The House of Discontent (6 page)

“Don’t worry,” Patricia said. “She can’t help it and I’m sure she doesn’t really mean it Perhaps she had a headache.”

“No, Mary said. “She’s nearly always like that. Isn’t it funny, the first few days you were here it was I making excuses for her to you, and now it’s you making excuses to me. But it’s no good disguising it from you any more. She’s been like this ever since we left the White House—though, of course, she’s a million times better when Edward’s at home. You must have noticed that, too.”

“You’ve got your father, and he loves you dearly,” Patricia said.

“And you, poor darling, haven’t got a mother or a father now, have you? You must miss him terribly.”

“I do,” Patricia said.

“You’re so wonderful about it. No one would ever know. Most people with a great sorrow never let you forget it... Oh, dear, I’ve suddenly remembered the photograph again! Worrying over Pookie put it clean out of my head.”

“Now stop worrying and go to sleep, and don’t think any more about it because you can’t do anything for the moment. If you have to think of something, think of the dance next week.”

“All right. I’ll think of the lovely white dress you are going to lend me!”

The next day was Sunday, and another glorious frosty morning. Mary wanted to start out as soon as possible to fetch Pookie, and as Edward was lazing in bed the two girls decided not to wait for a lift on his motor-bicycle but to go by themselves on ordinary bicycles.

“Why don’t you take your skates?” Patricia asked.

“Oh, no,” Mary protested. “Then they would think that I expected to be invited to stay and skate!”

“You are silly,” Patricia laughed.

“Don’t be long,” Edward called out to them from the window as they started off. “I shall expect you to be back and ready to amuse me by the time I am up. And I’ll take you over to Ludlow to see the Castle this afternoon if you like.”

It was about ten o’clock when they left, but they had to walk most of the way, pushing their bicycles, for it was uphill to start with.

“Just think how lovely it will be coming back,” Mary said.

“I hope my brakes work!” Patricia replied.

“Just think of poor Pookie running all this way uphill,” Mary said. “No wonder he was exhausted.”

By the time they came on to the flat they were almost at the South Lodge, and they got thankfully on to their bicycles. Patricia’s was a very old machine belonging to Dorothy. Mary told her that it hadn’t been ridden for ages. She had to stop twice and pump up her tyres.

“We ought to have mended the punctures before we left,” she said.

“I do wish you would have my bicycle,” Mary said for about the twentieth time.

“I wouldn’t for the world,” Patricia replied. “This is the kind I was taught to ride on. I hate your modern kind. It breaks one’s back bending over like that all the time. It must make you awfully round-shouldered.”

“You only say that because you don’t want to deprive me of mine,” Mary said. “I know you by this time!”

“I assure you I don’t. Nothing would induce me to have yours!”

As they entered the park by the South Lodge and started up the beech avenue, Patricia was deeply stirred by the beauty of the place. On their right, through the trees, they could see the lake, with the cottage on its farther bank.

“There is no one skating,” Mary said. “Oh, dear, I’ve suddenly remembered:—of course, it’s Sunday. I expect they have all gone to church.”

Patricia had forgotten, too, and now at the thought that she would probably not be meeting Anthony Brierleigh after all, she felt an unaccountable but very sharp pang of disappointment.

They skirted the lake, following a path which would round its edge, and pedalling hard they soon arrived at the cottage. In spite of its name it was, in reality, quite a fair-sized house, built in the colonial style—white, with green shutters and a green door under a small pillared porch. With its view over the lake and the beeches beyond, it was ideally situated, and standing as it did on ground raised above the level of the water, it obviously was not as damp as might first have been supposed.

As Mary had noticed, there was no one skating on the lake, but part of it had been swept clear, and from the many prints of edges cut in its smooth surface, it could be seen that someone, or perhaps quite a lot of people, had recently been skating on it. There was no one about at all, and again Patricia experienced that sharp sense of disappointment.

They got off their bicycles and propped them up against the side of the house, and Mary rang the front door bell. It was soon answered by a maid, and Patricia said that they had come to fetch the dog.

“Oh, yes, miss,” the maid said. “Will you come this way, please? Lady Brierleigh has gone to church, but Sir Anthony is at home and he has the dog with him.”

