When Love Is Blind

by Mary Burchell

  "You spoke about letters from people who loathe you, and I asked if there were really many of those."

  "Lots, I should imagine," he said indifferently. "If one is successful one makes enemies, and if one doesn't suffer fools gladly one makes even more."

  "I heard you say that of yourself once!" she ex­claimed involuntarily.

  "Heard me say what?" He turned to her with such an air of interest that it was difficult to believe he could not see her.

  "Th-that you never suffered fools gladly. You said it-very distinctly and unkindly, to tell the truth—as you thrust your way through a crowd of admirers at the stage door one night."

  "And you were there?" He gave an intrigued sort of smile. "Did you sometimes come to hear me play, then?" Evidently he had not paid much attention to her original greeting.

  "Oh, yes," said Antoinette. "I told you I did."

  "You're smiling again, aren't you?" He sounded curious and even a good deal amused. "Why?"

  "I suppose because I was recalling with such pleasure the times I heard you play."

  "How odd!" Then he frowned suddenly. "You aren't just a persistent fan pretending to be a good secretary in order to push your way into my private life and make a nuisance of yourself, are you?"

  "No, I'm quite simply a good secretary who happens to be interested in music. I wouldn't describe myself as a fan of yours exactly."

  "How would you describe yourself?" She had caught his attention completely now, and that air of be­wildered, restless melancholy was for a moment com­pletely gone. "Tell me what you are like," he com­manded imperiously.

  Panic took hold of her but she fought it down, and even managed to laugh in a perfectly natural manner.

  "Well, I suppose it's never very easy to describe one­self," she said, as though she were seriously reflecting on the matter. I'm of medium height, not specially fat or thin. I have rather coppery brown hair—"

  "Straight or curly?" he enquired as though it were really important.

  "Slightly wavy—and thick. I have quite a good skin, though I'm pale. And I have eyes that are grey when I'm in a good temper and green when I'm angry. I think that's all."

  "No, it isn't. I can tell you a whole lot more than that already," he declared. "You must have an expres­sive mouth, otherwise one wouldn't hear your smile. You have a remarkably soothing speaking voice that falls very gratefully on the ear, and you have strong, interesting hands. In fact—" suddenly he broke off and then said, again in that peremptory tone—"give me your hand again."

  She was really frightened now. But because she had no choice, she put her hand into his, and he ran his other hand over the length and the tips of her fingers.

  "You're a pianist!" he exclaimed.

  "Well, I—I do play a bit," she admitted.

  "Oh, no, not just "a bit"," he corrected impatiently. "Not with those spatulate fingertips. Grip my hand.—Harder! As hard as you can," he commanded as she reluctantly clasped his hand in hers.

  Then he laughed on a note of triumphant interest as she exerted the full strength of her grip.

  "No one who doesn't use the muscles of the hand constantly has a grip like that," he declared. "How well do you play?"

  "No more than for my own amusement," she insisted hastily. "I do a lot of typing and that might account for—"

  "Nonsense," he interrupted. "Typing produces an entirely different effect. You shall play for me presently and I'll tell you just how well you do play."

  "One day, perhaps," replied Antoinette, praying that nothing in her tone indicated to his keen hearing the unspeakable chill which his words induced in her. "But you mustn't scare me by suggesting anything so nerve-racking on a first meeting. It would be more to the point if I said that I hoped you would play for me one day."

  "Never!" He rejected the suggestion with such violence that she blinked. "I don't want to play now—for anyone but myself. Imagine being led to the piano, fumbling a little until one found one's bearings on the keyboard." He gave an exclamation of sheer disgust. "I'd rather never play again than make such an exhibition of myself!"

  "Stop being so self-pitying and arrogant," said An­toinette, and utter silence fell in the room.

  "What did you say?" He was quite white as he turned his sightless gaze upon her.

  "Just what you thought I said," she replied reso­lutely. "And, as you can probably tell from my voice, I'm not smiling."

