The girl in the blue dress (3 page)

"Well, my mother said you would be. They used
to have someone come and do sewing in their family when she was a girl. Her
name was Miss Popplejohn and, "

"Not really?" Beverley was enchanted.
"She used to do sewing for my mother too. There simply couldn't be two of
them with a name like that, could
there?"

The young man said quite impossible, and did
Beverley's Miss Popplejohn wear high necks and have fuzzy hair?

"Yes, she did. It wasn't her own, though. The
bit at the front, I mean. And Mother said she had
very cold hands."

By now, with the intimate link of Miss PoppleJohn, they
felt quite old friends, and as they got into the car, he said, "I didn't
introduce myself. I'm Andrew Wayne."

"I gathered that you must be. At
least, that you must be a young Mr. Wayne. Are you the only one?"

"I'm the only son, if that's what
you mean. I
have three sisters, though."

"Yes, I've heard of them. They are
all very beauti
ful, aren't they?"

"We-ell, I don't know about that." Andrew
Wayne considered the statement with the critical air of one who found other
people's sisters more beautiful. "I suppose they are a pretty good-looking
bunch. Sara certainly is. She's the eldest and is getting married in the
autumn. She's twenty-two. Three years younger
than
I am, " he added gratuitously.

"And the others?" enquired Beverley, with
that inoffensive but genuine interest which is always flatteringly pleasant.

"Madeleine is a couple of years younger than
Sara, "

"She'll be a bridesmaid, of course?"
interrupted Beverley, whose mind was already on the wedding procession.

"I suppose so. Yes, of course she will. And
Toni her real name's Antoinette, will be train-bearer or something. Though how
anyone's going to guarantee that she won't step on the train I don't know. She
has a talent, amounting almost to genius, for doing and saying the very thing
you hoped she
wouldn't."

Beverley laughed and asked how old Toni was.

"She's twelve, which of course means a very
big gap between her and the rest of us. I guess we spoil her in some ways, and
then we often forget she is really a child. Which means that she's a mixture of
disconcerting knowledge and almost equally disconcerting innocence." But
Toni's brother grinned
as he said this, with
an air of reminiscent indulgence,
and Beverley rather thought that he
had a special liking for his youngest sister.

Before she could ask any more, or he could impart
further information, they arrived at Huntingford Grange, which turned out to be
a somewhat imposing eighteenth-century 'house, with nothing specially to
commend it, beyond its size, its solidity and its very beautiful position on
top of a hill.

From the drive in front of the house, and Beverley
turned to look around her, it was possible to see over miles of countryside, again
to the dark rim of the cold North Sea. And although it was a warm day in May. a
fresh breeze blew up here, bend
ing the
flowering bushes which grew in the shrubbery on either side of the house.

"Come on in, and I'll find someone for
you." Andrew ran up the half-dozen steps to the front door, and Beverley
followed him.

As she did so, she thought, quite
impersonally,
what a well-set-up young
man he was, and that, with his dark hair and very blue eyes, he was not at all
unworthy to be the brother of three beautiful
sisters.

At his cheerful, but informal shout of
"Mother! a tall, good-looking woman in her late forties or early fifties
came out of a room at the end of the hall. She was so like him that there would
have been no
doubting the relationship, even
without this informal identification.

"Here is Miss Farman, Mother, " Andrew
Wayne explained. "She's about thirty-five years younger than you expected.
But she knows all about Miss PoppleJohn, because Miss P. used to work for her
mother
too."

"Really?" Mrs. Wayne smiled and shook
hands with Beverley. But although there was a glint of genuine amusement in her
very blue eyes, there was
also a slight air
of reserve about her which did not invite the same gay camaraderie as her son
seemed to enjoy. Beverley, however, did not like her any the
less for
that.

"Your mother must have lived on the other side
of the county when she was a girl, then, " she said.

"Yes, she did. Her name was Trenton then.
Angela Trenton, " Beverley explained. "My grandfather was
the Vicar of St. Stephen-in-the-Woods."

"Is that so?" Mrs. Wayne looked
courteously inter
ested, but not as though
she wished to pursue the
subject of Beverley's antecedents. "Would
you like to come this way, and I will show you the sewing-
room, and we can have a talk."

She led the way upstairs, Up two flights of stairs,
in fact; To a large, light room which she explained had once been the
children's schoolroom. Here there was, Beverley noted in a quick, comprehensive
glance
round, almost everything that a good
dressmaker
could require.

A large table for cutting, an adjustable model, and
an electric sewing-machine standing in an excellent
light from two windows.

A small fire burned in the grate, and as the room
stood high and had several windows in it, this was by no means unwelcome, in.
spite of the brightness' of the day. If she were going to spend much of the
next few weeks, possibly even months, working
here,
she would not have much to complain of, Beverley
thought.

At Mrs. Wayne's invitation, she sat down in a chair
near the fire, opposite her proposed employer,
and waited to hear what the older woman had to say.

"Did you make the dress and coat you are wear
ing?" was Mrs. Wayne's first enquiry.

"Yes." Beverley glanced down at her
light-weight
grey coat and matching dress, with
the unusual wide
white collar.

"It's charming. So very simple and yet
stylish. Was
it your own design and
cut?"

"Oh, yes. At least, this particular dress was
an adaptation from something I liked but which was a trifle too old for me, "
Beverley explained.

"I see. And that kind of adaptation holds no
diffi
culties for you?"

