by Susan Barrie
“And there’s no one to take him but you!”
He lifted her small, ungloved hand that was lying outside on the rug and placed it beneath the protection of the soft fur.
“Well, I like taking him—and I like snow.”
“I daresay you do,” he said, more curtly. “But what would happen if you twisted your ankle in a concealed rut, or fell into a drift up to your ears, or some such similar accident occurred to you? Would anyone in the house come out to look for you? I doubt it! Certainly not Noel—”
“Noel is in bed, but Mrs. Abbie would miss me very quickly,” Melanie insisted. “And it’s highly unlikely I should meet with any such disaster, especially as it’s not yet quite dark, and I was on my way home. But if I did Peter wouldn’t let me lie forgotten—he’d raise the alarm! Peter is a unique dog, and we all think it was a very happy thought your bestowing him on Noel.”
As if he appreciated this tribute Peter’s long tongue slid out, and he licked her ear from behind. Richard Trenchard laughed and encircled his muzzle with a hand usually appreciated by animals.
“Including my niece?” he asked. “Does she like him? She wrote, of course, but that might have been just politeness.”
“Adores him. She’s anxious for the opportunity to offer you her heartfelt thanks in person.”
He laughed again softly, and then offered her his cigarette-case. As they sat quietly smoking on the pale grey upholstery of the well-sprung seat he realized what was passing in her mind, and that she was consumed with curiosity to learn why it was that she had found him sitting there in the snowy lane. Looking down at her in the dim interior and marking the slightly tip-tilted nose which agreed with the upward curve of her eyelashes, he decided to enlighten her.
“It’s a long drive from town,” he explained, “and when I got here I liked the look of my house so much that I was tempted to switch off my engine and admire it. With smoke simply pouring from the chimneys, and the grounds looking like the setting for an ice pantomime, it certainly struck me for the first time as having something more to offer than my St. James Place flat.”
“If only you had let Mrs. Abbie know you were coming,” Melanie lamented. “We had more or less made up our minds that you wouldn’t be here until just before Christmas—and that you would probably be bringing some friends.”
“I shall expect a few friends for the Christmas holiday. That’s one of the disadvantages of owning a house.” He started up the car—or, rather, he tried to start it up, but the engine had grown cold, and refused to exhibit any symptoms of life. After one or two attempts to persuade it into action he gave it up, and turned to her. “I’m afraid we shall have to walk, and send down for the car later on. Do you mind?”
“Not at all,” she answered at once, surprised that he should ask, and, as a matter of fact, she had been conscious of a vague disinclination to continue that short journey up the drive to the house, and to have him swallowed up by all the bustle and excitement which would unquestionably attend the announcement of his arrival. He was so obviously in one of his nicest and friendliest moods, and there had been something about the way he had looked at her and spoken to her when first she had blundered into his car that had most curiously accelerated her breathing, and for a few moments she had felt almost overwhelmingly pleased to see him. And now, sitting so snugly and comfortably beside him, she was quite definitely reluctant to desert the warmth and comfort of the car, even although the walk up the drive would take far longer than the car journey.
He opened his own door and climbed out into the snow, and she followed with his hand on her arm to prevent her being precipitated into one of the ruts he had spoken of. Then, pausing to remove his suitcase from the boot of the car, he caught hold of her hand and tucked it inside his arm, and together they set off up the drive.
By that time a few stars were burning frostily in a clear patch of sky above their heads, and far away across the snow, in the direction of the village, the church bells were plainly practising their Christmas carillon. Otherwise the night was very still, and the faint wind which sighed close to their ears was gentle enough. Melanie could feel the rough surface of his coat-sleeve beneath her hand, and she had some difficulty in keeping pace with his long strides. He bent his head to look down at her in a sudden warm glow of light which streamed down the drive from the house, and she could see his white teeth as his lips parted whimsically over them.
