by Susan Barrie
“If you would just sit beside her and let her know that you are there I think it might help to calm her,” the nurse said.
Melanie scrambled into her dressing-gown immediately, and went along to Noel’s room. Her heart turned over at the sight of the wild, glazed eyes on the pillow, and the painted cheeks. Noel knew her, however, as soon as she entered the room, and her fiercely hot hand reached out to clasp Melanie’s passionately.
“I thought perhaps they might have sent you away,” she whispered hoarsely and then was forced to relinquish her clutch through sheer weakness, but Melanie held her hand closely and tenderly within her own. She smoothed the tumbled gold hair back from the white brow and assured her that under no circumstances would she leave her, and asked her to try and sleep because she was sure she was drowsy, and Noel blinked at her like a very tired baby and obediently closed her eyes.
For the rest of that night Noel slumbered fitfully, and Melanie sat beside her. The nurse offered to relieve her after a while, but Melanie shook her head. Noel’s fingers were lightly clasping her own, and she felt that the smallest movement might cause her to wake. But after a time the circulation ceased in her arm, and she could have cried aloud with the pain of it, and her eyes were so heavy that she could have dropped asleep at her post. But she did not do so. So many people had failed Noel in the past that, whatever happened, she, Melanie, must not fail her now, and the thought became an obsession. And with the dawn light Noel sank into a much more restful sleep, and presently the nurse stole across the room to the bed with a cup of strong, hot, refreshing tea, and Melanie drank it while the uniformed figure retained possession of the saucer, and Noel’s hand dropped lightly out of her cramped fingers.
Melanie stood up, looking and feeling almost too dazed with tiredness to know where she was, and the nurse whispered to her that she must go straight to bed. The patient would scarcely be likely to stir now for a while, at least. And Melanie stole along the corridors to her room and dragged herself over to her window.
In the still, bleak, wintry light she could see that the snow was now fast disappearing, and there was slush on the terrace where her employer had stood watching the moon a few nights before Christmas. The whole garden seemed to have turned in a few hours into a sea of grey, disfiguring mud, and the dark outlines of the laurels and the bushes which bordered the drive were dripping with moisture. The fairytale world had vanished, and in its place was an infinitely depressing greyness which was exactly in tune with Melanie’s own feeling at that moment.
She thought of the night when she and Richard Trenchard had walked up the drive together, she clinging closely to his arm, and remembered the strange feeling of excitement which had coursed through her veins because his smile had been so peculiarly friendly, and his voice, too. And she recalled how quickly she had been brought down to earth when he had shut himself in his library with Baxter, and left her feeling like a pricked balloon. What she had expected she did not quite know, but it had not been that abrupt dismissal, any more than she had expected him to turn on her and openly support Miss Gaythorpe that night that Sylvia’s whim was for skating on the ice. The ice which was now no more!
She looked towards the grey, shadowy outline of the lake and thought how unbeautiful it appeared now. Sylvia would have found the country even more depressing this morning!
Sylvia loved comfort, and brightness, and luxury around her, and she was probably one of those fortunate human beings whom the Fates love and who would have her happiness handed out to her on a platter. Always! ... Success, admiration, adulation, applause, and one man with eyes like grey smoke behind a screen of thick feminine eyelashes to look on and applaud her more than most!
Melanie leaned her head wearily against the cool glass of the window and wished that she could summon up the effort to get herself back to bed. She was so tired—so utterly, physically weary—and confusing thoughts were passing through her brain. Thank goodness Noel seemed to be a little bit better! ... That seemed to be a car light shining down there by the lodge gates, glimmering like a pale tulip in the early light. And a moment later she could almost have sworn that the grey shape of a car slid up the drive... But her eyes were playing her tricks. She could no longer even think coherently, and she staggered across the room, threw off her dressing-gown and tumbled into bed.
