by Susan Barrie
She had not really supposed that Richard Trenchard would consider it necessary to drive his own car to the station to pick up her and her luggage, but she had vaguely hoped that someone—perhaps a chauffeur if he employed one—would be there. As it was she shivered as she stood waiting in a thin downpour for a taxi, and thrust up the collar of her coat about her ears, and pulled her little velour hat down closer on her head. The taximan who finally took her instructions regarded her with an approving smile, however, for the coat was neat but beautifully fitting, and there was a jaunty little upstanding quill at one side of the hat.
Hill Street—still one of the most salubrious thoroughfares in London—squelched with rain as the taxi sped along it. Otherwise it looked grey and forbidding and quite uninviting, Melanie thought, after the country she had left. It was near tea-time, and there were one or two lighted windows, and the street-lamps flickered like pale tulips endeavoring to pierce the murk.
Melanie thought of Mrs. Duplessis enjoying tea and toast and hot buttered scones in front of her drawing-room fire—with Potch making short work of the crumbs!—and was depressed as a consequence.
When she had clambered out and paid the taxi-man outside Great-Aunt Amelia’s residence, she stood for a moment looking rather forlorn on the edge of the curb. Her suitcase had been dumped down beside her, and she was picking it up with a view to approaching Aunt Amelia’s front door, and tugging at her shiny brass door-bell, when a long and somewhat ostentatious and very sleek grey car slid noiselessly up beside her.
Melanie put down her suitcase again as Richard Trenchard opened the door nearest to her and unhurriedly descended from his imposing means of transport.
“So you’ve arrived, Miss Brooks,” he said, and subjected her to a rather curious scrutiny.
Melanie answered “Yes,” automatically, and wished that he had either met her at the station or allowed her a decent interval to rest and refresh and refurbish herself before coming beneath the searchlight gaze of his critical eyes.
As it was, she was sure there was a smut on the end of her nose, and her hair seemed to be straggling wispishly under her hat. But whether he noticed these disadvantages or not she was unable to guess, for, like his sister, he allowed little to be given away by his expression.
“I meant to be in time to meet you off your train,” he told her. “But unfortunately I got held up by an over-lengthy luncheon engagement, and I thought it best to come straight here. Did you have a good journey?” he asked conventionally, picking up her suitcase.
“Oh, yes, thank you,” she assured him, brushing a strand of hair out of her eyes. “But it’s such dreadful weather, isn’t it? I don’t like London when it’s wet.”
“Don’t you?” He seemed to give her a faint, superior smile. “You prefer your benighted moorland? Well, every one to his or her own taste, but for my own part I like civilization whenever possible and practicable, and especially at this season of the year.” He gave a hearty tug to the brass bell. “My sister did not, I suppose, altogether relish parting with you?”
“She raised no serious objection.”
“Good!” he exclaimed, his lips curving cynically. “That was self-sacrificing of her! And you did not decide at the last moment to tell me that I had not the slightest right to command you as I did, and suggest that I should find someone else to look after my niece?”
She gazed back at him steadily.
“Would it have been any good?”
His smile broadened.
“Well, perhaps not! I might even have come myself and fetched you in that case!”
The door behind them opened suddenly, and a neat maidservant stood framed in the opening. Richard Trenchard handed her over Melanie’s case, and waved to Melanie to enter the hall. She did so with a feeling that she had stepped right into the middle of the Victorian era, for there was a great deal of plush carpet and mirrors, and festoons of heavy plush curtaining over the doors. Even the maid, elderly and angular though she was, wore a ruched cap and stiffly starched apron over an old-fashioned dress of black alpaca.
“My aunt is resting, I suppose?” Richard Trenchard inquired, pushing open the door of a small and very obvious drawing-room on his right, where there was a magnificent thick skin rug in front of a bright coal fire, and some very uncomfortable-looking furniture upholstered in crimson damask.