He said gently, “Like Peter I’m dragging you along, but you can hang on to me as much as you please, and I promise I won’t let you stumble!”
Melanie felt a most pleasing sensation of warmth begin to steal in a comforting manner throughout all her being and it seemed to her that he drew her hand a little closer in the crook of his arm. He was holding her wrist firmly with his fingers, and ridiculously she felt that she was walking on air instead of snow that crunched crisply beneath her feet. If the drive had been another mile and a half in length she thought seriously that she would not have minded, but within a matter of minutes after leaving the car he had pulled the bell-chain in the porch and the front door had been flung hastily wide open to reveal the astonished visage of Mrs. Abbie.
Behind her, in the hall, there was leaping firelight, and there were holly and evergreens, too, behind the gilt-framed portraits of some unknown gentlemen in period costume who adorned the walls. Melanie had risked life and limb on the top of an uncertain step-ladder earlier in the day to place them there. And the michaelmas daisies had been reinforced with sprays of scarlet berries, and the crimson cushion in the Jacobean chair looked most inviting.
And Baxter came moving in a dignified fashion across the hall to greet them.
“Well, well!” Richard Trenchard exclaimed, and there was a most unusual glow in his eyes as he looked about him. “This really is—attractive!”
“Mr. Richard!” Mrs. Abbie exclaimed reprovingly. “Why couldn’t you let us have a telephone message? Or at least you might have sent a telegram! ... And me not even sure your bed is aired!”
“Then I’ll sleep in a chair in the library,” he told her cheerfully. He was obviously in the highest spirits, removing his thick overcoat and sending the snow flying in all directions as he tossed it from him, and then turning to assist Melanie off with her raincoat. “But from certain savory odors which seem to be finding their way from the kitchen you’ve got a very good dinner in course of preparation, and that I can certainly do with! Miss Brooks,” whipping the head-scarf from her damp curls and casting it carelessly on to a settee, “you and Noel will dine with me tonight, and we’ll open a bottle of champagne—of which I believe there are a few in the cellar—and celebrate the beginning of my occupation of the Wold House.”
“Miss Trenchard is having her supper upstairs on a tray,” Mrs. Abbie said, rather primly, before Melanie could get in a word.
“Oh, yes!” He made a slight, expressive face. “I forgot she’s indulging in being an invalid again! Oh, well, in that case—” He paused, looked at Melanie with a faint, regretful lift of one eyebrow, as well as one side of his always rather attractively crooked mouth, and shrugged his shoulders. “In that case I’ll have my dinner on a tray in the library, to save you opening up the dining-room, Abbie, but I’d be glad of a whiskey and soda as soon as you can produce it.”
“Certainly, Mr. Richard.”
He stooped and picked up Baxter, who settled with delighted purrs against his shoulder, and then walked with the masterful tread of one who knew himself to be the master in his own house towards the door of the library. But before he reached it he called over his shoulder to Melanie, “Better get those wet shoes of yours changed, Miss Brooks. And give my devoted regards to my niece!”
The message was ironical, as was the backward look which accompanied it, but Melanie answered simply—conscious of feeling rather like a highly inflated balloon which had received a sudden prick, “Yes, Mr. Trenchard.”
And then as he disappeared, airily casual once again—as she h
ad known him on at least two or three occasions since they first became acquainted—and the library door closed firmly behind him, she moved slowly forward towards the stairs and ascended them under the eyes of the watching portraits with that unpleasant, deflated feeling keeping pace with her steps. For, although it was quite absurd, of course, she had so thoroughly enjoyed that short walk up the drive, and the conversation which had preceded it, and now—now only Baxter was permitted to accompany him into the library!
She quickened her steps and started to run up the stairs, for, after all, she had had the walk, and she must let Noel know her uncle had arrived. And but for Noel’s cold— the thought intruded—they would all three be dining downstairs in the dining-room and drinking a toast to the house in champagne!
