Dorothy Eden (3 page)

“At Heriot Hills,” he said slowly, “in that, you’re going to look like a new-born lamb.”

“Your mind must run on sheep, Mr. Macauley. Give me that case, will you? This dress isn’t the only pretty thing I have. I hope you have plenty of room in your car. I have twelve bags and a cabin trunk. My Uncle Jonathan bought my trousseau for me. He insisted on it being a good one. I mustn’t disgrace Paul.”

“My goodness gracious!” Davey muttered. “The Queen of Sheba, to say the least.”

“Well, I only pray Paul isn’t like Solomon.” She gave him her clear dark blue glance. “But of course he isn’t. That’s quite comical to think of with Paul.”

“Is it?” Davey muttered. But in her pre-occupation over packing the fabulous dress she didn’t seem to hear his noncommittal answer.

A
S THEY WENT JULIA
said blithely, “I can tell you I shall be delighted to get out of this place. Hotels are so horribly anonymous.”

That word brought back the thought of those peculiar letters, and she took a quick glance at the young man with her, wondering if he was the sort of person in whom one could confide. It came to her all at once how very alone she was, and for a moment her heart wavered again.

Could the same person have written all three letters, even the one purporting to be from Paul? She didn’t think so, because the anonymous ones were printed, whereas the one from Paul was written in what certainly looked like his own handwriting. Perhaps, she began to reflect more soberly, he was in such pain from his sprained ankle that he could do no more than put on paper the barest instructions. Poor darling, how pleased he would be to see her so unexpectedly.

Yet in spite of her sane reasoning she could not convince herself that Paul had really written that letter.

Nevertheless, she refused to be depressed. Something had happened at last. In a few hours she would see Paul. She was on fire with excitement.

She scarcely noticed Davey Macauley’s aloof unfriendliness. She had been so silent all day that now she had to talk. As the road winding into the hills slipped away behind them, and all the country that could be discerned was pinpointed in the car’s headlights, a clump of the squat dark macrocarpa trees, a wooden cottage overgrown with geraniums and ivy, the glimmer of water that lay in pools by the roadside, a glimpse of a hill’s bare slope, Julia chattered. Partly she talked because it relieved her, partly because already she was conscious of an instinctive shrinking from the loneliness of the countryside. It was the sound of the wind that made it so lonely, and the occasional glimpse of a polar white mountain crest.

“And who,” she said suddenly, in the midst of an account of the voyage out from France, “do you think would write me stupid anonymous letters? You know the kind of thing. “Beware! You are playing with fire.’”

At last she had his full attention.

“Did someone write that to you?”

“Not exactly those words, but the meaning was similar. It’s awfully like cheap melodrama, isn’t it? The Black Hand sort of thing.”

“How long has this been happening?”

“Oh, only since yesterday. I got one letter in Wellington, and one this evening in Timaru. I thought at first it was from someone on the ship who was playing a joke. But the one tonight made me think I was being followed. Is there anyone who would be jealous of my marrying Paul?”

“A woman?”

“Who else?”

He hesitated. “I would hardly know. I have only been at Heriot Hills for three months.”

“Isn’t three months long enough to notice things?” she said lightly.

“I have my work to do.”

“You’re very non-committal, Mr. Macauley.”

“Am I? By the way, most people call me Davey.”

Julia supposed that after one had flung oneself, practically unclad, into a man’s arms, the basis of first names was inevitable. But Davey Macauley hadn’t made the suggestion with any show of friendliness. It was almost as if being addressed formally made him uncomfortable. Perhaps he thought Macauley was an unlikely name for a shepherd. If it came to that, he did not behave in the least the way she had imagined a shepherd would. He was too alert and contained. For all his aloofness and appearance of disinterest she felt that he would miss nothing. So he must know all about the household at Heriot Hills. “Would this person in a crude sort of way be trying to frighten me off?” she persisted.

“I wouldn’t know about Mr. Blaine’s private affairs.”

“Oh, come! Wouldn’t you have noticed if some silly girl was breaking her heart over him. Although from what I remember of Paul he wouldn’t be that kind of person. He was too shy. But I suppose in three years one can change.”