“Yes,” the maid admitted, “but she’ll be down soon.” She sounded dour, and she looked dour as she eyed Melanie up and down, reserving to herself the right to form an opinion of what she saw. “Will you be staying to tea, Master Richard?”— the “Master Richard” made Melanie smile inwardly, until she reflected that the woman had probably known her present employer when he was much younger than she was herself—“The young lady is up in her room, and she wouldn’t take any lunch because she fancies herself to be ailing. Or maybe she hasn’t got any appetite. She’s as thin as two sticks, and what they did to her at that school she went to I don’t know.”
“That’s what Miss Brooks is here to find out,” Richard retorted cheerfully, but declined to remain and partake of any tea. “I’ll ring through some time tomorrow and get you to come along to my flat, and we’ll discuss this question of Noel and what’s to be done with her as exhaustively as the time I can spare will permit,” he told Melanie, and then paused as the sound of a stick tapping decisively along the hall reaching their ears.
Great-Aunt Amelia appeared iii the drawing-room door before he could make his escape. He looked at her with a faintly rueful expression on his face, and she studied him severely. Contrary to the picture Melanie had formed of her in her mind she was tall and exceedingly upright, and undoubtedly still quite vigorous. She leaned heavily on her slender ebony cane, and a fine lace shawl of incredible delicacy and beauty was draped about her shoulders, but her eyes were as keen as a hawk’s, and her white hair not only plentiful but handsomely arranged.
“Bring tea,” she said tersely, to the maid, and then waited for Melanie to be presented to her.
CHAPTER FIVE
AFTERWARDS Melanie looked back upon that strange little tea-party with a certain amount of amusement, for it was immediately obvious to her that Richard Trenchard knew when he was cornered, and how futile it would have been to have persisted in his attempt to escape. But while she was being subjected to the eagle inspection of those old but amazingly bright eyes, and Richard was trying not to look revolted by the straw-colored beverage which was handed out to him, and the fingers of wafer-thin toast, the situation was without humor of any kind.
Great-Aunt Amelia never relaxed, and she sat in her straight-backed Victorian chair as if she had been doing penance on the back-board. She manipulated the heavy silver teapot herself; it was rock-firm in her hands, and so was her loud, hoarse voice when she spoke.
“This young woman’s had a long journey, so she’d better get upstairs to her room,” she said, when tea was half over. “You, Richard, can stay and talk with me for a while. I want to hear what plans you have formed for Andrew’s child.”
“As a matter of fact, Aunt, I’ve a dinner engagement tonight, and a business interview before that, so if you’ll forgive me I’ll really have to leave you,” Richard excused himself with as much smoothness as he could muster. “I’ve told Miss Brooks that I’ll see her tomorrow, and we’ll discuss Noel then. In the meantime I thought that you two might like to have a talk.”
“We will,” his aunt assured him emphatically, “as soon as Miss Brooks has got over her journey. I want to hear her views when she’s seen Noel—ridiculous name for a girl, anyway! And you can postpone your business arrangement, or put off your dinner engagement—I don’t care which!—and listen to me while I feel like talking. Tomorrow I may be in no mood for it at all!” She depressed the bell at her elbow almost fiercely, and when the maid came ordered her to take Melanie up to her room. “And see that she’s got a good fire, Fawkes, and that it’s kept going well. This weather’s enough to fill anyone with rheumatism, an
d she looks as if a puff of wind would blow her over. But maybe her looks are deceptive. I wasn’t much of a strapper myself when I was her age.”
Richard Trenchard looked at Melanie with a rather comical lift of his dark eyebrows when he said good-bye, and there was an unmistakable twinkle in his eyes.
“Don’t let my aunt terrify you altogether, will you, Miss Brooks?” he begged. “She’s not really as fierce as she sounds, but strangers usually find her, alarming. Au revoir until tomorrow! And tell Noel to behave herself!”
Upstairs on a crimson-carpeted landing Melanie found herself waiting while Fawkes flung open the door of her room. Instantly a bright glow of firelight met her, dancing in the garland-wreathed, highly polished posts of a four-poster bed. There were curtains of rosebud chintz which, she presumed, could be drawn together, if so she wished, once she was in bed, and she inspected them with interest.
“Where is Miss Noel’s room?” she asked, before the maid departed, having promised to turn on the bathroom taps for a hot bath for her.
“In here,” Fawkes answered, and tapped on the door of an adjoining room, which had once formed a dressing-room to the room she occupied.