Her heart beating with a sudden unaccountable excitement, Patricia, followed by Mary, went with the maid through the hall.

The maid paused in front of a door at the end of the hall to ask their names.

“Miss Leslie and Miss Norton,” Patricia told her.

The maid threw open the door and announced them, and Mary gave Patricia a little push to make her go in in front of her.

A man was sitting in a chair and pulled up to the fire, reading a newspaper, but as they came in he put down the paper hastily and got up, and Patricia saw, as she had all along half hoped and half expected, that he was no other than her stranger friend of the first evening in London.

As Pookie, who had been curled at his feet, sprang forward to greet Mary, he came towards them, his eyes only on Patricia.

“So it is you!” he said. “I thought I recognized your voice last night.”

He ignored Mary completely, but for the moment she was too busy making a fuss of Pookie to notice this.

“We have met before,” Patricia explained to her hurriedly, trying to bring her into the conversation. “Quite by chance.”

Anthony seemed to see Mary for the first time.

“Hallo, Mary,” he said. “So it’s your dog, is it? He’s been quite happy here, I think—haven't you, old man?” And he stooped and patted the dog’s head. As if in reply, Pookie sprang up at him and tried to lick his face. “I’m glad you haven’t had him poodled,” he went on. “They are such intelligent dogs, it’s a shame to make them look like clowns.”

“One could never keep them like that in the country,” Mary said. “It’s all I can do to keep him brushed and combed as it is—and the mess he gets into when he’s been hunting! And he always manages to go hunting the day after I have washed him.”

While they were talking Patricia was glancing round the room. It was one of the most attractive rooms she had ever seen. The sun was pouring in at a large bay window with a window-seat running round it, from which there was a glorious view over the lake. Opposite was the fireplace where a wood fire was burning on a great heap of ash, and above the carved pine mantelpiece was a portrait of a young man in eighteenth-century costume, obviously an ancestor, for he bore quite a striking resemblance to Anthony. The rest of the wall space of the room was lined from floor to ceiling with books. Patricia had never before been in such a cheerful library. She longed to go over to the shelves and examine the books.

Having glanced round and taken in that much, her eyes went back to Anthony himself. She was struck more forcibly than ever by the contrast between his bronzed face and the gold of his straight fair hair. His face was turned half away from her now and she noticed the beautiful, fine moulding of his profile. The word “Greek” sprang to her mind, but she was not absolutely sure what a Greek profile was really like.

She remembered suddenly that she had never thanked him properly for all he had done for her that evening. This was the opportunity and she mustn’t let it slip. He had been bending over Pookie talking to Mary, but now he straightened himself and turned to her.

“I never got a chance,” she began hastily, “to thank you for all you did for me that evening. Mary, you will never know how kind ...”

“Please don’t let’s talk about it, do you mind?” he interrupted. “It will be all over the neighbourhood in the twinkling of an eye.”

Patricia flushed, and Mary, feeling insulted, said with spirit and an unusual hauteur: “Are you implying that I repeat everything I hear?”

“No,” he said. “I didn’t intend any reflection on you at all. You happen to be one of the few really nice girls round about here, but there would be no reason why you shouldn’t repeat it, and I don’t like the idea of it being bandied about by everybody. Do you mind? ... It was very simple. Miss Norton arrived at Waterloo after dark on a wet evening and I was fortunate enough to find a taxi for us both and drop her at her hotel ... That’s all.” It was not all, by any means, but Patricia said nothing to improve on the story because it was obvious that he did not want her to do so.

“How extraordinary that you should have met like that,” Mary said. She was mollified by his compliment. “What a funny coincidence!”

“Fate often gives the appearance of coincidence,” Anthony replied in. a low voice.

Patricia looked at him quickly. Wasn’t that a very strange remark to make?

“And now there is the coincidence of Pookie running here in his fit,” Mary said.

“Yes,” he replied. “It would almost seem that Providence is on one’s side.”

Again Patricia thought: “What a strange thing to say.”

“Are you coming to Camilla’s dance?” Mary asked suddenly. For the first time she was feeling at her ease with him; she had never known him to be so nice before.