Mrs. Abbie was there with a tray of tea when she wakened. Mrs. Abbie had been moving softly about the room before she opened her eyes, tidying it for one who was now a great favorite, turning on the electric fire so that a pleasant glow shone upon the furniture and mingled with the last rays of daylight coming in at the window.
Melanie struggled up on to her elbow.
“Noel?” she inquired. “How is she?”
“The nurse says she seems to be much better,” Mrs. Abbie answered a trifle abstractedly. She added: “I’ll go and turn on a bath for you, and I’ll bring tea to you in the library when you’re downstairs. I thought you’d like a cup up here first to wake you up.”
Melanie almost leapt out of bed when she realized how late it was.
“I must have slept the whole day,” she said. “And I’d better go and see Noel.”
“The nurse says there’s no need for you to go anywhere near Miss Noel until you’ve had a proper rest yourself,” Mrs. Abbie surprised her by stating firmly. “You can go and look at her before dinner, but she’s probably sleeping now, and it won’t do to have her disturbed.”
“Oh, very well,” Melanie said, looking at her with uplifted eyebrows, and decided that perhaps those were the nurse’s instructions.
When she went down to the library she was wearing a dark green woollen dress with an ivory collar and cuffs. The fire was burning brightly in the hall, which surprised her a little, for the fire in the hall had not been maintained after the departure of the master of the house and his guests. And the leaping tongues of firelight discovered the chestnut gleams in her hair.
When she opened the library door she saw at once that a magnificent fire had been built up there, too, and Peter no doubt wondering what had become of his mistress—was lying in front of it on the rug and drowsily blinking his eyes. He thumped his tail when Melanie entered but did not get up to greet her. His great paws were resting on a pair of well-shod feet which, in the absence of any other form of illumination in the room, seemed to be protruding out of nothingness, as if unattached to a body, from the shadowy spot where a deep leather armchair always stood. It was Richard Trenchard’s chair, and although Melanie did not know it, Richard Trenchard himself was lying comfortably there and not even smoking a cigarette.
“Don’t put the light on,” he requested her quietly, as her hand went to the switch. “It’s so much more cosy in the fireglow, and Mrs. Abbie will be bringing the tea in a minute.”
Melanie stood quite still and stared towards the corner where his chair stood. She remembered the light down at the lodge gates in the early morning—her impression that a grey car had slid up the drive. And suddenly she felt wholeheartedly thankful.
She said with a little tremor in her voice, “Oh, I’m so glad you’re here!”
He stood up at once and came towards her. He took her hands and held them while he looked down at her, his eyes almost tenderly teasing and faintly concerned at the same time, while he received the impression that she looked a trifle wan.
“That’s the nicest thing I’ve ever had said to me!” he told her, and put her in low chair drawn up close to the fire. He arranged one of the comfortable velvet cushions at her back, placed a footstool for her small feet to rest on, and then produced his cigarette-case and offered her a cigarette.
When it was lighted she lay back and looked up at him with a certain amount of perplexity.
“Once again you didn’t let us know you were coming,” she accused him gently.
“Oh, but I did,” he assured her. “Mrs. Abbie knew I was coming—I spoke to her last night on the telephone. And the doctor knew I was coming. Only you were not aware of it.”
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br /> Melanie recalled Mrs. Abbie’s faintly mysterious air when she had brought her her tea, and realized that they had entered into a conspiracy. But it was a very pleasant conspiracy, and she felt a little warm glow of contentment deep down inside her as she looked up at him standing so close to her on the rug, and saw how his eyes dwelt upon her. A little rosy glow of color stole into her cheeks, and she felt unable to meet his intent gaze for long. She lowered her eyelashes, and they formed smooth, dark half circles on the delicate surface of her skin.
“Ah, that’s better!” he exclaimed, with satisfaction. “You look more like yourself now. Before, you were so pale that I hardly knew you, but I’m not in the least surprised, since you were up half the night. But Noel seems to have turned the corner all right—thanks, or so I am informed, largely to you! And in a day or so there’s a specialist fellow coming from town to examine her thoroughly. If there’s any sort of inherited weakness, which Crofts suspects, we’ve got to deal with it, and not leave it until it’s too late.”