Again she was surprised at herself for talking in this confiding way to a man whom she had only just met, and who was merely an employee at Heriot Hills. But Paul had casually entrusted her to his care. So he must be someone of some standing. Anyway, his voice and his manner showed that. And, like someone drunk with words after a long silence, she had talked too much to stop.

“My Uncle Jonathan was the only person who thought I wasn’t crazy to come to New Zealand to marry a man I had known only for a few days. I suppose it was really because of him that I came. There might have been too many difficulties to overcome otherwise.”

“You mean you might not have had a trousseau?”

She caught the flavour of sarcasm in his voice.

“That is something,” she said blithely. “Nice clothes mean a lot to a girl. You think I’ve come out to have a smart wedding and show off my things?”

“It could look that way,” he said indifferently.

She laughed good-humouredly.

“I suppose it could. But I do happen to be in love. That would be something, too, wouldn’t it?”

“Oh, indeed.”

He
couldn’t
be a shepherd, not with that neat sardonic manner. She was enjoying this dry interchange of words. She would tell Paul about it, saying, “At first I was mad with you for sending your shepherd to fetch me, but then I realised you knew I would have an amusing journey.”

“Uncle Jonathan has a passion for French writers,” she said, “Balzac, Anatole France, Flaubert. He lives in them. You know, the French still have marriages of convenience. Uncle Jonathan thinks that is so tidy and civilised. He felt he was arranging one with Paul and me when he helped me to come. But of course he realised the difference with us was that we were in love.”

“Then it must have been a long three years for you since you last saw Mr. Blaine.”

How could she tell him that she had only really fallen in love with Paul since getting that last letter, that unexpected tender passionate letter that said all the things she ever wanted a man to say? He would laugh at that confession.

“Oh, it was. Terribly long. But Paul explained about that. He had been in hospital a lot of the time having skin grafts, and he didn’t think it was fair to write to me until he knew that he would be all right. He had bad face wounds, did he tell you? I completely understand how he felt. He would be so sensitive about it until he was presentable again.” Suddenly she was saying a little uncertainly, “I suppose I shall recognise him?”

“I didn’t know him in the past,” Davey said. “He has only faint scars now.” He added in his slightly contemptuous voice, “You don’t need to be nervous, Miss Paget.”

“Apparently I don’t. Especially since some woman seems to be crazy about him. Tell me honestly, Davey, have you any idea who she would be?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Oh. All right. I’ll find out. The silly little scrap. Then would you tell me what the household at Heriot Hills is. I know so little about Paul’s family, really. He has never talked much about it. But then we’ve scarcely had time. I only knew him for those few days when he was in England on leave.”

“I suggest you wait until you get there, Miss Paget, and see for yourself.”

His words were spoken in the same light indifferent tone, but suddenly, for no comprehensible reason, Julia’s nervousness, the uncertainty she had felt while waiting in the gloomy hotel, had come back. Her intense excitement, like a potent drink, had worn off, and she felt small, alone, and very cold. This man would tell her nothing, and all the time the wet shining road was taking her nearer to the house that contained a man whose face had changed so that she might not recognise it. And not recognising it, she might find that she was no longer in love.

He had noticed her shivering.

“Are you cold? You’d better put my coat on.”

“I’m all right.”

“Nonsense. It will get colder all the time. We’re getting near the snowline. Like to get out and have a look?”

He stopped the car, and unwillingly she climbed out. The moon was rising, and low hills lay in a long series of black humps against a white background that was not sky but the snow line of the Alps. A chilling wind that seemed to taste of snow and ice blew against her face. Tussocks rustled on the hillside with an incomparably lonely sound. There was the occasional high quavering bleat of a lamb, a lost and eerie sound.

With an almost desperate effort Julia thought of her wedding dress, packed carefully in the bag in the back of the car. But now its snowy folds seemed to her like those mountain peaks, pure and infinitely cold. Her shivering became uncontrollable.