The next day Richard Trenchard’s good humor continued, and he congratulated Melanie on Noel’s altered appearance, for her confinement to bed had been rather in the nature of a precautionary measure, and she was able to get up and join them for breakfast on the first morning that he had breakfast in his own wide-windowed, sun-flooded breakfast-room—which had nothing at all to do with the dining-room, and had once been a little oak-panelled parlor, and was conveniently close to the green-baize door to the kitchen.
Although the snow still held fast, the sky on this first morning of his visit was blue and inviting, and Noel’s jumper was blue and she wore a very well-cut tweed skirt. Her cheeks were fuller and her eyes clearer and her spun-gold hair hung down her back in two very thick and attractive braids. It was quite remarkable hair, and although she agitated continually to have it cut to a more fashionable length, Melanie hoped her uncle would withhold his sanction, and had tried winding it about her head in a coronet of plaits which suited her young and pensive face.
“It seems to me,” the owner of the house remarked, after studying his niece intently for several seconds after she entered the room, “that either Miss Brooks or the Wold House has done you an astonishing amount of good. In which case you can come with me in the car this morning and we’ll bring back a load of greenery with which to decorate this place in a suitably festive manner. I see you’ve already started on the hall, Miss Brooks, but we’ve much more to do than that.”
She was surprised that he betrayed even so much enthusiasm for a task which she had been secretly certain he would either have held in a kind of abhorrence, or looked upon with condescending amusement so long as somebody else made themselves responsible for it. But upon reflection she decided that it was the sudden acquisition of a really attractive home, and the fact that he had already issued invitations to certain of his friends to visit it for Christmas, which made him anxious that they should see it at its best.
“I did the best I could with the branches I could reach,” she told him; “but the holly with the finest berries on it needs longer arms than mine. And there are some magnificent laurels, too, and a gorgeous bunch of mistletoe on an old apple tree in the orchard.”
“Then we’ll straightaway transplant it to somewhere where the unwary will be most likely to find themselves embarrassed by, it,” he replied, his eyes twinkling at her rather wickedly across the table. “Isn’t that the correct thing to do with mistletoe, Miss Brooks?”
She felt herself flushing faintly under the meaning look in his eyes, and was glad when Noel decided to seize the opportunity to thank him for her birthday present.
“That’s all right, my child,” he said, dismissing her thanks carelessly. “So long as you don’t ever allow him into my library to chew up my papers. If he ever does that, both your life and his will be forfeit!”
Although it was a bright morning it had snowed a great deal during the night and they had to attach chains to the wheels of the car before setting out to penetrate the white and silent lanes. It was a world of infinite beauty, sparkling like fairyland, through which they crawled at a snail’s pace, the chains clanking noisily, and Melanie would have been content to lie back against the seat of the car and simply admire it, while Noel, occupying the seat of honor beside her uncle at the wheel, chatted to him for the first time almost without self-consciousness. But there was work to be done, as Richard reminded her when they arrived at a magnificent specimen of holly towering above the deep snow of the drive, and looking as if it had shaken itself free of all but a light powdering of rime. And very soon the back of the car was piled high with the scarlet and green which somehow looked exciting against the contrasting whiteness of the snow, and even the pearl-grey upholstery of the car.
On their way back they passed through the village, with its square-towered church, looking like the subject for a Christmas card. And the white-haired elderly Rector, returning to his Reentry after supervising decorations in the church, espied them and recognized the long grey car as belonging to the brother of Mrs. Duplessis. He smiled and waved a hand at them, and Richard brought the car to a standstill and decided that it might be polite to address a few seasonable words with him, if only for the sake of his sister, who always counted upon the Rector to make up a bridge four when she was giving one of her social evenings.
“So nice to feel that the owner of the Wold House is now settled amongst us,” the Rector observed, obviously meaning it. “We shall hope to see more of you, Mr. Trenchard, now that you are no longer living in London.”
