The Other Linding Girl (3 page)

“Oh, but that isn’t necessary,” Rachel broke in quickly. “I wasn’t expecting to go. I don’t mind at all—”

“Nonsense.” Her aunt gave her an oddly quelling glance. “Everything can be arranged, if we’re sensible about it.”

“If by that you mean that I should put a social engagement before a professional one, everything
cannot
be arranged,” Sir Everard stated curtly. “There’s no question of my going out tonight, Hester, and that’s final. For God’s sake, don’t you yet know what it means to be married to a profession? If you have to go, Nigel must take you—and the pair of you can be as irresponsible as you like together. Nigel’s better suited to that than I am.”

And Sir Everard gave his brother-in-law a glance of undisguised disapproval which Nigel Seton, Rachel noticed, withstood with admirable calm.

It was at this point that interruption came from a totally unexpected quarter.

“If Lady Linding will allow me to escort her,” said Oliver Mayforth, “I shall be happy to do so.”

“But, Oliver—” Hester looked unexpectedly taken aback— “you realise, don’t you, that—that almost everyone we know will be there?”

“I’m sure they will.” The assistant surgeon looked rather grim. "But I hope you will let me take you, all the same.”

“Well, that settles things splendidly,” declared Sir Everard quickly, before anyone could query an arrangement which suited him so excellently. “And now perhaps we can have dinner.”

So they all went in to dinner, which was—in spite of the fact that Hester hurried things rather—a much more elaborate affair than Rachel was used to at home. All the same, she more than once spared a nostalgic thought for the dear, shabby dining-room in Loriville, where the family were probably just sitting down to
their
evening meal.

As soon as dinner was over, her aunt said briskly, “Come on, Rachel, you and I had better get dressed. Will you come back for me, Oliver? I don’t expect Nigel will take the Rolls. He’s funny about driving Everard’s car.” She spoke exactly as though neither her brother nor her husband was present, Rachel noticed. “And there isn’t room for two evening dresses in that little runabout of his. ”

Then she swept her niece out of the room and upstairs, enquiring rather impatiently on the way how long it took her to dress.

“Not long,” Rachel promised, with a smile, and her young aunt left her, to attend to what evidently promised to be more elaborate preparations on her part. True to her undertaking, Rachel was downstairs again in good time, wearing the simple but very well-cut white evening dress which she had bought because Elizabeth had insisted (with all the authority of an affectionate elder sister) that it “did things for her.” Unquestionably it flattered her already admirable figure, and added subtle, warm overtones to the colouring of her smooth skin. And it made her uncle exclaim;

“My dear, you look charming! You make me quite sorry I’m not coming too,” he added gallantly.

“I’m also sorry.” Rachel smiled at him. “But of course there’s no question of your being out late if you start operating early tomorrow.”

“No, no—Hester finds it so difficult to accept these things ” Sir Everard rubbed a hand over his forehead in a worried way, and Rachel felt genuinely sorry for him.

“Being brought up in a doctor’s household makes it easier for me to understand,” she explained soothingly. “It’s difficult, I expect, if one hasn’t had that background.”

“True, true. Hester’s background wasn’t a very good preparation for this sort of dedicated life, I’m afraid.” He used the word “dedicated” with such simple sincerity that Rachel saw him for a moment stripped of his little foibles and poses, and realised why he was a great doctor.

“She doesn’t come of medical people?” Rachel asked gently.

“No, no. Her people were
literary
.” Sir Everard said this as though it constituted a disease, though a minor one. “Almost ‘arty’, one might say,” he added, in an unexpected burst of family candour. “The father was a clever man, but quite impractical, and the mother had lots of degrees but no sense.”

“Rather a bohemian sort of life, do you mean?” Rachel suggested politely, though she was faintly embarrassed at the personal turn the conversation had taken.

“You know, it was almost that,” agreed Sir Everard, as though shocked at finding the word applied to anything remotely connected with him. “Hester was clever and pretty enough to break away and find her own level. But it was a bad preparation for life in her brother’s case. Very bad,” he repeated, and frowned, as Nigel Seton’s gay voice was heard calling something to his sister upstairs.

Rachel, a little at a loss to know how to reply tactfully to this, was silent. And, a few moments later, Nigel Seton came running downstairs and into the room. She naturally looked at him with fresh interest, in view of her uncle’s recent strictures. But, though he looked quite extraordinarily handsome in his evening clothes, it was difficult to fit him exactly into the role of irresponsible playboy.

It was not, Rachel reflected further, altogether easy to fit him into
any
role. In some odd way, he defied any sort of real definition. With most people one. could make some sort of guess. Stockbroker, actor, bank manager, doctor, artist. But not with Nigel Seton. And, with a

slight sense of shock, Rachel came back to the odd thing he had said on the telephone—“I live by my wits.”

No wonder her dignified and conventional uncle found him a thorn in the flesh!

Sir Everard, however, made a visible effort to be genial, as he said,

“Well, Nigel, you’re provided with a very attractive partner this evening, I must say. Rachel could hardly look prettier, could she?” And he looked as though he were in some way responsible for his satisfactory niece’ s appearance.

“She could not,” agreed Nigel Seton gravely. “But don’t embarrass her.”

“Embarrass her? No girl is embarrassed by the underlining of her good points,” declared Sir Everard. “And I think Rachel’s ego can do with a little boosting. She informed me, on arrival, that she is the
ordinary
one of the family.”

“Very modest of her,” commented Nigel Seton in a rather equivocal manner. And then Oliver Mayforth returned and, a few minutes later, Hester made her appearance, looking radiantly lovely in her new Florian gown.