  "No," he said slowly, "you're not smiling. One doesn't when one tells someone the disagreeable truth. But perhaps—" he smiled wryly—"your eyes are green."

  "Green?" she repeated uncomprehendingly.

  "You said they were green when you're angry. I thought—" his smile deepened ruefully—"you sounded as though your eyes were green."

  "Oh!" Suddenly the fact that he had not only taken her impulsive rebuke but could actually joke gallantly about it almost broke her heart—"I didn't mean—I shouldn't have said—"

  She stopped, because all at once the tears were running down her cheeks. Several times during the last half hour they had been very near. This time she simply could not stop them. She could only be wretchedly thankful for a moment that he could not see what was happening.

  "You meant exactly what you said," he told her drily, "and you were perfectly right to say it. I am arrogant. I suppose I've always rather fancied myself that way. And unless there is someone there to check me fairly brutally at times, I suppose I might become self-pitying. Arrogant people do when the tide turns against them."

  She was silent, because only by keeping quite still could she hide from him the fact that she was in tears.

  "You're very quiet." He frowned impatiently. "Have you decided to be offended or something?"

  "N-no."

  "Then what's the matter?—Why," he exclaimed in­credulously, "You're crying!"

  "No, I'm not."

  "I don't believe you." He put out his hand and caught her, lightly and with some accuracy, by the wrist. Then with a questing, uncertain movement he unexpectedly put his other hand against her wet cheek. "You are crying," he said again, and there was astonishment and amusement in his voice, and some­thing else which curiously warmed her cold, frightened heart.

  "I'm—sorry," she gasped.

  "No, don't be sorry. I can't recall that anyone ever cried for me before. Perhaps arrogant people don't in­spire tears." And he laughed slightly. Then he re­leased her wrist, but only so that he could take her face between both his hands.

  "You silly girl," he said, half mockingly, half tenderly. "Your cheeks are quite wet. But I think, from the feel of it, that you have a pretty shape to your face—and laughter lines here—" those sensitive fingers traced a light curve round the corners of her mouth. Then suddenly he released her and said in a matter-of-fact sort of tone,

  "Well, I suppose we'd better do some of those letters, particularly the ones from the people who loathe me. After all, we don't want them to think I'm self-pitying, do we?"

  "N-no," agreed Antoinette huskily. "We'll reply to them very promptly and confidently."

  "That's the idea," he agreed. "You'll find everything piled on that desk over there." He made one of those curiously sketchy gestures towards one corner of the room where a desk was standing. "Half of them haven't even been opened, I imagine. You'd better open them and read them to me. Begin with the signatures and then I can probably tell you if you need bother me with the whole contents or just reply conventionally to a conventional expression of regret."

  "Very well," said Antoinette, and cleared her throat.

  "Feeling better?"

  "Yes. Except that I feel rather an idiot. I don't often cry. I won't do it again, I promise."

  "Don't promise anything. I might want to make you cry," he warned her calmly. "I'm often not at all a nice person. But you'll find that out for yourself. Fetch the letters."

  So she brought over the pile of letters—some still sealed in their envelopes, as he had said—and began to read them aloud to
him.

  In the course of the next hour or so she learned quite a lot about him, both from the way people wrote to him and his reception of what was written. Few wrote with intimate knowledge or warmth, though many wrote with undoubted respect and regret. In­evitably, practically the same words clothed the same sad sentiments again and again, and she was thankful that he had decreed that many of these well-meant but conventional letters should not even be read out to him. They would only have re-emphasized unbearably the horror of what had happened to him.

  "That will just be a routine expression of sympathy," he said to at least half of the letters when she had got no further than the signature, and almost always he was right. Sometimes, on glancing through the letter, she would give him an odd detail or two, but usually it ended with his saying impatiently,

  "Thank them politely and say that, as my secretary, you will let them know how I get on. Then file the letter and forget it."