“As a matter of fact I return to London immediately after Christmas,” Richard told him rather bluntly.
“Oh, do you?” There was disappointment on the rather finely drawn face. “But such a charming old house—and the gardens, so attractive in the spring. Perhaps you will eventually decide to settle—?”
“Perhaps,” Richard replied non-committally.
The Rector caught sight of Melanie, in the back of the car, and beamed at her.
“In the meantime your Miss Melanie will continue, I hope, to help us out with the Women’s Institute on Friday nights? She and Mrs. Duplessis have always been so good, and so regular and faithful in their attendance, and their assistance whenever it was needed. Miss Melanie even organized a sale of work for us once, and Mrs. Duplessis is always getting up concerts. At the moment we are trying to raise funds for the new church organ...”
He paused tentatively, and Richard said rather brusquely, “I’ll send you a cheque, Rector, but you must forgive me if I find it impossible to embrace my sister’s interests. For one thing, she is not as busy as I am, and for another—our tastes have always lain in a different direction,”
“Oh, of course, of course.” But the Rector was so pleased at the prospect of a cheque that he was not greatly concerned in which direction their tastes lay. “That is most kind—most kind!”
He again beamed at Melanie, thought what a pretty little thing the young niece was who apparently was not in the best of health, and Richard let in his clutch.
On the way home Richard observed, in an amused tone, over his shoulder to Melanie, “So you’re a young woman of many interests, Miss Brooks!—and apparently much sought after! I’m beginning to realize just how much my sister relinquished when she found the strength to let you go!” Melanie decided that he was teasing her, and he certainly gave her a quaint look when he handed her out of the car when they arrived back at the Wold House. With her arms full of prickly holly and a somewhat embarrassed flush in her cheeks she brushed past him into the hall, and one of his dark eyebrows lifted quizzically as he looked after her.
That night they had out the bottle of champagne from the cellar, and even Noel was permitted a small glass, while Mrs. Abbie was called in to the dining-room to join in a toast to the new house. The toast was, “To the Wold House! May its walls never look down upon a scene less happy than this one!”
His eyes seemed to meet Melanie’s deliberately and to dwell upon her as he uttered the words, and for a moment she found it almost impossible to meet them. There was for an instant something rather tense and electrical in the atmosphere of the dining-room, and even Noel sensed it as she held her glass aloft. Richard’s eyes were positi
vely brilliant tonight, and there was no doubt about it he was in high good humor, and he looked rather more sinisterly handsome than usual as he stood there at the head of his table, inviting them to drink with him.
Melanie, in a deep red dress which seemed to throw a kind of damask bloom over her face, buried her nose in the champagne bubbles and inevitably sneezed sharply, which set them all laughing, and the tension was eased. And Richard demanded, “What about getting on with the decorations? Everybody lend a hand.”
He stood on the top of a tall step-ladder and Melanie handed him up branches of holly, and watched him affix the mistletoe to the antique swinging lantern in the hall. He looked down at her, provoking her with his amused eyes as he inquired, “Is that what you would consider a strategic position, Miss Brooks?”
Melanie peered upwards at the virginal white berries framed in their clusters of glossy leaves, and he studied the graceful curve of her rather flower-like white throat, rising out of the square, dark neck of her gown. Her sleek brown head shone more than ever like a polished chestnut beneath the rays of the lantern, and her skin looked creamily pale save where the rather excited pink flush was painted delicately on her cheeks. Her lips were a little parted—and very red and inviting.
“Is it?” he insisted softly, coming down the ladder, and she turned and met his eyes and backed instinctively, although she could never afterwards, have told why. Except that his intention was plainly written in his eyes, and for some reason she felt suddenly panic-stricken at the idea that he should kiss her—casually, under the mistletoe in the hall. And as he made a slight movement towards her, his eyes suddenly dancing, she backed still farther away from him and came up against one of the tall Jacobean chairs, and it fell with a resounding crash which echoed through the hall.