Melanie nodded.
“I agree,” she said. “Noel’s fragility has always concerned me a great deal, but she’s so young that I’m sure it can be dealt with.”
Mrs. Abbie came in with the tea-trolley, and her smile as she looked towards them in the fireglow made Melanie aware that she was actually feeling rather pleased about something. It suddenly struck her that the pleasure she was experiencing was connected with her master’s return home, unaccompanied by any of his friends, and the fact that he appeared to be very ready and willing to wait upon the girl in the green dress, who already looked that much happier herself.
It was rather like the few days before Christmas, only nicer. Decidedly nicer—and more promising!—Mrs. Abbie said to herself inwardly.
When she had left the room Melanie was further amazed to hear Richard agree to accept a cup of tea when she offered it to him, and he even risked sampling one of the small cakes. She said very demurely, “I thought you didn’t take tea, Mr. Trenchard!—at least, only on those occasions when you find yourself more or less forced to do so!”
“That’s true,” he agreed, directing an almost schoolboy grin at her. “But then I’m rapidly becoming much more domesticated since I found myself in possession of the Wold House. I actually felt that London was dull when I returned to it a few days ago, and that, I assure you, is extraordinary—even more extraordinary than taking afternoon tea!”
“But ought you to have left it just now?” she inquired, more seriously. “You were going to be so very busy, and there is your new play on the fourteenth? You’ll return for that, of course?”
“I don’t know,” he answered, producing his pipe and stuffing it full of tobacco. “I haven’t yet made up my mind. And I’ve got a kind of feeling that I could work here—once this problem of Noel is settled. I don’t like thinking of the poor kid being ill. She’s such a little scrap, and so extraordinary dependent. But one of these days, when she’s outgrown her present tendency to ill-health, she’s going to be a howling beauty.”
Melanie was able fully to agree with this prophesy, but although he did not mention it she wondered whether he thought of Miss Gaythorpe’s contribution towards the unfortunate Noel’s present bout of illness, and whether he experienced the mildest form of contrition because he had accused her, Melanie, of coddling his niece! But, if he did, he was not going to admit to it just yet.
That night she had dinner with him alone in the dining room, and after dinner he visited Noel. But only for a few minutes. And when he came downstairs to the library again he seemed so grave and quiet that Melanie at first thought that Noel must be worse, until he reassured her by telling her that Noel was decidedly better, and that she was asking for Melanie to go up to her. Melanie stood up at once and started to move towards the door.
Her employer stopped her.
“Don’t stay longer than a quarter of an hour,” he said. “The night-nurse is with her, and she’s quite comfortable. “But,” he added, with a fierceness unlike him, “I can’t help attributing all that to that crazy idea of skating by moonlight. In a climate such as this! I ought to have put my foot down, but—The trouble with Miss Gaythorpe is that she doesn’t always stop to think. And she can be remarkably persuasive on occasion!”
He threw his cigarette into the fire, and watched the tiny flame which leapt up as it was consumed by the blaze. Melanie felt that faint chill of apprehension strike her which always did strike her when it was abruptly borne in on her that the lovely, red-headed film star had an undoubted attraction for him. And she was quite sure Sylvia knew how to make the most of her powers of persuasion! At least, where Richard Trenchard was concerned.
“Good night,” she said, thinking he might not wish her to return to the library that night, but he looked up at once.
“Not good night yet,” he said. “It’s early. Come back and talk to me. Or, better still—do you play chess?”
“Yes,” she answered, almost eagerly. “I used to play a lot with my father.”
“Good!” he exclaimed. “Then you can now play with me!”