  Once or twice, for some reason that she usually could not fathom, he would say, "Put that aside. I'll deal with that later." And once he laughed with malicious enjoyment over a particularly fulsome tribute from another well-known pianist and said,

  "Damn him, there's relief in every line. He always did regard me as his most powerful rival."

  "Do we reply?" enquired Antoinette.

  "Of course. And in our gayest and most confident vein. I see no reason why he should sleep more com­fortably at night for the thought that I'm blind."

  Antoinette bit her lip, poised again for a dangerous moment between laughter and tears. Then she opened a very different-looking letter—so different that she was moved to describe its actual appearance.

  "This is on lovely almost dove-coloured paper, and the address is "Cornerways", Pallin Parva—"

  "And it's signed "Charmian"?" he finished with a touch of genuine interest.

  "Yes, it's signed "Charmian"," she agreed. "Shall I read it? It looks rather—personal."

  "I can't know the contents if you don't read it, can I?" he retorted disagreeably.

  "I thought you might prefer to have this one read out by someone nearer to you—more intimate with you."

  "I have no one nearer to me," he said coolly. "I have no immediate family, if that's what you mean. And you're going to have to be my second self if you remain as my very personal secretary."

  The thought both warmed and scared her. But she said in as practical a tone as she could,

  "Didn't you have a personal secretary before all this happened? You must have, surely?"

  "No, no!" He rejected the very idea with distaste. "I just used to get someone from an agency once or twice a week. A different one each time if possible so that I never felt dependent on or attached to any specific person. I detest personal ties—almost without excep­tion."

  "How you must hate this new arrangement, then!" The exclamation was out before she could stop it.

  "I don't like it," he replied bluntly. "It's one of the things which incline me to self-pity. But possibly it's good for my arrogant soul. Read the letter."

  "Yes, of course!" She glanced back at the forgotten letter and, keeping her tone as impersonal as possible, she read aloud,

  "My dear, I only want you to know that I am thinking of you with love and sympathy. Since some­one else will have to read this to you I cannot write much of what I would say. May I come and see you, Lewis? Each time I telephone they say you are not having visitors. But I'm not just a visitor, surely? Please let me come. My love to you, Charmian."

  "When was that written?" he enquired.

  "Exactly a week ago," said Antoinette, glancing at the date.

  "Hm. She's waited rather a long time, hasn't she? Dial the number for me, give me the telephone and— No, wait a moment! First gather up all those routine replies. You'll find a typewriter and everything you re­quire in the small room which opens out of this one. That will be your office. You can get on with those letters for the time being. How many more have we to deal with?"

  "About a dozen. And then there are eight—no, ten—that you said you would attend to later. They required something more than the conventional reply."

  "All right. Take the ones we've dealt with, and then get me Mrs. St. Leger's number. It's at the head of the letter, I suppose. In any case, it's Pallin four-seven, if I remember rightly."

  "It's on the letter," Antoinette said, glancing back at the expensive dove-coloured sheet in her hand. "Pallin four-seven, as you say. Then she lives in the neighbourhood?"

  "She's more or less my nearest neighbour," he replied, but he offered no further information about her.

  So Antoinette transferred her letters to the small inner room, where she found, as he had said, a type­writer and a well-equipped desk. Then she came back and dialled Charmian St. Leger's number.

  A light, very musically pitched voice replied, "Mrs. St. Leger speaking." And Antoinette said, "Mr. Free­mont would like to speak to you," handed the receiver to her employer and withdrew to her own office.

  Only then did she discover, to her vexation, that she had left her shorthand notebook behind. She went back into the room, walking quietly so as not to disturb him, and was in time to hear him say in a tone of half-mocking indulgence.

  "Yes, you can come if you like. So long as you promise not to cry over me. Tears bore me."

  Antoinette withdrew silently again and closed her door. She wondered if her tears had bored him. On the whole, she thought not.

  She worked steadily for some time. And since she was both quick and efficient, she gradually disposed of most of the large pile of letters by the time a maid came and told her lunch was ready.

  "Mr. Freemont prefers to lunch alone," the girl volunteered.