Even if he had no wish to accompany her to the ball, it was obvious that Sir Everard took the greatest pride and pleasure in his young wife’s appearance. He said, “My dear, you look wonderful!” and warmly kissed the very cool cheek which she presented to him.

“There’s always one who kisses and one who turns the cheek ” thought Rachel. “I’m somehow
sorry
for Uncle Everard.”

But Uncle Everard looked quite content as he waved them on their way. Which, in a strange way, did not reduce Rachel’s queer compassion for him.

Nigel's car proved to be a battered affair In comparison with Oliver Mayforth’s. But it was comfortable enough, once one was inside. And, while he waited for the others to move out ahead of them, he turned to Rachel with an amused glance and said, “So-you’re the ordinary member of the family? Your brothers and sisters must be quite something.”

“Two sisters,” she specified gravely. “The elder one really a beauty and the younger one immensely gay and lively. I come in the middle.”

“Was that what decided you to leave home?” he enquired, as he started the car, and Rachel blinked slightly at such unexpected acumen.

“Not entirely.” She indulged in no indignant and hollow denials. “I’m greatly attached to both of them, but I
was
beginning to feel a little tired of being described as ‘the other Linding girl— what’s her name?’”

He laughed.

“I don’t believe that?”

“You don’t believe I was getting tired of it?”

“No, I don’t believe that’s what happened. You’re not the
other
anything. You’re completely—and intriguingly—yourself.” Rachel tried not to look as gratified as she felt.

“That’s a very nice speech,” she said lightly. “But—” remembering suddenly what her uncle had said—“I think perhaps you’ve made it to other girls before me.”

“No,” was the cool reply. “It hasn’t applied to other girls before you.”

“O-oh,” said Rachel, and was silent.

“What makes you think I might have?” he enquired curiously. “Well—” Rachel was slightly nonplussed, for it was difficult to answer that without implicating her uncle. “I had the idea—I mean—”

“Yes?”

“You did imply, on the telephone, that you were a—a rather lightweight sort of person.” She recalled that with some relief. “You said you—lived by your wits.”

Rachel was not aware that her voice dropped to a gravely critical note on that last phrase. She was only aware that she had made him laugh heartily—and that it was both a mocking and an oddly attractive laugh.

“Well, I do,” he agreed.

“But what do you
mean
by that? It’s nothing to laugh about. It’s rather—rather deplorable. Haven’t you got a regular job or profession?”

“Not really—no.”

He seemed so casual about it that Rachel found herself wondering indignantly if he more or less lived on Uncle Everard.

“Then what,” she enquired rather austerely, “do you do for a living?”

“Oh, I dabble a bit in chemistry—write occasional articles for the less popular journals, when I feel I have a good subject—odd things here and there, you know.”

“But nothing regular?”

“Nothing regular,” he agreed.

Rachel thought it sounded dreadful. For all her father’s understanding and indulgence, neither she nor her sisters had ever been allowed to suppose that the world owed them an easy living.

They had all been brought up to realise that they must put as much into life as they took out of it—or, quite simply, feel ashamed. This casual catch-as-catch-can sort of existence seemed little less than immoral to her.

“It doesn’t sound very worthwhile,” she said severely.

“I’m sure your uncle would agree with you.”

“And doesn’t that—worry you?” She didn’t quite like to say “make you feel ashamed”.

“No. He has his very definite viewpoint, to which he is entitled, and I have mine.”

To Rachel his didn’t sound like a viewpoint at all, more like an amiable drifting, while the really serious business of life was left to others. She told herself Nigel Seton was not her business. But, though she managed to remain silent, her expressive face said more than any words, and after a moment, he laughed softly and enquired,

“Have I shocked you?”

“I don't much like your views,” Rachel admitted,

“Does that mean you don't like me?” he enquired,

The question was lightly asked and should have been, lightly answered. But, in some inexplicable way, it assumed quite unmanageable proportions.

“I—don’t know,” she said. And, even to her own ears, there was a note of surprise in her voice.

“Reserve judgment Rachel. ” He smiled, that gay and rather mocking smile, as he looked at her. But she noticed that his eyes were entirely grave.

The discovery oddly disconcerted her, and she was glad that, at this moment, they arrived in the huge forecourt of the Gloria Hotel, and he parked the car immediately behind the sleds Jaguar from which Hester and Oliver Mayforth were just emerging.

The four of them joined the stream of people making their way through a private entrance to one of the several ballrooms which the Gloria boasted. But, somewhere short of the ballroom itself, Hester took Rachel’s arm in an unexpectedly determined grip and, with a careless word or two about getting rid of their wraps, she whisked her off to an incredibly luxurious powder room.

The moment they were inside the door, she said brusquely, “Rachel, I want you to do something for me.”

“Why, of course.” Rachel was eager to do anything to please her unpredictable young aunt.

“I’ve no intention of spending my evening with Oliver Mayforth. He bores me,” she said, with devastating simplicity. “I’d be glad if you would take him off my hands. ”

“But—” Rachel was greatly taken aback—“why didn’t you agree to go with Nigel—with your brother—in the first instance, then?”

“I’m not going to spend a whole evening with a mere brother either,” Hester replied, with a slight laugh. Which immediately made Rachel wonder uneasily with whom she
did
intend to spend the evening. But, though she felt extremely uncomfortable, it was not for her to start questioning her aunt. And so she said, a little reluctantly,

“I’ll do whatever you like, of course. But what will your brother think?”

“Nothing,” replied Hester coldly. “I shall explain to him.”

Again Rachel felt acutely uncomfortable. The whole arrangement suggested so clearly that Hester and her brother were used to joining forces to use people and situations to suit their own ends. No wonder Uncle Everard had been critical. And, at the thought of her uncle, Rachel could not help wondering if he knew much of how his wife spent her time when away from him.