He looked at Patricia “Are you going?” he asked. “Oh, yes,” she replied.

“I don’t know,” he said to Mary. “I may be.”

“Camilla’s asked you, hasn’t she?” Mary wanted to know. She was never very tactful.

“Yes, Camilla has asked me.”

“But you don’t like dancing, do you?”

“Only on the ice,” he said. “By the way, didn’t my mother say that she had asked you to come up and skate this week-end? Yes, of course she did. She said. ‘I have asked up the Leslies and the pretty cousin who is staying with them.’ Now I remember.” He turned to Patricia with a sudden smile which illuminated his whole face. “That must be you!” he said.

“Yes, I suppose so,” she replied, smiling back and blushing a little.

“Well, why haven’t you come up?” he asked Mary quite crossly. “We had a marvellous day yesterday. Why don’t you stay to lunch and we’ll skate this afternoon?”

Mary hesitated.

“I haven’t got my skates with me,” she said, “and I think we ought to get back for lunch. But if we could come up this afternoon ...”

Patricia suddenly thought of Edward’s suggestion that he should take them to Ludlow that afternoon, and reminded Mary of it.

“There won’t be room for me, anyway,” Mary said. “He can’t take both of us on the back of his bike except for very short distances. You go to Ludlow, if you like, and I’ll come up here and skate. You don’t skate, anyhow...”

“But I can lend you a pair of skates and you will soon learn,” Anthony said.

“I think, perhaps, I had better wait and see what Edward says,” Patricia replied, sorely torn.

“Just as you prefer,” Anthony replied coldly. “I am sure you will like Ludlow very much.”

Patricia had a sudden intuition that she had offended him.

“Perhaps you will let me come up tomorrow?” she asked. “Certainly,” he said, “but I shan’t be here.”

At that moment the sun went in. A cloud had passed over it, and at the same time the warm friendliness of the atmosphere between the three of them froze, leaving them all at once stiff and silent.

“I suppose we had better go,” Mary said.

Anthony did nothing to detain them. He saw them to the door and without even waiting for them to get on their bicycles he went back into the house.

C
HAPTER FIVE

“ANTHONY BRIERLEIGH was much more like his usual self at the end,” Mary said when they were out of earshot. “I couldn’t get over him being so nice to start with. I’ve never known him like that before. But he is so disconcerting, isn’t he? At one moment he presses one to come up and skate, and then, when one asks him if it is really all right, as I did when we left, he makes one feel awful—as if one had invited oneself in the first place!”

“Would you have said I was rude to him?” Patricia asked, puzzled.

“No, not a bit. You couldn’t help having another engagement. You weren’t a bit rude.”

But in spite of this assurance Patricia felt greatly disquieted as she rode along. She did not know exactly what it was that was worrying her, but it was something vaguely troubling and disturbing. Anthony’s whole behaviour struck her as having been a little odd; and yet before the end when the atmosphere suddenly became frozen, there had been something in it which had thrilled her in a strange new way—as if she had been walking along the edge, not of an abyss or of a precipice, but of some undefinable depths which contained not death and horror but the exciting promise of almost terrifying joy.

She could not have explained even to herself, let alone to anybody else, what exactly it was that she had felt, but it had been something vast, tremendous and thrilling. And then suddenly, through no fault of her own as far as she could see, the promise had been withdrawn, the vision shut away, the thrill turned into a disquieting chill.

She felt restless and in need of silence. She wanted to be left alone to think out this strange new experience that had happened to her, but Mary wanted to talk, and all the way down the avenue she rode close to Patricia and kept up a ceaseless chatter.

“How extraordinary that you should have met him in London like that. Do tell me about it. Didn’t you know his name? Did you recognize his voice on the telephone last night? Do tell me what really happened.”

“Only just what he said,” Patricia replied. He hadn’t wanted anyone to know more, so she was not going to tell more. If it were to be bandied about as a story by all the neighbours, it would lose something essential of its preciousness.

“But why didn’t you tell me that a strange man had helped you like that?” Mary persisted. “Fancy keeping anythin
g
as thrilling as that to yourself!”