  "Yes, of course," Antoinette agreed. By which she supposed she meant that she well understood he would hate to be observed while he was getting used to the difficult task of eating without seeing what was set before him. Oh, daily, hourly, humiliation for one who had always been so arrogantly independent! Even the simplest detail of everyday life must present its special problems now. And all because she—she—had been fool enough to come to a guilty stop in the middle of a road where she should never have been!

  Antoinette found she had little appetite for the ex­cellent lunch served to her in the silent dining-room. When she was actually with her new employer, or working hard on his behalf, she could hold the worst of her remorse at bay. But alone now and without the compulsion of work upon her, she could only think how quiet the house seemed and how desolate it must be to him.

  Presumably he had taken pride and pleasure in it once. Now it was the prison which enclosed him, the immediate limit of the dark world in which he now wandered.

  She could not bear to linger over her coffee and was back again at her desk so quickly that he unexpectedly rang his bell for her and, on her entering the drawing-room, said rather disagreeably,

  "You don't have to display quite such a passion for work, you know. It's hardly half an hour since that typewriter stopped tapping, surely?"

  "I'm sorry. Does the sound of it irritate you?"

  "No more than anything else." He gave a sigh of weary impatience. Then he laughed shortly and added, "I take that back. More self-pity, I'm afraid, wasn't it?"

  "You're entitled to a little." She tried to make that sound as though she too found it wryly amusing instead of unbearably pathetic. "I've practically finished that first batch of letters. Do you want us to deal with the others now?"

  "We might as well," he agreed indifferently. And then, in a rather different tone, "Do you know, I don't even know what your name is."

  "You don't?" She felt like a nervous rider suddenly faced by some tremendous obstacle which she thought she had already surmounted. Then, calling on all her coolness and self-possession, she said, "My name is Miss Burney, and my friends call me Toni."

  "Why Toni?"

  "Oh, it's a nickname." She thought she had got across her surname safely, but she dared not risk the
combination with her unusual Christian name. "I never liked my real name."

  "Which is—?"

  "Sarah," she declared desperately, offering the first name that came into her head.

  "Sarah?" He repeated it reflectively. "No, that wouldn't suit the girl I'm visualizing. Toni is much better. Am I regarded as one of the friends who call you Toni?"

  "If you—if you want to, of course."

  "Very well then—Toni. We'll deal with the rest of the correspondence."

  Surreptitiously she wiped a few beads of moisture from her forehead and picked up her pencil.

  They had just dealt with the very last letter when the maid who had announced Antoinette's lunch came in and said that Mr. Everleigh was there. Antoinette guessed immediately that this was Gordon Everleigh, the highly successful manager who handled the affairs not only of Lewis Freemont but of many other distin­guished artists in the musical world.

  "He can come in," said her employer, and Antoinette read quite clearly on that intelligent, sensitive face first the pleasure of one about to greet a real friend and then the doubt and uncertainty of having to face someone so inextricably associated with all that had been lost.

  "Would you like me to go?" she enquired.

  "No, no. You'd better stay and meet him. He's my manager and you'll have quite a lot to do with him. For a time at any rate, until we know for certain—"

  He broke off and was silent until the door opened again and the maid announced, "Mr. Everleigh."

  Gordon Everleigh was a tall, good-looking man, per­haps a year or two older than Lewis Freemont himself, with an air of controlled energy and good-humoured authority peculiar to successful men who deal well with people.

  His greeting to Lewis Freemont was warm without being gushing, sympathetic without being too emotion­al. And when he was introduced to Antoinette he shook hands warmly and said with every sign of real sincerity that he was glad to see her, since her presence suggested that Mr. Freemont had decided to take up some sort of active life again.

  "Not to the extent of contemplating any public play­ing," put in Lewis Freemont shortly.

  "Too early to discuss that," replied the famous man­ager imperturbably. "I've postponed the proposed American tour, of course. But there's no need to make speedy decisions about anything else."