"No. I don't think so. I like making my own
designs entirely too. But good ideas can always be
adapted to individual needs and tastes."

Mrs. Wayne nodded and seemed satisfied. Then she
went into the question of business arrangements, and Beverley noted, with a
mixture of amusement and anxiety, that her ideas of "reasonable
terms" tended more towards Aunt Ellen's pessimistic prophecies than
her own high hopes.

"Your terms are rather high, Miss Farman, "
Mrs. Wayne said frankly.

"My work is very good, Mrs. Wayne, "
Beverley replied, equally frankly. "If you went to any good London fashion
house you would pay very much
more."

"And your work is equal to that?" Mrs.
Wayne did not sound exactly sceptical, but as though she needed to be
convinced.

"I think so. But the only way to make sure
would be for you to try me out on one or two things. If you genuinely felt the
work was not worth what I am asking, I would not refuse to discuss our arrange
ment again."

"Hm, that is fair enough,
" Mrs. Wayne conceded.
"Then
I think the best thing would be for you to
start
on, let us say, a couple of .informal dresses
for my eldest daughter, who
is getting married in the autumn, as I told you, and needs a good many things
for her trousseau, of course."

"I should like to do that, " Beverley
began. But before they could take the discussion further the door opened, and a
small, dark-haired girl who was undoubtedly Toni came in.

"Oh, Mother, is this Miss Farman who's going
to make dresses for us all?" she demanded with interest.

"
And
can she make a party dress for me, the
very first
thing? Because it's Wendy Tulley's birthday party
next month, and I simply haven't got anything. Not anything at all."

"No, Toni, "

"Oh, Mother!" The stricken wail betokened
agony of mind, but the interested glance in Beverley's direction suggested that
the misery was only skin deep.

"Don't make that ridiculous noise,
" said her mother without passion. "And go down and ask Sara to
come up here, there's a good child."

"May I come up too? I love to hear
clothes dis
cussed."

"Very well. But be quick."

Toni whisked off immediately and Mrs.
Wayne smiled at Beverley.

"She isn't as pretty as the other
two, " she said objectively. "But she is just beginning to get
clothes-
conscious."

"She is very attractive looking and would be
fun to dress, " Beverley replied sincerely. "I hope you are going to
let her have her party frock. Clothes for children of that age are rather fun, "

"Well, we'll see. There is no lack of material,
anyway." And, to Beverley's astonishment, Mrs. Wayne west over to a huge, old-fashioned
press, which stood in the comer of the room, and, opening it, displayed twenty
or more parcels which obviously contained material. Some of them were
completely shrouded in wrapping paper, but some of the parcels were open at the
end, so that one caught glimpses of quite lovely silks and cottons of a most
exquisite colouring and variety.

"Why, " Beverley drew near, in curiosity
and ad
miration, "what a
treasure-house!"

"Yes, (hey are lovely, aren't they? I have an
uncle who's an importer of oriental silks and materials, " Mrs. Wayne
explained. "He has often given us odd lengths over the years. That's why
it seemed so much more sensible to find someone to make these up,
rather than spend money on other things."

"I should think so, indeed!" said
Beverley, fascinated by the prospect of working in these beautiful
materials.

Then Toni came back and with her came quite the
loveliest girl Beverley had ever set eyes upon.

Sara Wayne was tall, like her mother and her
brother, and she was almost perfectly proportioned,
the set and length of her neck being so particularly beautiful that when
she turned her lovely head from side to side one could hardly keep one's eyes
from
her.

Unlike her brother she had brilliantly fair, almost
corn-coloured hair, but her eyes were the same in
tense blue. And the features which in him, and to a certain extent in
her mother, were strong and
well-defined, were in her exquisitely
delicate, and moulded as though by the hand of an artistic genius.

She smiled slightly at Reverley as they were
introduced, a sweet, coolly friendly smile. But then her long, unexpectedly
dark lashes came down and shadowed her eyes, so that her lovely face took on a
secret, faintly mysterious look which must, Beverley thought, be absolutely
irresistible to some types of men.

She listened with attention to what her mother and
Beverley had to say about the suggested dresses, and she had some good ideas of
her own. She smiled occasionally, and when she expressed an opinion, in that
cool, pretty voice of hers, it was obvious that she had
good taste and knew what suited her.

And yet Beverley had the most
extraordinary im
pression that she was
not really interested. She might have been discussing someone else's trousseau,
or else arranging for dresses which she herself would wear
in a pleasant but unreal masquerade.

"Perhaps it's just her manner, " Beverley
thought. "She may be very reserved, or shy. And yet, doesn't any girl get
excited about her trousseau? I know if I were only discussing cotton frocks for
a honeymoon with Geoffrey, "

But she quickly jerked her thoughts back from that
path. For, really, whatever hopes she might have about some vague future with
Geoffrey had nothing to do with the matter in hand.

Towards the end of the discussion, the third sister,
Madeleine, came in, and in some ways Beverley thought her the most attractive
of the three. She was not so strictly beautiful as Sara, but much gayer and
more animated, and she had the most charming, infectious laugh, which seemed to
release a sort of
sunny vitality into the room.

Her hair was two or three shades darker than the
corn-gold of Sara's, but it curled delightfully
round
her prettily shaped head, and like all the rest of the family, she
had intensely blue, beautifully set eyes.

"I can't imagine anything more exciting than
making clothes for such beautiful girls, " Beverley said
frankly. "I do hope I shall be able to please
you all
with my work."