A muffled, and definitely sullen voice called out to know what was wanted, and Fawkes looked back at Melanie, plainly asking by her look whether she wished, at this stage, to meet her new charge.
Melanie nodded her head.
“Yes; I want to see her.”
When she stood in the room next door she was at first rather appalled because there was no heating except for a diminutive electric fire, which, by the chill of the room, had not been switched on for some time. It was not a very large room, either, and the bed was in a corner, and the tumbled bed-clothes made it look definitely unattractive. The girl in the bed, with an old red ripple-cloth dressing-gown held round her shoulders, looked tiny, and pale, and rather wild-eyed.
“What do you want?” she demanded, glaring at Melanie.
Melanie approached her soothingly, and sat down on the side of the bed. She smiled in a way she reserved for small dumb animals, very young children and the under-privileged. Her brown, soft gold-flecked eyes were miracles of gentleness and she endeavored to straighten the disordered sheets.
“What a mess you’re in!” she exclaimed. “And this bed doesn’t look at all comfortable! You’d better come through to my room and sit by the fire while I give the mattress a turn and see what I can do to make it more comfy.” She touched the thin hands clutching at the bedclothes. “Why, you’re half frozen! Why haven’t you got the fire on in here?”
“The fuse has blown, and I wouldn’t ask them to mend it,” came the reply, in the husky cracked whisper of the victim of a head cold. “And, anyway, I didn’t want them in here—I’d rather be alone!”
“But, why?” Melanie asked in gentle amazement.
“Because I don’t like any of them—particularly the old woman! I think she’s detestable.”
“And yet I thought she was rather nice.” Melanie informed her truthfully, for somehow the austerity of Great-Aunt Amelia had done nothing to frighten her. If she had been Noel she would have disliked very much to be entrusted to the care of Mrs. Duplessis—but not Great-Aunt Amelia!
“Look here, my child,” she said, “I don’t think you’re at all feverish, but you sound as if you could do with some aspirin and a good hot drink, and while it’s being got ready for you you can sit by my fire and get thoroughly warmed up. I’m going to transform this room, too, It’s the most cheerless place I’ve seen.”
Noel’s eyes were large and blue as cornflowers, and they regarded Melanie with a certain amount of wonder as she placed ready slippers for her to step into. She had a cloud of pure golden hair which covered her like a mantle, and made Melanie think of the princess in the fairy tale who was always pictured with her mane of just such tresses drifting wildly about her. In a few years, thought Melanie, eyeing the faint, excited pink which was creeping up under her clear skin, Miss Noel Trenchard was going to be a howling beauty—if she was thoroughly fit!
Fawkes, who was hovering, none too pleased, in the background, came forward willingly enough, however, to assist Melanie to re-make the bed. Between them they mended the fuse and got the electric fire going, and Melanie insisted upon a hot water bottle being placed in the bed, and looked out a clean nightdress for Noel because the one she was at present wearing was definitely grubby.
She was shocked by the scanty wardrobe the child possessed, and which two drawers of the unimposing chest-of-drawers were more than sufficient to accommodate. And there seemed to be little or nothing hanging up in the bedroom cupboard, apart from a school uniform. She wondered whether Richard Trenchard knew anything at all about the needs of his niece and ward.
As Great-Aunt Amelia went early to bed, Melanie had her own dinner served on a tray before her fire, and Noel sat watching her while she consumed it, herself replete after a bowl of bread and milk and a large plate of biscuits. There was no doubt about it, she had been half-starved, and Melanie thought she looked ten times prettier when she was fed and warmed. But Melanie would not let her stay up and talk as she apparently wished to do, now that the barrier of shyness and mistrust was down, and promised to listen to all her complaints on the morrow, when her cold, she felt, would be much better.
But as she tucked Noel up in bed, and saw her settle down drowsily and fairly happily, she thought: “What if I hadn’t come today, after all? ... Would Noel have been left alone as she was when I found her ...?”
In the morning Great-Aunt Amelia sent for Melanie to attend her in her room, because she wished, as she explained, to talk to her.