And although it sounded more in the nature of a command she went up the stairs to Noel’s room with a lighter step than she had known for several days, and her heart was actually singing a little inside her. Which she knew to be entirely absurd.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
PERHAPS to make up for the severity of the Christmas weather spring came early—or there was a deceptive touch of spring in the mild quality of the early February days. Melanie discovered aconites in a sheltered corner of the garden, and snowdrops, and she, gathered some and took them indoors for Noel to see. Noel had been a prisoner confined to the house all through January, and she was growing a little weary of not being allowed out into the sudden bursts of pale, exciting sunshine. To her, from the windows, the terrace, and the shrubberies, and the lawn where the sundial stood—and the orchard where Peter loved to root up the daffodil bulbs from amongst the coarse grass whenever the occasion offered, and no one was looking—represented a freedom which was now temporarily denied her. But on the whole she kept very cheerful, and she certainly never complained.
Melanie always experienced a kind of pang whenever she looked at her these days, for Noel’s face was so white and thin, and her blue eyes wistful. She was much more fragile than when Melanie had first set eyes on her, and that distressing little cough was much more frequent. Her hands had a blue-veined transparency which sometimes frightened Melanie, and she knew that her employer was watching his niece closely.
The specialist from London had seen her and examined her twice, at intervals of a few weeks, and after the last visit he and Dr. Crofts and Richard Trenchard had had a conference in the library. Melanie waited for them to come out and the doctors’ cars to drive away, and in order to while away the time she exercised Peter up and down the length of the terrace, in a gentle zephyr of a wind which brought the healthy color to her cheeks and made her eyes appear extraordinarily clear.
Under the shelter of the terrace all sorts of little green shoots were rising to the surface, and there was actually a tiny specimen of a wallflower in bloom against the terrace wall. And the pale celandines were brightening the hedge which shut in the kitchen-garden.
Melanie looked across the lawn to the sundial, and beyond that to a patch of climbing woodland, slightly below the level of the fells, and she thought that in a few weeks the bluebells would lie there in sheets of mauve. In a few weeks, too, the orchard would be a sea of foaming pink and white blossom, and the dull brown of the moors which hemmed them in would be giving place to new and tender green, with starry-eyed wildflowers amongst last year’s bracken gazing up at the rain-washed spring skies.
In a few weeks this bleak north country would come to life in a way she knew and a way she loved. But whether she would still be here to witness the miracle she had no idea.
She looked up as footsteps crunched on the path, and her employer joined her. It seemed remarkab
le to her that for so many weeks now he had been content to remain at the Wold House, and despite, as she knew, frequent telephone calls from Sylvia, and probably letters as well, his determination not to return to London yet awhile appeared to be unshaken.
This morning, despite a certain gravity of expression, resulting from the visit of the specialist, he looked up at the sun and crinkled his eyes in its warm glare. He inhaled the moist scents of the garden, too, as if he was beginning to be aware of the advantages of possessing a few acres of his own.
“I’ve been thinking,” he said, as he lightly took her arm and propelled her across the lawn where a few intrepid daisies were beginning to show their heads, “that there is a great deal to be done here, and the sooner Rawlins”—the gardener—“gets down to it, the better. I’m going to have this lawn entirely relaid, and I’m thinking of having a tennis lawn as well. And then I want to rescue the rose-garden. At the moment it’s so choked with weeds that I can’t imagine any single bloom daring to raise its head above the brambles.”
She looked up at him as he kept his fingers lightly beneath her elbow, and their pressure increased slightly as they approached the head of a flight of steps leading down to the sunken rose-garden he was obviously interested in.
“Then you do feel that you can settle here? You like the house and the grounds?”
“I like it very much—much more than I anticipated when I bought it!”
She was silent. She wondered whether his liking had grown since Sylvia’s visit, and whether it was Sylvia’s idea that the place should be brought completely up-to-date and money expended on its gardens.
“How about you? he inquired, looking down at her curiously. “You’re a country-loving young woman, or so you told me once. Haven’t you any enthusiasm to spare for this place?”
“I? Oh, I simply love it!” Her brown eyes sparkled so much as she uttered the words that he was entirely convinced of her sincerity. “But it’s not my house, is it?” rather more flatly.