“I hate it!” she muttered. “It’s primeval.” The wind tossed the words from her mouth, and she didn’t think he heard them. In a moment she was glad. It was betraying her nervousness, and that she never did. She was proud. She accepted adventure.

She felt a coat being flung round her shoulders.

“Put that on,” Davey Macauley said crisply. She clutched at it and scrambled back into the lighted car. In that moment he, and the warmth of the coat, were the only things she had in that lonely spot. She looked at him as he followed her in, seeing him for the first time, the dark hair slicked down, the ears that stuck out like a schoolboy’s, the flat mouth drawn down at the corners, the slanted eyebrows and long thin nose. He caught her glance. For a moment the sardonic almost contemptuous humour shone in his eyes. Then he switched off the dashboard light. “Come along then, Queen of Sheba.”

For the rest of that long journey up and down hills, round horseshoe curves, past the steely glimmer of a lake and the pencilled shape of poplars, through the untidy overflow of swollen streams, always towards the white mountains, she remained silent, beyond an occasional question as to how far they still had to go. At last Davey turned the car down a rough road, little more than a track climbing across a hillside.

“We’ll be there in ten minutes,” he said. “It’s just on midnight. You’ll see the house round this bend.”

Julia could see nothing but what looked like a plantation of trees. Presently they were driving beneath them, the overhanging branches swinging against the car. Julia recognised oak and elm and the flickering white leaves of silver poplar. There was a small grove of pointed Christmas tree firs. Then suddenly, while still in the midst of the trees, they were at the front door of the house. It literally grew among the greenery, a large old wooden two-storey building with two rather pretentious pillars supporting a wide verandah.

Davey stopped the car and Julia slowly climbed out. Instantly the wind seized her and nearly blew her off her feet. The air was full of the creaking and sighing of trees. She had a feeling of being imprisoned in a dark and stormy forest. She stared speechlessly at the house. Perhaps it was only the dim light that made it look so old and tumbledown, so forgotten among all this sad sighing greenery. Paul had written, “Mother wants the house dressed up,” but how had they come to let it get into such a dilapidated state? If it had not been for the faint yellow light in one of the upper windows she would not have believed that anyone lived here. Even as she looked a hand—was it a hand, it looked so thin and fleshless?—was silhouetted a moment against the pane, then the blind was pulled down and even that faint light vanished.

Julia became aware that Davey was standing beside her.

“You go in,” he said briskly. “The door won’t be locked. Just give a shout.”

A shout! In that black deserted place? She would never be able to produce more than a quaver of sound.

“Who—will wake up?” she said uncertainly. (The owner of that ghostly hand? Never could she believe that Paul, the blue-eyed healthy normal person she had known, was within these walls.)

“Mrs. Blaine, I should think. Paul’s mother. I’ll bring your bags in.”

Julia gave a swift glance at her stacked luggage in the back of the car. Now she understood Davey’s expression as he had looked at it in Timaru. All those elaborate clothes were ludicrous in this wild forsaken place.

“Just give me that little bag,” she said swiftly. “That’s all I want tonight.”

“Sure?” His voice indicated his disbelief that she could do with so little.

“Of course I’m sure,” she snapped. Her momentary anger at his impertinence jerked her back into reality, and she was able to walk up the steps on to the porch, and then to turn the knob of the heavy door and open it slowly.

The hall in which she found herself was in darkness except for a slip of light from a room at the far end. She gave a rather tremulous “Yoo hoo!” Then suddenly she seemed to awake at last to the fact that here she was at last under the same roof as Paul. In another moment, provided she could make someone hear, she would be taken to his bedside, she could be face to face with him, the man with whom she had only completely fallen in love after he had written her that tender sensitive letter. In an excess of excitement she ran stumblingly across the hall, which had a faint smell of old dusty carpet, towards the door through which the chink of light showed.

She pushed open the door boldly and there, by a dying fire, was Paul. Of course it was Paul. The room was lit only by two candles on the mantelpiece and the glow of embers from the fire, but there distinctly was his fair head leaning against the back of his armchair, his injured foot resting on a stool.

She tried to speak, but couldn’t. She could only draw her breath in in a long audible sigh of excitement.