Great-Aunt Amelia was up and dressed, and sitting in an uncomfortable-looking bedside chair, and she fixed Melanie with her shrewd, far-seeing eyes.
“You’re not as young as you seem,” she observed, when the morning greetings were passed, “and you’ve got a great deal of sense in that small head of yours. I suspected it as soon as I laid eyes on you, and from what Fawkes tells me about your method of dealing with that unhappy child Noel you look like proving something of a godsend to her—if you’ll stay with her long enough! No wonder Richard made up his mind that Eve would have to do without you.”
Melanie felt herself flushing a little as a result of this praise.
“I’m afraid Mr. Trenchard didn’t know quite what to do, or whom to ask to look after Noel, and I—well, Mrs. Duplessis consented to release me—”
“Release you?” Great-Aunt Amelia almost snorted. “She had no alternative! Because she hadn’t the common decency to offer the child a home herself she knew there could be no choice in the matter where you were concerned. She did it to save her skin, as you might say—her comfort-loving, luxury-loving skin! I’ve always thought Eve a despicable kind of sister for Richard, and goodness knows he’s arrogant enough—but he’s not selfish! Whatever else Richard is, his heart’s in the right place—once you’ve discovered it’s there at all! Believe me, I know Richard, and I know what I’m talking about. The tragedy with Richard is that he hasn’t got a wife—and it doesn’t look to me as if he ever will have now!”
Her old eyes grew thoughtful and reflective and vaguely unhappy as she stared into the fire, and she seemed to shake her head almost mournfully as she muttered to herself: “Of course, he should have married Elaine!—but Elaine married Andrew! And what happened to them both? They went and got themselves killed! And now Richard’s saddled with that child Noel...”
She sighed suddenly, deeply.
“Ah, well...” She looked again, keenly, at Melanie. “Don’t let Richard down, young woman—he depends on you. He may seem to take a lot for granted, but you won’t regret it. I know my great-nephew—and I tell you you won’t regret it!”
CHAPTER SIX
IT was almost a week before Melanie found herself in Richard Trenchard’s flat, with Noel seated rather sulkily beside her on the dark, leather-covered couch. For the discussion concerning Noel’s imme
diate future which was to have taken place the day after Melanie’s arrival in Hill Street had had to be postponed because of Noel’s persistent cold.
But now she looked as well as one of her natural fragility, coupled with a lack of stamina and vitality which secretly concerned Melanie, could hope to look after being confined to the house for so many days. She had a dry little cough which escaped her at times, and there were shadowy half circles beneath her eyes which made them look large, sullen and brooding. But she was interested at finding herself in fresh surroundings once again, even if it was only the flat of her Uncle Richard; and Melanie had not needed to spend many hours in her company before finding out that his niece had little or no liking for her legal guardian. In her insignificant bosom a kind of dull resentment had been allowed to grow, and take determined hold, because, during her school years, she had been so often left lonely and neglected, especially in school holidays. And this neglect—whether unavoidable or not—would take some living down, as Melanie realized.
She was a little surprised because the flat of the well-known playwright—or, at any rate, the room in which he worked—was without any of the trimmings she had somehow imagined a man of his eminence and creative ability would consider essential in his surroundings. There was a vase of flowers on his desk, which indicated that he liked exotic and out-of-season blooms, and the desk itself was a handsome piece, if a trifle disordered at the moment; but otherwise the same severely simple furnishing prevailed which had caused Eve to sneer a little at the Wold House.
Richard himself was lying back in his chair and regarding them both with interest. As usual he was impeccably dressed, and he seemed to fit very well into his chair upholstered in steel-grey leather. He had been working on their arrival, but now, with one of his special blend of turkish and Virginian cigarettes smouldering away between his long fingers, he studied his visitors under apparently languid lids and very dark eyelashes which had the effect of darkening the eyes themselves so that the irises, at least in the tranquil firelight in his room, seemed black, or nearly so. And observing the clumsy outfit of his niece and comparing it with the leaf-green perfection of Melanie’s tailored suit—like a whispered hint of spring on that murky afternoon—and her head like a shining, polished chestnut, attracting so much of the fireglow, the merest suspicion of a thoughtful frown appeared between his brows.
