
septic.^"
"I'm glad to hear it"
But he didn't say why he was glad to hear it
She tidied up the kitchen after making a slight
mess on the draining-board with her various
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bowls and vases, and then glanced around it
carefully to make absolutely certain everything
was in order before she left She explained that
she didn't wish to get him into trouble with his
housekeeper because the place had been made
untidy, and he seemed amused by the notion
that anyone or anything could get him into
trouble with some overweening authority he would dispute in any case. Which more than proved her point�and it was one that she had made to her sister�that he was an extremely
arrogant man. And what was worse, he was naturally arrogant. It wasn't an arrogance he had acquired over the years. She thought of his Regency prototype, whom she had stumbled upon in the attic, and she knew without having to be told that he had been an extremely ^arrogant man, too. If Gay was seriously thinking of putting him
in the place of her late husband she would have to grow accustomed to having her life organised for her. There would be no question of her living
the kind of life she had lived with Bruce.
But�and this was a reasonably sized "But"� she had first to catch her fish. And as he was obviously expert at avoiding the most tempting bait she might have to think of some entirely new form of bait with which to tempt him on to the end of her line. Unless she did it by simply looking at him with her large, misty violet eyes.
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They had been known to work havoc before.
Harriet drove home to Falaise with her puppy, and she said nothing to Gay about having tea with the doctor... and certainly she didn't mention that she had done his flowers for him. She didn't know why she kept this secret to herself, except that she more than suspected Gay would look slightly surprised.
"But why on earth didn't you bring him home to tea here?" she would ask. And when she thought about it afterwards Harriet wondered why she hadn't done that very thing.
Gay was looking a trifle mysterious when she
returned home, and she had a long ladder in one
of her sheer stockings which was a surprise to
Harriet, for she had never known her appear in
public with such a noticeable ladder before.
Also, she was dusting the front of her dress and
complaining of a scratched knuckle, and when
Harriet asked her what she had been doing she
board. She was a little vague about the particu
lar cupboard she had been turning out, and
Harriet simply could not understand why she
had undertaken such a task in any case. It was
unlike Gay to stoop to such menial tasks, even in
a house with which she was not yet fully fam
iliar and where anything might be brought to
light with the turning out of a cupboard or one
of the unused rooms.
"I was thinking," Gay said hurriedly, plainly
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hoping that Harriet would not pursue her enquiry concerning that cupboard, "that this is ramer an exciting old house, and we don't know
half that we ought to know about it For instance, the attics. I'd like to go up into them one day with you, and we can sort out what there is up there."
"There's nothing of any particular value." Harriet surveyed her curiously, surprised at. this sudden interest in the attics. "And whatever you do, don't go up there by yourself without warning someone that you're going up, because you could break a leg if you stumbled over the open beams. I very nearly did so myself when I was up there."
"But you didn't let anyone know when you
were going up." Gay smiled a little oddly as she surveyed her. "I hope you won't do it again without giving us all due warning, because you're far more likely to get into trouble up
there than I am. I don't normally go clambering about over open beams, but that kind of thing tempts you."
"Only if I'm anxious to find something." Harriet poured her a glass of sherry and yielded to the temptation to pour a small one for herself. "I found a very attractive flower painting when I was up there the first time, and on the second occasion I went to look for a companion for it. I don't suppose I'll go up there again... not unless
you want me to, that is."
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Gay sipped her sherry thoughtfully and exam
ined the ladder in her stocking.
"I'm not what you might call consumed with
impatience to go up there," she admitted. "But
I do think I did a very good job this afternoon."
"Turning out your cupboard, you mean?"
, "Yes; turning out my cupboard," and she
smiled at the contents of her glass.
But, two days later, Harriet found herself up
in the attics with no less a person than Dr.
Drew, who had expressed a desire to see the portrait that-had thrown her into such an unusual state of nerves when she discovered it for the first
-time. It was once more afternoon, and he had looked in to see Gay, who was out She was, as a matter of fact, away on a two-day visit to London, and he seemed surprised that she had not informed him she was going away. He even looked a little peeved, as if the omission offended him... which inclined Harriet to the theory that he was almost as interested in Gay as she was in him. Which would please Gay very much indeed if she had the least idea of it.
He paced up and down in the drawing-room and studied the Aubusson carpet with a definite cleft between his black brows. As always he was immaculately dressed and impeccably groomed, and Harriet found herself wondering whether the villagers weren't sometimes a little in awe of him. He was the sort of man one ought to find
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sitting at a walnut desk in a room overlooking
other brass plates in Harley Street, not making his rounds in a remote country village where the regular doctor thought more of his. collection of guns and fishing-rods than he did of the cut of his suit, or the set of his tie.
He had even been known to do his rounds minus a collar and tie when the weather was warm. And in the winter he was seldom to be seen without an old-fashioned muffler, and a pair of hand-knitted gloves which his housekeeper made for him.
But Dr. Drew had a kind of austere elegance which Harriet was firmly convinced clung to him even in moments when he was not only off duty but entirely unobserved.
She had been weeding in one of the borders when he arrived, and her hands were grubby because she was not one of those people who use gardening gloves. Dr. Drew looked at her critically as she wiped her hands furtively down the sides of her dress, and said that she ought to be careful... she could get blood-poisoning if she scratched her hand on a thorn, or something of that sort Harriet replied that she was tough, and most thorns apparently recognised it and avoided her.
^ "Anyway, I like gardening," she said defensively. "It keeps me out in the air, and I like fresh air."
Her skin was certainly delicately flushed with
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exercise, and her eyes were very bright between their fluttering eyelashes.
"I'm so sorry Gay isn't here," she said, "but she had to go to London. I don't suppose she thought you would object," she added, "since I think most people will agree she's reached the convalescent stage."
His eyes narrowed as he gazed at her. "You're a bit hard where your sister is concerned, aren't you?" he observed in a critical manner.
She stared full at him, and most unfortunately smeared her face as she thrust back an end of her hair.
"Aren't you forgetting that I've known her since she was a baby?" she said.
"You may have known her since she was a baby, but in your attitude towards her I always sense a certain disapproval," he told her bluntly. "Perhaps you don't realise it, but it's always there."
She flushed as if he had openly accused her of being unfair to her half-sister. "I assure you we get along very well," she said with sudden stiffness.
"Do you?" But his expression told her that he openly doubted her. "Do you? Then why do you refuse to believe that she isn't as strong as you, apparently, would like to think she is? Is it because of your sisterly affection, which makes you anxious every time there's a possibility that she
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might be seriously under the weather, or because
you suspect her of malingering?"
She flushed still more brilliantly.
"I don't suspect her of malingering! I only suspect her of�" "Yes?" She looked away. How could she tell him that
Gay had made up her mind to marry him? Although if he had made up his mind to marry Gay it wouldn't really matter!
And suddenly she had the strange conviction he had made up his mind to marry Gay. He looked around him for a seat, and as there wasn't one asked her if they could go indoors.
"I want to talk to you," he said.
"And I feel uncomfortable standing opposite you with a trowel in one hand and a botde of insecticide in the other. Do you think we can go into the drawing-room?"
"Of course."
But first she asked him if she could wash her hands before joining him in the drawing-room. And when the smear had been removed from her face and her hands were clean and the dark stains on her linen skirt had been partially brushed off, she walked into the drawing-room to find him pacing up and down with a distinctly clouded look about his brow, and a look of resolution drawing attention to the squareness of his jaw.
"Can I offer you some tea?" she said.
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"No, thank you. I want to go upstairs to the attics and have a look at that portrait you found the other day." "The portrait...?" "The one you took so much exception to! Because, apparently, it reminded you of me."
"I�I didn't take exception to the portrait because it reminded me of you. I was simply surprised."
"Horrified, apparently. Can we go upstairs?"
She glanced at his immaculate apparel. ' "You're not really dressed for clambering about in attics, and if you've got some more patients to visit I wouldn't recommend it�"
"I haven't. Not for an hour, at least." He was beginning to look and sound impatient. "Can we go up?"
She shru
gged. "Well, yes, I suppose so, if you want to. But if it wasn't quite so large I could bring the portrait down to you�" "Don't be silly!"
Resentfully she climbed ahead of him up to the attics. Under no circumstances could she imagine him saying, "don't jse silly," to her halfsister ... and although this was perhaps understandable, since Gay was Gay as well as being the mistress of the house, and a valuable private patient besides, she did find that the knowledge in no way endeared him to her. And as a matter of fact, since taking tea with him, and being
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quizzed by him to a certain extent, she did find
that she was inclined to dwell on his defects
rather than any attributes he might possess.
He was the man who approved of Gay while
disapproving of her.... And that annoyed her.
She didn't really object to him approving of
Gay, but she could think of no acceptable reason why he should have taken such an apparently
incurable dislike to her.
When they reached the low door which admitted to die attics he tried to insist on going first, but she wouldn't hear of it.
"I know the way," she said. "They're rather like a rabbit warren. You'll just have to follow me."
For part of the time they had to crawl on thenhands and knees, and she shuddered when she thought of his immaculately creased trousers. But they were his trousers, and if he didn't mind, well, why should she?
The attics ran from one end of the house to the other, and what with the collection of junk and the various articles of furniture that had been stored Away up there, and round which they had to make tfieir way, it was some time before they reached the distant shadowy corner where the pile of portraits was stacked against the wall. Harriet was the one to reach them first, and she knew that the one they were looking for had been left by her on the outside of the pile, and that it was in fact propped against the
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others with its face to the open space inside the attics. At a distance of several feet it should have been easily recognisable in its cumbersome oldfashioned frame, and Philip Drew heard her gasp when she discovered that it was no longer where she had left it. With the assistance of the doctor she went through the stack of portraits, but the Regency gentleman who looked so like Dr. Drew was not amongst them. After a careful search of the attics he didn't appear to be up
